PrepTest 121, Section 1, Question 2
Publishing executive: Our company must sell at least(44 more words not shown)
The publishing executive's argument is(10 more words not shown)
- Athe publishing company(10 more words not shown)
- Bthe publishing company(13 more words not shown)
- Cwhat is true(18 more words not shown)
- Dwhat is true(25 more words not shown)
- Ethe publishing company(13 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Why does one book have to do all the work? This company has twelve titles to sell.
Suppose the novel sells 50,000 copies, another book sells 25,000, and a third sells 40,000. No individual title reaches 100,000, but those three already total 115,000. The company could reach its sales requirement even if its strongest title fell short on its own. We need to add the sales together.
The opening sentence does raise a different question: selling 100,000 books is required for a profit, but is it enough? Maybe costs would still be too high. I'd object if the executive said, “We will sell 100,000, so we must make a profit.” But that isn't the argument we get. The executive predicts that total sales won't reach 100,000 because no individual book is likely to reach it.
What we’re looking for
The flaw question asks what that reasoning overlooks. Look for the possibility that several smaller sales figures can combine into a large enough total. Keep our objection attached to the argument actually made, rather than to the different mistake we initially wondered about.
Working the answers
- A
A much smaller number for the novel doesn't expose the missing addition. If anything, worse prospects for the strongest title make the executive's pessimism easier to understand. The problem remains that we haven't counted what the other books might sell.
- B
This addresses the concern raised by the first sentence: meeting a requirement doesn't guarantee a profit. But the executive never claims that 100,000 sales would guarantee one. The disputed conclusion is that the company is unlikely to sell that many books. B could be true without explaining the mistake in that sales forecast.
- C
This would matter if the executive moved from the company's overall financial history to a claim about one particular year. For example, a profitable decade could contain an unprofitable year. Here, the evidence and the prediction both concern sales this year. The shift is from individual titles to their combined sales, not from a long period to a short one.
- DCorrect
Translate the abstract wording back into books. Each individual title might be unlikely to sell 100,000 copies, while the group of twelve titles could easily sell that many altogether. Our 50,000-plus-25,000-plus-40,000 example shows how. The executive treats a limit on each book's prospects as though it were the same limit on their combined prospects.
- E
Poor advertising might reduce sales, but the argument gives us no advertising problem to evaluate. Adding a possible reason for fewer sales doesn't explain why the existing forecast is faulty. The overlooked possibility is that sales of different books add together, even when none is a huge hit.
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