PrepTest 130, Section 4, Question 5
Company president: For the management consultant position, we(43 more words not shown)
The company president's reasoning is(9 more words not shown)
- Atakes for granted(14 more words not shown)
- Bgeneralizes from too(8 more words not shown)
- Ctakes for granted(22 more words not shown)
- Dpresumes, without providing(15 more words not shown)
- Epresumes, without providing(12 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Working at a top firm sounds like a promising qualification. But does it make every person who has worked there one of the best consultants available?
Imagine an entry-level employee with six months of experience at an outstanding firm. The firm could deserve its excellent reputation while that employee still has a great deal to learn. Meanwhile, a particularly strong consultant at a lower-ranked firm might be better suited to this job.
What we’re looking for
The president moves from the quality of the firm to a guarantee about the individual selected. Restricting interviews to people with the right firm on their résumés does not by itself show that every eligible candidate is among the best consultants. That is the unsupported move the flaw answer should describe.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
The president takes for granted that only the best consultants have worked for the top firms. If less impressive consultants have also worked there, the interview rule could admit them, and the eventual selection would not be guaranteed to be among the best. The firm's reputation does not establish every employee's individual quality.
- B
The president does not study a few firms and generalize their characteristics to firms worldwide. The reasoning uses a firm's standing to judge someone who worked there. A small-sample flaw would require a sample doing evidentiary work that we do not have here.
- C
This describes a move from individual members to the collection as a whole. For example, it would involve saying that every consultant is excellent, so the firm must be excellent. The president moves in the other direction: these firms are excellent, so someone selected from their former employees must be excellent too.
- D
The conclusion concerns the quality of the person eventually selected. It does not require every person who worked for a top company to accept an offer. Some could refuse, and the president's inference about the quality of the eventual selection would still have the same flaw.
- E
The president claims that the selected person will be a top management consultant, not excellent at every task. That person might be a poor cook or a poor youth-sports coach without contradicting anything the president says. The unsupported leap concerns consulting ability and a firm's reputation, not competence in unrelated activities.
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