PrepTest 139, Section 1, Question 22
Company president: Most of our best sales representatives(45 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(9 more words not shown)
- ASome of the(13 more words not shown)
- BMost of the(18 more words not shown)
- CMost of the(13 more words not shown)
- DMost of the(18 more words not shown)
- ESome of the(26 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Who did the company hire in the first place?
If nearly everyone hired had an engineering degree, we'd expect engineers to make up most of the best salespeople. They might also make up most of the worst. The winners' background wouldn't by itself tell us whether that background improves the chance of succeeding.
Think about picking the best football players from a pool limited to Wyoming. Finding that the winners are from Wyoming wouldn't show that Wyoming produces better players than every other state. The selection pool has already shaped the result. We need a comparison with the people who weren't represented in that pool.
What we’re looking for
Here, the president wants to favor engineers with little sales experience over experienced salespeople without engineering degrees. To support that preference, compare how the two groups actually perform. For a weakener, I'd look for evidence that the company has mostly hired one group already. Then the successful employees' profile could simply reflect who got the opportunity.
Working the answers
- A
Some employees acquired engineering degrees after joining the company, but the premise specifically describes the best representatives who came to the job with those degrees. The existence of a different group doesn't undermine that fact or compare the two kinds of applicants the president wants to rank.
- BCorrect
Most hires already fit the engineer-without-sales-experience profile. That makes it less surprising that most of the best performers fit it too. Their presence among the winners might reflect their large share of all hires rather than a higher success rate.
B doesn't say every hire was an engineer, and it doesn't prove engineers perform worse. It weakens the evidence for preferring them by revealing that the president hasn't made a fair comparison of the groups' chances of success.
- C
Engineering-trained customers might provide a reason technical knowledge helps a salesperson communicate with them. That is a possible benefit, not something we need to assume actually occurs. Either way, C doesn't reveal that experienced nonengineers would perform better or undermine the observed success of the engineers.
- D
Applicants aren't the same as employees whose sales performance can be assessed. Many applicants could lack engineering degrees while the company hired very few of them. D doesn't tell us how the competing groups performed or how they were represented among the people actually hired.
- E
Some unsuccessful hires lacked extensive sales experience, but we don't know whether they had engineering degrees. We also don't know their failure rate compared with experienced nonengineers. A group can have some failures and still be the better hiring choice. E doesn't supply the relevant comparison that B shows is missing.
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