PrepTest 111, Section 3, Question 17
Only a very small percentage of people from(33 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(8 more words not shown)
- ASix hundred is(21 more words not shown)
- BThe percentage of(34 more words not shown)
- CIt is a(16 more words not shown)
- DIt is irrelevant(29 more words not shown)
- EThe presence of(28 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
There aren't many board seats to begin with.
Suppose each of these 600 corporations has ten seats. That's only 6,000 seats. A tiny percentage of a large profession could occupy them even if that profession supplied every single board member. So the first sentence hasn't yet shown underrepresentation.
Put numbers on it. Imagine a million people in the service professions, with 6,000 of them holding all 6,000 seats. Only 0.6 percent of those professionals would be board members. But 100 percent of the board members would come from the service professions. Both percentages could describe the same situation because they start with different groups.
The premise starts with people in the service professions and asks how many reach these boards. The conclusion concerns the composition of the boards. To establish underrepresentation, we need to know how much of that second group comes from the service professions and what level of representation would be expected.
What we’re looking for
That's the flaw I'm looking for. We might independently suspect underrepresentation, but this evidence doesn't establish it. A conclusion can sound plausible while the argument for it fails.
Working the answers
- A
Calling 600 too small doesn't address the problem. The author is discussing the largest corporations and drawing a conclusion about the most important boardrooms. Even if we collected this same percentage for many more corporations, we would still be measuring how many service professionals become board members, rather than how the board seats are distributed.
- BCorrect
These are the two different percentages. In the premise, the whole group is people from the service professions. In the conclusion, the relevant whole group is board members. A small share of the first group could be a large share of the second.
Our example makes that concrete: 6,000 out of a million professionals is a small percentage, but 6,000 out of 6,000 board members is everyone. The premise can therefore be true without showing the claimed underrepresentation. B identifies why we can't substitute one percentage for the other.
- C
The author doesn't claim these large corporations are typical of corporate boards generally. The conclusion is specifically about the most important corporate boardrooms. Whether small corporations have different boards doesn't fix or expose the percentage switch within the group the argument actually discusses.
- D
The argument isn't about what matters to smaller corporations or what larger corporations would agree to do. It's trying to draw a conclusion about representation from the percentage who reach board positions. D introduces a different discussion without addressing that evidence.
- E
No claim about social responsibility appears in the argument. We could learn that these board members make corporations more responsible, less responsible, or neither, and we would still have the same problem determining whether they are underrepresented.
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