PrepTest 154, Section 4, Question 19
Store owner: My customers are not worried about(44 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the store(13 more words not shown)
- Ainfers that something(21 more words not shown)
- Bappeals to personal(6 more words not shown)
- Cgeneralizes about the(9 more words not shown)
- Ddraws a conclusion(7 more words not shown)
- Efails to consider(11 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
The people afraid to visit your store aren't there for you to interview. Let's believe the customers who say they're not worried about neighborhood crime. They're the people who have already decided to come in. Their answers tell us something about the customers the store still has, but what about the people it might have lost?
Someone worried about crime could stay home, shop elsewhere, or even choose to live in a different area. The owner could talk to customers every day and never encounter that person. Crime could therefore reduce the number willing to shop at the store while every customer interviewed sincerely reports feeling unconcerned.
What we’re looking for
That's the problem for the flaw question. The people selected for questioning leave out the very group needed to test the conclusion: potential customers staying away because of crime. The issue isn't that the owner must be wrong about those present. It's that their presence makes them an unreliable stand-in for everyone who might otherwise shop there.
Working the answers
- A
The owner doesn't say there is a small amount of evidence that crime hurts business and then dismiss that evidence as insufficient. The owner points to customers reporting no worry. The mistake concerns who is included in that evidence, not a general rule that a little evidence should count as none.
- B
Asking people whether they're worried can provide useful information about their concerns. The problem isn't simply that their answers express personal views. It's that the owner asks only people who are still shopping there and uses those answers to judge whether others have been deterred. D identifies that specific defect.
- C
The conclusion concerns the owner's business, not the whole neighborhood. The owner says crime isn't reducing the number willing to shop at this store. We shouldn't criticize a broader neighborhood-wide generalization that the argument doesn't make.
- DCorrect
The sample consists of people who visit the store, leaving out people crime may have discouraged from visiting. That selection favors hearing from people willing to tolerate the neighborhood's conditions. Even perfectly honest answers from those shoppers won't show that no potential customers are staying away. This is what makes the sample biased for the conclusion the owner draws.
- E
Crime could harm the neighborhood in other ways without contradicting the owner's claim about store visits. Showing that some residents suffer a different harm wouldn't identify why this business conclusion is unsupported. The relevant possibility is that crime deters customers the owner never interviews.
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