PrepTest 150, Section 3, Question 9
Marketing agent: A survey of my business clients(52 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the marketing(13 more words not shown)
- Aoverlooks the possibility(17 more words not shown)
- Bfails to explain(20 more words not shown)
- Cdraws a conclusion(18 more words not shown)
- Dtreats conditions that(15 more words not shown)
- Eoverlooks the possibility(17 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
The numbers sound impressive. Which clients do they describe?
At first, this sounds like attractive marketing: clients who had never made more than $10,000 are now making at least $100,000. That wouldn't by itself prove the marketing agent caused the improvement, but the actual conclusion doesn't claim causation. It claims that 90 percent of the agent's clients improved at least tenfold.
The multiplication isn't the problem. Moving from $10,000 to $100,000 is a tenfold increase. The phrase to go back and check is 'of those who made a profit.' The 90 percent applies to that selected group, while the conclusion applies it to all the clients.
What we’re looking for
Imagine 100 clients, only ten of whom made a profit. Nine of those ten could meet the impressive profit figure, satisfying the 90 percent statistic. That would tell us about nine clients, not ninety. For the flaw, look for the switch from profitable clients to the full client list.
Working the answers
- A
Even a profit of $100,001 is more than ten times $10,000. Being only slightly above $100,000 doesn't undermine the stated multiplier for a business whose earlier profit was no more than $10,000. The problem is how many clients the statistic covers, not a need for much larger profits.
- B
A claim about 90 percent doesn't require the other 10 percent to have the same improvement. Nor does it require an explanation of why those other businesses performed differently. The missing information concerns the clients outside the profitable group, not why some members of that group fell short of the threshold.
- CCorrect
The premise selects the clients who made a profit and tells us about 90 percent of that group. The conclusion treats this as 90 percent of every business client. Without knowing what share of the full client list the profitable group represents, we cannot carry the percentage across. The 100-client example shows how the premise could be true while the conclusion was false.
- D
The argument doesn't give a condition that guarantees profit and then insist that every profitable business must meet it. It reports outcomes for a selected group and misapplies that group's percentage. D names a different relationship from the one the agent gets wrong.
- E
'Not all' still allows 90 percent. The conclusion already leaves room for some clients not to show the claimed increase. E doesn't say how large the unsuccessful group is, so it doesn't capture the specific error of treating the profitable subset as the whole client list. C identifies that change directly.
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