PrepTest 127, Section 2, Question 1
This region's swimmers generally swim during the day(53 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the argument(10 more words not shown)
- Aoverlooks the possibility(7 more words not shown)
- Bbases its conclusion(6 more words not shown)
- Coverlooks the possibility(17 more words not shown)
- Dpresumes, without providing(17 more words not shown)
- Efails to take(21 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
The swimmers feel safer during the day. Are they actually safer? We don't know yet. But even a mistaken belief can affect behavior: people who fear swimming at night will do most of their swimming during the day.
That matters when we learn that all the recent attacks happened during the day. Of course we would expect attacks when people are in the water. We need to consider how many people swim during each period before using the attack totals to compare the danger.
Imagine 100 people swimming during the day and nobody swimming at night. There could be several daytime attacks and no nighttime attacks even if swimming at night would be extremely dangerous. The absence of nighttime attacks would reflect the absence of swimmers, not the safety of nighttime swimming. Even with one nighttime swimmer, that person's escaping an attack would give us very little basis for the comparison.
What we’re looking for
The flaw question asks what the reasoning overlooks. My prediction is the difference in the number of people exposed to sharks. More attacks during the more popular swimming period don't by themselves tell us which period is more dangerous for a swimmer.
Working the answers
- A
Some sharks may hunt primarily at night, but we aren't told whether those sharks are present in this region or how much danger they pose to swimmers. This possibility doesn't identify the central problem with using attack totals: the number of people in the water may differ enormously between day and night.
- B
We have no reason to treat the reported attacks as unreliable. Accept that they all happened during the day. The problem remains in what the author concludes from that fact, rather than in the credibility of a source.
- C
Poor visibility might explain why people feel anxious at night. That is a plausible explanation of their preference, but the conclusion concerns actual danger. Explaining why people are uncomfortable doesn't establish whether they are more likely to be attacked.
- D
Disputing the swimmers' judgment in this instance isn't the same as assuming they cannot be the most knowledgeable people about safe swimming times. The author claims their belief is wrong, but D attributes a much broader assumption about their knowledge.
- ECorrect
More nighttime swimmers could produce dramatically more nighttime attacks. The current low total may therefore reflect how few people swim then. Without considering exposure, the author cannot use the daytime attacks to establish that nighttime swimming is no more dangerous.
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