PrepTest 135, Section 4, Question 26
Because our club recruited the best volleyball players(41 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the argument(5 more words not shown)
- Apresumes, without presenting(17 more words not shown)
- Bpredicts the success(18 more words not shown)
- Cpredicts the outcome(16 more words not shown)
- Dpresumes, without providing(23 more words not shown)
- Econcludes that because(21 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
The best players still have to play together.
Maybe these players don't cooperate. Maybe they never practice, or their coach does a poor job. A less talented team that works well together could beat them. Recruiting the strongest individuals certainly matters, but it doesn't settle which team is best.
Even if we grant the club that first step, there's another jump: having the best chance of winning isn't the same as being almost certain to win.
Imagine a tournament with eleven teams. Our club has a 10 percent chance of winning, and each of the ten other teams has a 9 percent chance. We have a better chance than any one opponent, so we are the most likely winner. But the other teams together have a 90 percent chance. We're much more likely to lose than to win!
What we’re looking for
That example gives us two different questions: “Which team has the highest chance?” and “How high is that chance?” The argument answers the first and acts as though it has answered the second. The flaw question could target either this mistake or the earlier jump from players to team. Let's keep both in mind and require the answer to describe the actual direction of the reasoning.
Working the answers
- A
The club doesn't insist that competition is the only way to identify the best team. It claims to be the best because of the players it recruited, before announcing the expected championship result. A would concern a rule about how being best can be established, which the argument never gives.
- B
Player quality is relevant to team quality. Good players can help a team succeed even though cooperation, coaching, and practice also matter. The problem is treating a relevant consideration as enough to settle the result, not relying on something that has nothing to do with the result.
- C
Comparing teams can help us predict who will win. If one team is better than another, that can be a sensible reason to favor it. This answer doesn't identify the problem with the confidence of this prediction: being better than each rival doesn't establish an overwhelming chance of beating the entire field.
- D
This runs the first mistake in the wrong direction. D starts with the best team and concludes that every individual player must be the best. Our argument starts with the best individual players and concludes that they make the best team. Both involve players and teams, but the same nouns don't make the inferences match.
- ECorrect
The club treats being the most likely winner as enough to conclude that it will almost certainly win. But our hypothetical favorite has only a 10 percent chance. Its chance is higher than each rival's without being higher than the combined chance that someone else wins.
E describes the unsupported step to being more likely to win than not. The argument goes even further, to almost certainty, so it includes that mistake. It hasn't established even a greater-than-50-percent chance, much less the much higher confidence expressed by its conclusion.
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