GRE Big Book Logical Reasoning Question: Do I just not know what catering is?

The correct answer is (E). The reasoning is people who go to a catered event will be able to communicate to each other and reason that it was the catering event that poisoned them. Hence, the higher amount of reports.

To me, this explanation doesn’t make any sense because it relies on so many assumptions:

  1. The catered event is for a large, uniform group of people: coworkers, wedding, religious holidays, etc.? Is this a common knowledge thing for catered events? I haven’t been to many in my life.

  2. If two friends go to a restaurant and eat together and get sick, can’t they just reason it was because of the restaurant? How do I know this? Because my friends and I have gotten sick from restaurants before and were able to conclude it was from the restaurant. This deduction doesn’t seem any less slow than if it had happened at a catering event.

What bothers me about this problem is the passage doesn’t explain catering or restaurant meals with any of the nuances it uses to ultimately solve the problem (example: catering event for large crowds). Frustrating!

Hi, could you share what answer you picked and why

It definitely can be frustrating but there’s usually a path to the correct answer