Logical reasoning PrepTest 133 · Section 3 · Question 6

Incorrect. The argument is that this is an effective (and fair) way to evaluate the bus drivers' performance—that doesn't require it to be the only way to do so.

Incorrect. The supervisors actually only have to be relatively fair judges of the bus drivers' performance. Since the argument establishes a goal of the evals as to determine the best bus drivers, the supervisors only need to be able to tell the great ones from the rest—they don't need to be "excellent" at their jobs to know one driver is better than another.

Incorrect. The specific effect of the supervisors on the drivers doesn't matter, as long as it's about the same for everyone. Whether the supervisors make everyone a little better, a lot better, a little worse, or a lot worse—as long as it's the same for everyone, the argument can work.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen with Necessary Premise

Stimulus Summary:
Drivers complain that supervisors riding with them for evals affects their driving, but that's true for everyone, so the relative evals (who's better) are still valid.

Answer Anticipation:
This argument has a couple key ideas in it, related to some common types of logic on the exam—comparisons, and causality.

The argument brings up the possibility that the supervisors's presence causes the drivers to drive differently. The argument, however, establishes this as true, stating that it's a cause that every driver has to deal with. Since the causality here is established in a premise, there's no correlation/causation flaw, and so we shouldn't think about alternative causes (eliminating one would be a common answer in a Strengthen with Necessary Premise question that does have a correlation/causation flaw).

The next element to evaluate for any logical flaws is that comparison—the conclusion is that the best drivers without a supervisor will also be the best drivers with a supervisor. Why? Because every driver has a supervisor on board, affecting their performance.

However, that's assuming that the effect on each driver will be comparable. If some drivers are very good at their jobs, but they also have performance anxiety, they may tank the eval despite being better drivers. The argument is assuming that every driver is affected about the same by the presence of the supervisors.

Answer Explanation:
This answer highlights that the argument assumes the effect supervisors have on the driving abilities for each driver is about the same, so that the best drivers will still be the best drivers, and the worst still the worst. If the supervisors have a very different effect on the driving ability of each driver, then their relative skill might be skewed by that and the argument falls apart.

Key Takeaway:
When arguments are comparative in nature, dig into those comparisons to see if they're comparing apples to apples. Here, the stimulus never established that the relative impact of the supervisors on each driver was the same—in other words, it didn't establish that the comparison was fair.

Incorrect. Self-assessments are out of the scope of this argument. Even if the bus drivers are terrible judges of their own abilities, the supervisors might still be able to accurately assess their relative driving abilities.