LR Drill Set 9, Question 6
A magazine surveyed its readers on whether they(32 more words not shown)
The situation described above most(8 more words not shown)
- APeople cannot always(11 more words not shown)
- BMagazine readers are(13 more words not shown)
- CPeople who use(16 more words not shown)
- DOne's quality of(12 more words not shown)
- EThose who use(16 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
The people who used email to answer generally liked email. The people who put their answers in conventional mail generally didn't. Their choices and their opinions line up. That isn't very surprising. If I think email makes my life easier, using it to reply to a survey makes sense. Someone who doesn't value it might choose the familiar paper-and-envelope route instead. We don't need a story about who reads magazines or an assumption about anyone's age to see that pattern.
What we don't know is how many people used each method. A majority within the email group could mean six out of ten people; a majority within the conventional-mail group could mean sixty out of a hundred. Both statements could be true even though the groups were very different sizes.
What we’re looking for
The question asks for the proposition this situation illustrates. Look for the link between using a technology and valuing it. We aren't being asked to prove whether email actually improves people's lives, and the survey results don't settle that separate question.
Working the answers
- A
People can be mistaken about a technology's benefits, but these results don't show that anyone is mistaken. They report different opinions from people who chose different ways to respond. We have no independent measure of the technology's effect against which to judge those opinions.
- B
This would tell us something about how frequently magazine readers use the two methods. The passage tells us the majority opinion within each group of respondents, not how large either group is or how often readers use each method. Unequal-sized groups could produce exactly the reported result.
- CCorrect
The email users tend to value email, while those replying by conventional mail tend not to value it. That is the pattern the statement describes: people using a technology are more likely to appreciate it.
The survey doesn't prove a universal rule about every technology or establish that every conventional-mail respondent never uses email. But it clearly illustrates an association between choosing the technology here and expressing a favorable view of it.
- D
Access to conveniences is different from people's assessment of one convenience. The passage doesn't compare the actual quality of life of people with and without email access. Nor does it say conventional-mail respondents lack access. We can't turn their opinions into proof that access directly changes their lives.
- E
To compare response rates, we'd need to know how many email users and conventional-mail users received the survey as well as how many replied. The passage gives neither comparison. Knowing what respondents said doesn't tell us which group was more likely to respond in the first place.
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