LR Drill Set 13, Question 3
The last outdoor drive-in movie theater in Nova(54 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(14 more words not shown)
- AOn the many(31 more words not shown)
- BThe proposed cuts(35 more words not shown)
- CAll of the(29 more words not shown)
- DThe overall reduction(23 more words not shown)
- EThe administration claims(30 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
It was their last chance to go. That might explain the packed theater.
A closing announcement can make people nostalgic or prompt them to do something they've been postponing. They may show up for one final visit precisely because the theater is about to disappear. That doesn't tell us they'd keep coming every week if it stayed open.
The owners said the theater couldn't regularly attract enough customers to remain viable. A profitable final week doesn't necessarily contradict that. The author is treating an unusual week, after the closure announcement, as evidence of what ordinary operation could sustain.
What we’re looking for
For the parallel flaw, I'd look for a group or occasion that isn't representative of the broader situation. We have a reason to expect the selected case to be unusually favorable, but the argument uses it to reject a claim about the general pattern. Another closing business could match, but the subject doesn't have to be a business; the selection problem is what matters.
Working the answers
- A
This relies on many past occasions described as similar to the present. It may overstate how certain the next result is, but it doesn't point to an obviously unusual selected case and treat it as representative. The final theater week is special because the imminent closure itself may have changed behavior.
- B
Cutting hours in a room many students like could produce opposition. The argument doesn't infer everyone's opinion from a selected group already motivated to show up somewhere. Its reasoning concerns the expected response to a loss of access, so it doesn't reproduce our sample problem.
- CCorrect
Students who feel strongly against the cuts have a reason to attend the meeting. Students who don't care or support the cuts may stay home. So the meeting attendees needn't represent every enrolled student.
The closing-week audience plays the same role as the meeting attendees: a selected case whose special circumstances can produce an unusually strong response. Generalizing from that case is the mistake. A theater's last-week crowd doesn't establish normal demand, just as a meeting full of opponents doesn't establish universal student opposition.
- D
This assumes an equal percentage cut makes the library's cut fair. Whether equal percentages are a fair standard is a different missing connection. There is no selected audience or special occasion being treated as representative of ordinary behavior.
- E
Increased athletic funding could coexist with a genuine shortfall in the library's fund drive. Perhaps the departments have different funding sources or financial needs. The answer wrongly treats those facts as incompatible, but it doesn't misuse an unusual sample in the way the theater argument does.
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