Crowd : Shoal : Team — Identify the single most accurate higher-order label that precisely describes these collective terms and choose the best-fitting category from the options.

Difficulty: Easy

Correct Answer: Group

Explanation:


Introduction / Context:
Analogy items that list words like crowd, shoal, and team typically assess your ability to recognize collective terms and abstract them into a single unifying category. Instead of focusing on the specific species or contexts, the test expects the overarching label that cleanly generalizes across all items while remaining as specific as possible. This demands careful reading, because some distractors are partially true in narrower contexts but fail to cover the entire set.


Given Data / Assumptions:

  • Crowd is a collective noun for a group of people.
  • Shoal is a collective noun commonly used for a group of fish.
  • Team is a collective noun for a group of persons working or playing together toward a common goal.
  • We must choose exactly one label that is true for all three simultaneously and is the tightest correct category.


Concept / Approach:
The reasoning strategy is to compare how each candidate option fares across all listed terms. Good analogy solving prioritizes specificity without excluding any listed item. Collective nouns describe groups as single units, and crowd, shoal, and team are all examples. Therefore the label Group is a precise umbrella that includes all three equally well.


Step-by-Step Solution:
1) Recognize each given word as a collective term rather than a species or profession.2) Map each term to the concept group: crowd of people, shoal of fish, team of players or workers.3) Eliminate narrower or mismatched options that do not cover all three.4) Conclude that Group is the tightest and fully correct label.


Verification / Alternative check:
Try substituting the label with Collective noun and consider whether the meaning aligns. Because the options do not include that exact phrase, Group is the closest and still strictly correct abstraction that unifies all three examples without loss of meaning.


Why Other Options Are Wrong:

  • Individual: This is the opposite of a group based label, so it is invalid for collective nouns.
  • Fish: Shoal relates to fish, but crowd and team are not specific to fish. This option is under-inclusive.
  • Woman: None of the three terms inherently refers to gender, so this is irrelevant.


Common Pitfalls:
Associating shoal with fish and then trying to force a species based answer. Remember that the task is to find a category that fits all items equally, not to overfit to one item. Also avoid assuming that team is sports only; team applies in workplaces and projects as well, but the group nature remains constant.


Final Answer:
Group

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