PrepTest 153, Section 2, Question 23
Critic: Journalists should have reasonable knowledge of statistics.(33 more words not shown)
The pattern of reasoning in(15 more words not shown)
- ABefore being issued(50 more words not shown)
- BAll elementary schools(44 more words not shown)
- CInternational travelers should(30 more words not shown)
- DAll public officials(41 more words not shown)
- EToy manufacturers should(47 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Journalists don't need a PhD in statistics to report accurately, but some basic understanding seems useful. If you're explaining a poll to the public, you need to understand what its numbers mean.
Imagine a journalist reads a forecast giving one candidate a 60 percent chance of winning and the other a 40 percent chance. 'Sixty is bigger than forty, so the first candidate will win.' Hold on. Being more likely to win isn't being certain to win. Forty percent still leaves plenty of room for the other candidate. Even a 10 percent chance describes something expected to happen about one time in ten, not something impossible.
That illustrates the kind of reporting mistake the critic worries about. I can see why the critic wants journalists to know enough statistics to avoid it. Could an editor who understands statistics catch a reporter's mistakes? Perhaps. That would be one way to question how much knowledge every journalist personally needs. But the question asks us to match the reasoning, so let's identify the pattern being used.
What we’re looking for
We get a recommendation, a risk if it isn't followed, and a case illustrating that risk. Journalists should understand statistics; otherwise they can misinform people; here is a journalist whose bad interpretation produced an erroneous report. I want all three parts in the parallel.
Working the answers
- A
The recommendation concerns drivers' knowledge of environmental effects and ways to reduce them. That is broader than the original knowledge requirement, but we could group those together as environmental knowledge. That alone wouldn't eliminate A.
The decisive missing piece is the example. A predicts a bad consequence if the requirement isn't followed, but never gives a case in which someone's lack of knowledge produced that consequence. The original includes the journalist's erroneous election report.
- BCorrect
Schools should have recess, just as journalists should have statistical knowledge. Without recess, children can face health risks; without the knowledge, journalists can misinform people. Then we get the concrete case: a school eliminated recess, and its students became less physically fit.
The recommendation, the risk of failing to follow it, and the case showing that risk all have counterparts. The subject matter changes, but the job each part does stays the same.
- C
There is a recommendation and a threatened consequence: process travelers through security, or safety will be sacrificed for convenience. The sentence about tolerating inconvenience adds a tradeoff. What we still don't get is an actual case of skipped security producing the bad result. We can't supply that missing example ourselves.
- D
This recommends studying ethics and explains the benefits of doing so. The original instead describes the harm that can arise without the recommended knowledge and gives a case of that harm. D never provides a public official whose lack of ethical study led to misuse of office.
- E
This comes close: require identifying information on the toy, or buyers might discard the package and lose the information needed for a recall. But that is a possible sequence of events, not a reported case. An example might describe a particular toy whose discarded packaging prevented a buyer from identifying a recall. E gives no such case, while B does.
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