Logical reasoning PrepTest 101 · Section 2 · Question 8

Question prompt

Sociologist: The claim that Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: B

The notes below walk through why it fits the stem and how to eliminate the rest.

Argument or Facts

Argument

Valid or Flawed

Flawed

Question Type

Errors in Reasoning Questions

Stimulus Summary

Opposing point - There are a lot of stories about violent crime, so there are a lot of violent crimes
Sociologist - Violent crime is rare, so newspapers cover them when they happen, so violent crime isn’t common.

Answer Anticipation

This stimulus features an opposing viewpoint, and removing that from our consideration of what the Sociologist says makes it a lot easier to analyze her argument on its own.
With the opposing point stripped out, we can see that this argument falls into one of the repeated errors in reasoning - but one of the less common ones!
Here, the Sociologist established as a premise that “violent crimes are very rare.” That’s in support of the conclusion that...violent crime is very rare (“the claim that there is a large number of violent crimes is false”). When the argument directly establishes the conclusion as a premise, the argument commits a Circular Reasoning flaw, so we should look for an answer stating that.

Answer choices

  1. A
    presupposes that most newspaper Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A is not credited
    The argument establishes that newspapers are likely to print stories on violent crimes, not that a story in a newspaper is likely to be about violent crime.

  2. B
    presupposes the truth of Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B matches the stem
    This answer is the generic form of a Circular Reasoning answer, so this is the correct answer.

  3. C
    assumes without warrant that Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited
    Whether the stories themselves are biased is immaterial to the argument - what matters is whether the frequency of stories on violent crime is skewed compared to the actual rate of violent crime.

  4. D
    mistakes a property of Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D is not credited
    The conclusion is about the number of violent crimes, and the premises are about news stories on violent crimes. This doesn’t jump from members of an overall group to the group itself, so there’s no Parts vs. Whole flaw here.

  5. E
    uncritically draws an inference Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited
    The conclusion is about the current number of violent crimes, so there’s no prediction about the future.

What this tests

Question analytics

Based on historical answer selection rates for this question.

Answer choice distribution

  1. A 13%
  2. B Credited 72%
  3. C 3%
  4. D 8%
  5. E 4%

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