PrepTest 138, Section 4, Question 21
Each of the candidates in this year's mayoral(43 more words not shown)
The pattern of flawed reasoning(15 more words not shown)
- AAnyone who has(53 more words not shown)
- BEverything on the(36 more words not shown)
- CAll the books(50 more words not shown)
- DEach of the(54 more words not shown)
- EAll of the(60 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What if the people running for mayor are the exceptions?
Most small-business owners are competent managers. Fine. But the candidates are only a particular group of small-business owners. That group could contain mostly incompetent managers, even if competent managers greatly outnumber them among business owners overall.
The final link doesn't fix this. Competent managers have the skills necessary to be good mayors, but we haven't established that most of these candidates are competent managers. And having necessary skills wouldn't by itself guarantee that someone becomes a good mayor; the conclusion is only about possessing those skills.
What we’re looking for
For the parallel flaw, keep the groups straight. Every candidate belongs to a larger group. Most members of that larger group have a quality, and that quality leads to another. The mistake is carrying the larger group's 'most' into a conclusion about this particular subgroup.
Working the answers
- A
This has problems, but its chain doesn't match. Most of the company's management worked in sales, and sales workers have been there for at least a year. The marketing rule applies to more than a year, so someone at exactly one year isn't covered. The conclusion also switches from management to upper management. The original instead starts with every member of the target group inside a larger group, then improperly applies a majority statement about that larger group to the target.
- BCorrect
Maddy's menu corresponds to the candidates. Fat-free foods and drinks correspond to small-business owners. Sugar-free items correspond to competent managers, and low-calorie items correspond to people with the necessary mayoral skills.
All menu items are fat-free, most fat-free items are sugar-free, and all sugar-free items are low in calories. But Maddy's could specialize in sugary, fat-free items. The general majority among fat-free foods doesn't establish the majority on this particular menu. That is exactly the unsupported transfer in the original.
- C
This begins with a similar problem: Ed's hardcover books could be unusually short even if most hardcovers are long. But the conclusion goes further still, saying he has never read any of his books in under three hours. That covers all his books, whereas the original concludes only 'most.' B preserves both the subgroup mistake and the strength of the conclusion.
- D
The commercial-success majority doesn't do the work in the conclusion about intermissions. Short films have no intermission under the separate rule. That establishes no intermission for the festival's avant-garde films, but we don't know what proportion of the whole festival those films represent. This shifts from a subset of festival films to most festival films without using the intervening majority claim in the way the original does.
- E
All helmets in the store contain plastic. Therefore, the store's plastic-containing helmets are the same group as all its helmets. We're told most of that group contain rubber, so the conclusion follows. The rubber-to-plastic rule is unnecessary, but it doesn't make this an invalid transfer between different populations. Unlike the original, E keeps the relevant group fixed.
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