PrepTest 158, Section 4, Question 4
A club wanted to determine whether it could(62 more words not shown)
A questionable technique used in(5 more words not shown)
- Adrawing a conclusion(6 more words not shown)
- Bmaking a generalization(12 more words not shown)
- Ctreating a generalization(11 more words not shown)
- Ddrawing a conclusion(9 more words not shown)
- Einferring, solely from(18 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Of course the people at the Tuesday meeting can usually make it on Tuesdays. Where are the people who can't?
That's whom this survey leaves out. If a member works every Tuesday evening, that member probably isn't sitting in the room to explain the conflict. Asking everyone present can tell us about the attendees, but it systematically misses people whose schedules keep them away.
What we’re looking for
The president should reach the whole membership—perhaps through an email survey—before deciding that scheduling isn't the main problem. Even if 95 percent of the people in the room find Tuesdays convenient, many absent members could find Tuesdays impossible. The flaw question should describe that problem with who was surveyed.
Working the answers
- A
The president doesn't simply assume the conclusion and use it as its own support. The survey is evidence offered for the conclusion. The problem is that the people surveyed may differ from the people whose absence needs explaining.
- BCorrect
The sample consists of members who made it to a Tuesday meeting. That group is especially likely to find Tuesdays workable, so its answers may not represent the membership as a whole. The missing members are exactly the people most likely to have schedule conflicts.
- C
The president doesn't say that because 95 percent of attendees have no trouble, every attendee has no trouble. The error is moving from the attendees to an explanation of overall attendance, not turning a statement about most cases into a statement with no exceptions.
- D
Nothing in the premises contradicts anything else. A club can have an attendance problem while most people who do attend report no scheduling difficulty. In fact, that's perfectly consistent with many absent members having conflicts.
- E
The argument doesn't first establish that changing the day would be insufficient and then conclude that the change is unnecessary. It uses survey responses to decide what causes the attendance problem. E describes a different chain of reasoning.
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