TASK DEFINITION: You are given a background paragraph that describes one or more causal or qualitative relationships such as a relationship in economics or a scientific law and a story that makes use of the concepts or the relationship described in the provided paragraph. You need to come up with a question about the story that requires an understanding of the relationship described in the background paragraph. The generated question should not be answerable without both the background and story. Write a question about the story that requires a relationship in the background paragraph to answer. Check whether your question requires both the background paragraph and the story to answer. If your question can be answered by only one of these, try to rewrite your question so that it requires both. Note that "flipping" a word in the question can give rise to a new question where the answer will be different from the original question. Often, "flipping" a word gives rise to flipping the direction of the relationship, for example, from "increase" to "decrease."
PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: The Table above includes the ideal mechanical advantage of each class of lever. The mechanical advantage is the factor by which a machine changes the input force. The ideal mechanical advantage is the increase or decrease in force that would occur if there were no friction to overcome in the use of the machine. Because all machines must overcome some friction, the ideal mechanical advantage is always somewhat greater than the actual mechanical advantage of the machine as it is used in the real world.
Story: John designed a hypothetical lever that would have ideal mechanical advantage. He labeled the lever as lever A. He then wanted to compare this lever with a real world lever, which he labeled as lever B. He intended to use these levers to increase force.

SOLUTION: Which lever would have greater mechanical advantage, lever A or lever B?

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: Storing large volumes of data When storing XML to either file or database, the volume of data a system produces can often exceed reasonable limits, with a number of detriments: the access times go up as more data is read, CPU load goes up as XML data takes more power to process, and storage costs go up. By storing XML data in Fast Infoset format, data volume may be reduced by as much as 80 percent.
Story: Odis had a busy day storing XML. At 8 AM, he stored 202 Gigabytes to the database. At 9 AM, he stored 302 Gigabytes to the database. At 10 AM, he stored 402 Gigabytes to the database. At 11 AM, he got breakfast. At 12 PM, he stored 502 Gigabytes to the database. At 1 PM, he stored 602 Gigabytes to the database. At 2 PM, she went to sleep to finish storing XML later on that night.

SOLUTION: What time did access times go up: 1 PM or 11 AM?

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: Communication is any way that animals share information. Many animals live in social groups. For these animals, being able to communicate is essential. Communicating increases the ability of group members to cooperate and avoid conflict. Communication may help animals work together to find food and defend themselves from predators. It also helps them find mates and care for their offspring. In addition, communication helps adult animals teach the next generation learned behaviors. Therefore, communication generally improves the chances of animals surviving and reproducing.
Story: There are 2 groups of prairie dogs that have been released into the wild. Group A was domesticated and therefor never learned to communicate danger to each other. Group B was rescued from a bad storm but lived in the wild for years before they were captured then released. One day the two groups encountered a lion that was trying to eat them. One of the members of group B made a peculiar high pitched sound, alerting the rest of it's members that there was something dangerous nearby and they all went inside their burrow and hid. The member of group A saw the lion and simply ran as fast as it could without altering any of the other members. Unfortunately one of group A's members was caught and eaten.

SOLUTION:
Given there is a third group, Group C which was also domesticated, will Group C's chance for survival in the wild increase or decrease?