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: In addition to insects, weeds have also been a menace to farmers - just ask anyone with a garden how much they hate weeds. They can quickly compete for water and nutrients needed by other plants. Sure, farmers can use herbicides to kill weeds, but do these chemicals also harm the crops? Can biotechnology help with this issue? Some crops have also been genetically engineered to acquire tolerance to the herbicides - allowing the crops to grow, but killing the weeds. But the lack of cost effective herbicides with a broad range of activity - that do not harm crops - is a problem in weed management. Multiple applications of numerous herbicides are routinely needed to control the wide range of weeds that are harmful to crops. And at times these herbicides are being used as a preventive measure that is, spraying to prevent weeds from developing rather than spraying after weeds form. So these chemicals are being added to crops. This practice is followed by mechanical and/or hand weeding to control weeds that are not controlled by the chemicals. Crops that are tolerant of herbicides would obviously be a tremendous benefit to farmers ( Figure above ). The introduction of herbicide tolerant crops has the potential to reduce the number of chemicals needed during a growing season, thereby increasing crop yield due to improved weed management and decreased harm to the crops.
Story: Jamie decided he wants to build a garden in his back yard. He finishes planting a nice crop of tomatoes and zucchini and is very happy with himself. About a month later he checks in on his garden only to see a plethora of weeds has grown with his crop. The tomato and zucchini plants are much smaller than he expected and some are even dying.

SOLUTION: Given Jamie removes all the weeds in his garden, will his plants get more or less nutrients and water?

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: The primary advantage held by a player in late position is that he will have more information with which to make better decisions than players in early position, who will have to act first, without the benefit of this extra information. This advantage has led to many players in heads-up play raising on the button with an extremely wide range of hands because of this positional advantage.[3] Also, as earlier opponents fold, the probability of a hand being the best goes up as the number of opponents goes down.
Story: Steve is in a poker tournament in the coming week. The tournament is broken up into two rounds. In the first round, Steve drew an early position at the table which will be on Saturday, and in the second round he drew a late position which will take place on Sunday. Steve hopes to win as the pot for winning is rather large.

SOLUTION: Which day will Steve most likely have a better advantage?

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: Turner et al (2006) derived crash prediction models for this report's predecessor and found a
pronounced 'safety in numbers' effect in the models. Using the crash prediction model for mid-block
locations, generic motorist and cyclist volumes can be used to demonstrate the impacts on the
expected crash rate of varying motor vehicle and cycle volumes. As shown in figure 2.20, an increase
in the proportion of cyclists to the overall traffic volume causes an increase in expected crashes at
mid-block locations, but the crash rate increases at a decreasing rate. That is to say, the crash rate per
cyclist goes down as the cycle volume increases.
Story: There were a ton of motorcycles on Interstate 8 last week. On Monday, there were 2500 motorcyclists. On Tuesday, there were 3500 motorcyclists. On Wednesday, there were 4500 motorcyclists. On Thursday, there were 5500 motorcyclists. On Friday, there were 6500 motorcyclists. On Saturday, there were 7500 motorcyclists. On Sunday, there were 8500 motorcyclists.

SOLUTION:
What day had a lower crash rate per cyclist: Friday or Sunday?