PrepTest 125, Section 4, Question 20
TV meteorologist: Our station's weather forecasts are more(59 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(7 more words not shown)
- AThe meteorologist's station(14 more words not shown)
- BThe less popular(10 more words not shown)
- CThe most popular(13 more words not shown)
- DThe meteorologist's station(14 more words not shown)
- EOn most of(25 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Being right when you predict rain is useful. Is that enough to establish that your forecasts are better overall?
Read the evidence carefully. On most occasions when this station predicted rain for the next day, rain actually came. That is a record of success among its rain predictions. It is not merely saying the station predicted rain on most rainy days. Predicting rain every day would not automatically produce this record; all the dry days would count as misses.
Even so, we have only part of the picture. What about predictions of no rain? What about snow or other weather people care about? The passage says rain is the most important concern, not the only concern. A station could perform well on this particular measure while having weaknesses elsewhere.
What we’re looking for
For a strengthener, I would welcome evidence that the station also predicts dry days or other weather accurately. But an answer can help without settling every weakness. We need additional support for its advantage over the most popular station, using the evidence the passage actually gives us.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
Our station predicts rain more often and has a better success rate on those predictions. The passage says most of its rain predictions are right, while that is not true of the competitor. Adding that our station makes more of these predictions means the better success rate isn't being achieved by issuing fewer rain forecasts than the rival.
For example, imagine our station predicts rain ten times and gets six right. The popular station predicts rain four times and gets two right. These are illustrative numbers, but they show the point: the stronger rate combined with more predictions gives our station more correct warnings of rain. That supports the usefulness of its forecasts on the question viewers care about most.
This isn't the dry-day evidence I expected, and it doesn't prove superiority on every weather measure. It adds support for the practical value of the rain forecasts.
- B
The staffing of the less popular competitor doesn't establish an advantage over the most popular station. More fundamentally, we need to know how good the forecasts are. A station's lack of full-time meteorologists doesn't by itself tell us whether its predictions are accurate.
- C
Investigative reporting could explain the rival's popularity while its weather forecasts were excellent, poor, or somewhere in between. The argument concerns the relative usefulness and reliability of the forecasts. Knowing why viewers like the other station doesn't settle that comparison.
- D
The evidence compares predictions for the next day. A policy against forecasting more than three days ahead doesn't tell us how good those next-day predictions are. We shouldn't change the comparison to long-range forecasts that the evidence never evaluates.
- E
Agreement isn't accuracy. Two stations could predict no rain and both be right, or both be wrong. E tells us that our station often shares a forecast with at least one competitor, but it doesn't tell us what the weather actually was or establish that our station performed better than the most popular competitor.
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