Logical reasoning PrepTest 106 · Section 3 · Question 2

Question prompt

A number of Grandville's Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: E

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

Some rich people are criminals. The Planning Committee should have ethical members. So the Planning Committee shouldn’t have wealthy people.

Answer Anticipation

Whenever an argument makes a very strong, blanket statement, you should check to see if the premises back it up.
Here, the conclusion is that “no” rich person should end up on the Planning Committee. To prove that, you’d need premises that leave no room for exceptions - every last rich person should be banned from the Committee.
Do we get that? Nope. We learn that a number of rich people in Grandville have been criminals. It does establish that members of the Planning Committee should have ethics “beyond reproach,” so the ex-criminals arguably should be banned from holding a seat. But that leaves open the possibility that other rich people who haven’t been found guilty of a crime should be allowed to be on the Committee.
In establishing that only some rich people should be banned but concluding that all of them should be, this argument makes a bad generalization. Let’s find an answer reflecting that.

Answer choices

  1. A
    confuses a result with Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A is not credited
    There’s no discussion of a result here, and there isn’t a Sufficient/Necessary flaw, so this answer is incorrect.
  2. B
    mistakes a temporal relationship Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B is not credited
    This is a fancy way of describing a Correlation/Causation flaw (a correlation being two things that are temporally related), but there’s no causality present in the stimulus, so this is incorrect.
  3. C
    assumes that because a Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited
    There’s no discussion of motive here, so this answer is incorrect.
  4. D
    judges only by subjective Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D is not credited
    There are two “standards” discussed here. The first is whether someone is a criminal, and there’s definitely an objective standard possible there (has the person been convicted of a crime?). The other standard deals with ethics. But ethics either are subjective, in which case this doesn’t apply; or they’re objective...in which case this answer doesn’t apply. For this answer to work, we’d need something to be explicitly subjective, when an obviously objective standard applies. Think an argument that says most people believe Coke sells better to conclude that it does sell better - that uses a subjective standard, when you could just look at objective sales data.
  5. E
    generalizes on the basis Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E matches the stem
    The argument wants to prevent all wealthy people from being on the Planning Committee based on “[a] number” who are criminals. But those wealthy criminals could be the exception, while most of the rich people of Grandville are actually upstanding citizens. This answer describes the unwarranted generalization from the stimulus, so it’s the correct answer.

What this tests

Question analytics

Based on historical answer selection rates for this question.

Answer choice distribution

  1. A 13%
  2. B 9%
  3. C 4%
  4. D 4%
  5. E Credited 69%

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