PrepTest 102, Section 4, Question 12
The school principal insisted that student failures are(30 more words not shown)
The flawed pattern of reasoning(14 more words not shown)
- AThe nutritionist insisted(34 more words not shown)
- BThe manager insisted(30 more words not shown)
- CThe nutritionist insisted(38 more words not shown)
- DThe manager insisted(34 more words not shown)
- EThe nutritionist insisted(44 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
No failing grades doesn't necessarily mean better teaching.
Before the change, I would already question the principal's certainty about the cause of failure. Students might not be doing the work, or conditions outside the classroom might interfere with learning. Poor teaching is a possible explanation, but the principal hasn't excluded everything else.
Then the failing grades disappear. Why?
Maybe instruction improved. Or maybe the school simply changed the passing mark. Imagine lowering it so that scores previously marked as failures now count as passes. The grades would look better even if teachers taught exactly as before and students learned no more. We need evidence about the teaching, not just the disappearance of the reported symptom.
What we’re looking for
For the parallel, follow the order: someone attributes a problem to a particular cause; the problem is no longer reported; the person concludes that the supposed cause has been fixed. We want the same unsupported inference from the vanished problem to an improved underlying situation. An answer that first changes the cause and then predicts the problem will disappear goes in a different direction.
Working the answers
- A
The nutritionist matches the principal, weight gain matches failing grades, and overeating matches poor teaching. But then A tells us overeating stopped—the proposed cause changed. It concludes that weight gain stopped. The original instead observes the outcome disappearing and infers that the proposed cause improved. The roles begin to match, but the evidence-to-conclusion direction doesn't.
- B
This gives us an actual intervention: the manager simplifies jobs. Complaints then stop, and the manager concludes the working environment improved. The original doesn't tell us teaching was changed. It jumps from no failing grades to better teaching. B supplies a change to the alleged cause that the original lacks, so it doesn't make the same unsupported move.
- C
The nutritionist denies that the weight gain is real, supplies charts, and concludes that complaints stopped. The principal doesn't say the original failing grades were imaginary. Nor do we get charts or another intervention followed by a prediction about complaints. C has neither the same accepted problem nor the same pattern of inferring its cause has improved.
- DCorrect
The manager matches the principal. Complaints match failing grades, and not having enough work matches the alleged problem with teaching. When complaints stop, the manager concludes the underlying situation has improved: workers must now be productively occupied.
But maybe employees stopped complaining because they feared punishment. Maybe the complaint forms became unavailable. The silence wouldn't establish that they had more useful work, just as a change in grading wouldn't establish better teaching. D preserves both the roles and the unsupported leap.
- E
The proposed cause is thinking about food; the outcome is weight gain. The members report stopping the supposed cause, and the nutritionist concludes the outcome stopped. Whatever we think of that proposed cause, the direction differs from the original. We need the outcome to disappear first and then an inference about the cause, not the other way around.
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