PrepTest 127, Section 3, Question 6
Executive: We recently ran a set of advertisements(65 more words not shown)
The executive's reasoning does which(4 more words not shown)
- Abases a prediction(15 more words not shown)
- Buses information about(23 more words not shown)
- Cinfers a statistical(10 more words not shown)
- Duses a case(20 more words not shown)
- Ebases a prediction(9 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Running advertisements doesn't tell us whether they reached the right people. Imagine advertising an LSAT class to readers who are planning vacations. Some might be interested, but we would want evidence that the audience fits what we are selling.
The executive has some evidence for the website ads: consumer response was unusually limited. The print ads ran too, but the company has no direct information about the response to those. The executive fills that gap by reasoning that the print ads probably did poorly as well.
That could be right, but what if the audiences differ? People reading a printed magazine might respond differently from visitors to its website. Or perhaps the company put substantial effort into the print ads and much less effort into the online version. A poor response in one setting doesn't automatically establish a poor response in the other.
What we’re looking for
The stem asks what the reasoning does, so we should describe the move rather than just criticize it. The executive uses the known performance of the website ads to estimate the unknown performance of the print ads. We need an answer that keeps those two cases and the difference in available evidence straight.
Working the answers
- A
The website response isn't presented as the cause of the print response. The executive uses one as a comparison for the other. An answer about how strongly a cause operates describes a different relationship.
- B
This would fit reasoning such as: print ads usually receive little response, so this particular print ad probably did too. Here, the executive relies on the results of this company's website ads to assess its print ads. The reference to typical website response helps describe the online result as poor; it isn't a general frequency used to estimate a particular event of that same kind.
- C
The executive does not assemble many particular cases to establish a broad statistical rule. The direction is from the measured website case to the unmeasured print case. Nothing in the reasoning establishes a generalization about advertisements as a whole.
- DCorrect
Direct evidence is available for the website ads: their response was below the typical level. The analogous case is the print advertising, where direct evidence is unavailable. The executive reasons from the former to the latter. This describes the comparison without requiring us to accept that the two audiences will respond alike.
- E
Both sets of ads have already run. The executive is estimating a past response that was not directly measured, not forecasting a future advertising result. The important shift is between website and print, not between recent events and future events.
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