PrepTest 108, Section 3, Question 10
Many people joke about Friday the thirteenth being(68 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(8 more words not shown)
- APeople who fly(15 more words not shown)
- BSurveys show that(19 more words not shown)
- CWeather conditions at(19 more words not shown)
- DIn the year(16 more words not shown)
- EThe absentee rate(23 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Maybe something else made people stay home.
The high cancellation and no-show rate on Friday the thirteenth is a fact to explain. It doesn't tell us why those passengers changed their plans. A frightening public event, a financial crisis, or a hurricane could also make travel less appealing or harder to complete. Those are possibilities, not facts about the year studied.
The author chooses superstition: people would rather disrupt their plans than fly on an allegedly unlucky day. But the date of a cancellation doesn't establish the traveler's motive. If something else happened on those dates, it could produce the same pattern without the passengers being worried about bad luck.
What we’re looking for
For the weakening question, I'd want evidence of another cause. We don't need to show that nobody is superstitious. We need a reason to doubt that fear of Friday the thirteenth explains this unusually high rate.
Working the answers
- A
Being less superstitious than another group does not mean being free of superstition. Professional travelers could be less superstitious than the general public while a significant number still avoided flying on this date. A also doesn't supply another explanation of why the cancellation rate was unusually high.
- B
What people report believing can differ from what affects their choices. Someone might deny being superstitious yet still decide not to risk the flight. The survey therefore doesn't directly establish the motives of the travelers who canceled.
It also concerns the general population, while the 17 percent figure concerns people scheduled to fly. We cannot simply compare those percentages as though they measured the same group doing the same thing.
- CCorrect
Severe weather at several major airports supplies an alternative reason for the disruption. People might avoid an unsafe or difficult trip, or be unable to get to the airport as planned. That could produce cancellations and no-shows on those Fridays without superstition being the explanation.
C does not have to establish the reason for every missed flight. It gives the author a substantial competing explanation for the pattern used as evidence of fear of the date.
- D
The evidence concerns flying, not driving. Someone could be comfortable driving on Friday the thirteenth and still hesitate to fly. Normal road traffic doesn't explain the unusually high rate of missed or canceled flights.
- E
Airline workers and airline passengers face different choices. Employees may go to work even when passengers cancel trips. A normal employee attendance rate doesn't tell us why the passengers failed to take their scheduled flights. C addresses a reason those travel plans could be disrupted.
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