PrepTest 144, Section 3, Question 10
Advertisement: VIVVY, a video-based foreign language course for(42 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(14 more words not shown)
- ASimilarly, you could(31 more words not shown)
- BSimilarly, you could(31 more words not shown)
- CSimilarly, you could(45 more words not shown)
- DSimilarly, you could(39 more words not shown)
- ESimilarly, you could(36 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Three successful students used VIVVY. How many other children used it, and what happened to them?
Perhaps these three were selected precisely because they turned out well. If thousands of other users didn't become successful university students, the advertisement would give us a very misleading picture. Three success stories don't tell us how typical those stories are.
And why credit the language course for their success? Amy, Matt, and Evelyn might have become successful university students without it. Their families, other education, or their own work could have mattered. We know they used the course and later succeeded; we don't know the course produced the success.
What we’re looking for
The question asks for a parallel that exposes the same mistake. Look for a few people who did something and had a good outcome, followed by a promise that someone else can expect that outcome by doing the same thing. The named people supply the evidence. The conclusion makes a prediction for a new person who follows their example.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
The three people with good-luck charms correspond to the three children who used VIVVY. Their lottery wins correspond to those children's later university success. The conclusion then tells a new person to expect the same result from carrying a charm, just as the advertisement tells parents to expect success from using VIVVY.
But the charm might have had nothing to do with the win, and other charm-carriers might have lost. Those are the same problems we raised: selecting successful examples and treating their shared activity as a reason to expect success yourself.
- B
The picnic attendees don't all have the same outcome: only Christine has become ill. The conclusion concerns whether one of the named attendees, Jesse, should expect illness. Our original uses three matching success stories as evidence for a general expectation about a new user. B instead uses mixed results to predict what will happen to one person already in the described group.
- C
This starts with a general rule about employees hired within the last year and then identifies three employees who meet that description. Its conclusion concerns those three people, not what a new person can expect from copying three examples.
It also makes a different unsupported move: saying recent hires can expect layoffs doesn't establish that only recent hires will be laid off. Other employees could lose their jobs too. That isn't the advertisement's move from selected successes to a promise for the next user.
- D
This gives a rule linking habitual speeding with eventually getting a ticket, then reasons backward from three people's tickets to habitual speeding. A ticket wouldn't establish that a person routinely speeds. The original doesn't start with a general rule like that; it tries to establish an expectation from the three examples themselves. D also concludes something about the named people rather than a new person.
- E
The three students are the people whose future is being predicted here. The evidence is a broader result about most of last year's graduates finding jobs. In the advertisement, the three named children are the evidence, and the conclusion predicts success for someone else.
E therefore moves from a reported pattern among many graduates to an expectation for particular students. The original moves from three selected examples to an expectation for a new course user. Sharing a university topic doesn't make those roles match.
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