PrepTest 121, Section 4, Question 15
Trustee: The recent exhibit at the art museum(57 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the trustee's(12 more words not shown)
- Aconfuses a necessary(15 more words not shown)
- Btakes for granted(13 more words not shown)
- Ctakes for granted(13 more words not shown)
- Dfails to address(17 more words not shown)
- Epresupposes the very(7 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What if people would have come anyway?
Imagine an exhibit of newly discovered works by a famous artist. People might hear about it through friends or social media and come even if the local news never covered it. The trustee hasn't shown how many visitors the local coverage actually brought in.
We can even allow that the coverage helped. Contributing to record-breaking attendance isn't the same as being needed to keep the museum open. Without the coverage, attendance could have been lower than the record and still high enough to avoid bankruptcy.
What we’re looking for
The flaw question asks us to identify that overlooked possibility. We need to question the claim that the museum depended on the local coverage, not deny that the coverage occurred or insist that it attracted nobody.
Working the answers
- A
The trustee says low attendance would have forced the museum to close, so avoiding low attendance was required for staying open. But the argument doesn't treat adequate attendance as a guarantee against every possible reason for closing. Instead, it assumes the media coverage was needed to get enough visitors. A describes a different mistake about what is required and what is enough.
- B
Earlier exhibits might have received extensive coverage too. That doesn't settle whether this exhibit needed its coverage to attract enough visitors. The argument doesn't depend on the claim that the attention was unprecedented.
- C
We don't need most readers to attend for coverage to have an effect. If a huge number read the articles, even 5 percent of them could supply many visitors. The trustee hasn't specified a percentage of readers who attended, and the argument doesn't require that percentage to exceed half.
- DCorrect
The exhibit might have drawn enough people to prevent bankruptcy without the local coverage. That could happen because the art itself attracted interest, because people learned about it elsewhere, or simply because the coverage increased an already sufficient turnout.
This is why “contributed” doesn't establish “could not have remained open without it.” The coverage could deserve some credit for the record while being unnecessary to the museum's survival.
- E
The argument offers observations about coverage, attendance, and the danger of low attendance as support. It doesn't simply assume that the media saved the museum and repeat that as its conclusion. Those observations leave a gap, but they aren't just the conclusion restated.
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