I recently passed (with high distinctions) three postgraduate course exams towards my masters degree (at a top-10 university). Ho hum, don't be impressed; that

I recently passed (with high distinctions) three postgraduate course exams towards my masters degree (at a top-10 university). Ho hum, don't be impressed; that is not unusual. My strategy, though, is not textbook; I spend more time studying the conceits of the lecturer, than I did the lecture material itself. With this in mind: The point we're supposed to accept is that when asked to evaluate the data sets presented, one heuristically makes assumptions based on social norms and crystallised intelligence. I'm pretty sure that this hypothesis was made in the article preceding the quiz, so no excuses for not realising the point of, well, any of the questions. For the theatre question, I too started with your interpretation. However, it didn't make sense in the context of illustrating the author's hypothesis, so it couldn't have been the "right" answer. Protip: when considering someone's line of argument in anything but a hard engineering discipline, I usually play the man before the ball - it's much more revealing.