Question #1469

Extra time wasted

Started by JohnS316 · started 2021-12-16 21:54 · last activity 2022-02-09 13:26 · 2 replies

I got the question right but took way too long because the answer choice was missing another flaw I saw. The stimulus is self contradictory, if she had better grades than everyone else at the school, that would indicate she would be at a school with lower education (mixed). If it was a single sex school (the higher grade average) you would expect her to not have higher grades than everyone else since grades max out at a certain point; therefore, only one person has a 4.0 or even lower than whatever her gpa is, at the school. The conclusion contradicts its own premises. Never saw contradictory premises/conclusion in any answer choice and took extra time to force myself to select another answer choice. Any tips for knowing if an answer choice is similar enough to avoid wasting extra time?

Replies

JohnS316 · 2021-12-16 22:23

Never mind. After further analyzing, I am missing the point that the question stem is actually saying her grades are higher than other women at the university (which is not apart of the single vs mixed education). Rather it is saying her background education is from single because she has higher grades.
Ravi · 2022-02-09 13:26

Correct. This argument is flawed because it's using the converse of the conditional statement. If a girl is educated at an all girls school, she'll perform better academically. However, performing better academically does not guarantee that she was educated at an all girls school. There could be many different reasons why Alice performed well, like studying, being extremely smart, etc. It doesn't have to be 100% true that she was educated in an all girls school. B's converse flaw matches perfectly. It can be diagrammed as Babies taught to swim-->ear infections Ear infections-->babies taught to swim It's true that when babies are taught to swim, they have more ear infections, but this does not have to be the only cause of ear infections in babies. This argument has a converse flaw (A-->B; B-->A) employed in the same manner as the stimulus, which is why it's the correct answer. For avoiding spending more time on questions, try diagramming the answer choices out in general terms. The stimulus boils down to A-->B; B-->A Then, you just have to look for the choice that matches that basic structure, and here, B does.