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Ok so the question I'm talking about is on PT 48 (December 2005), Section 1, Question 24


This is the only question I got wrong on this section, but I can't seem to wrap my mind around this at all. The journalist's logic makes no intuitive sense to me, nor does the correct answer (E). FML

Can anyone help make sense of this to me?

Thanks

osgiliath wrote:Ok so the question I'm talking about is on PT 48 (December 2005), Section 1, Question 24


This is the only question I got wrong on this section, but I can't seem to wrap my mind around this at all. The journalist's logic makes no intuitive sense to me, nor does the correct answer (E). FML

Can anyone help make sense of this to me?

Thanks

(E) is basically a different phrasing of the fact that the 2 groups don't have to necessarily overlap - that is, when reading the problem, most people think something like "if there are 100 eligible voters, 26 of them would join, and 16 would donate money. those 16 who are willing to donate money would also be willing to join, so out of the 26 who would join, 16 would donate and 10 wouldnt."

but maybe out of the 100 people, 26 are poor and can only support it by joining, and a completely different group of 16 people who have 0 overlap with those 26 are super busy and can't take time off from work to join, so they show their support by donating money. now the party has 42%

put another way - Imagine the stem said "the argument is vulnerable on the grounds that it assumes which of the following?" Then our answer would be along the lines of "it assumes that no more than 4 of those 16 who would donate money are also those who would join the party."

The journalist gives two proportions and says that, since they each do not lead to the 30% or so required to last, then the party won't last.

BUT

What if the two groups have no members in common? Then if they teamed up the two would equal 42%.

The way it is worried makes the 16% sound like a subset of the 26%, but it's not. Or at least, it doesn't say so.

The journalist assumes that the two groups overlap enough for the combined numbers to be less than the 30%. This assumption is unwarranted.

Ok I get it. Maybe it's just the fact that I never even assumed that the 16 and 26 would definitely overlap - that seemed so counter intuitive to me that I couldn't even understand how the journalist arrived at his conclusion in the first place.

In other words, from the get-go I assumed the 16 and 26 were separate. So I never stood a chance. lol. After that, nothing really made sense.

And that's an important "mistake" for you to have made--because now you've seen and memorized that assumption/flaw, which, as it turns out, is one of the most common types you'll see on the test!