PrepTest 125

Incorrect. The rule on suspensions establishes being late for a quarterly meeting or missing monthly general meetings is grounds for suspension. This answer conflates those two conditions, so it's wrong.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Errors in Reasoning

Stimulus Summary:
Office is late for quarterly meeting OR Officer who missed two monthly meetings → Suspended
T - Officer, suspended, and not Officer who missed two monthly meetings
Therefore - T was late for a quarterly meeting

Answer Anticipation:
If you noted that the first statement is set up as a conditional rule, congrats! You made this question a lot easier on yourself. If you missed that, note that there's a conditional indicator word ("must" introduces a necessary condition) as well as an OR structure that suggests you should be diagramming.

When there's conditional logic in an Errors in Reasoning question, the flaw is almost always an illegal reversal or negation. Here, the necessary condition of the suspension rule is that someone must be suspended. That means that a valid application of this rule would establish the sufficient conditions about an individual, and then conclude that that person was suspended.

Here, the argument reverses that. While it does establish that Thibodeaux (not pronounced how you'd expect!) is an offer who hasn't missed any monthly meetings—two terms from the sufficient condition—it also establishes that he was suspended, which is the necessary condition.

From that, and since it ruled out one of the potential sufficient conditions in the premises, it concludes that the other sufficient condition is true of Thibodeaux. Therefore, since the argument concludes a sufficient condition based on a necessary one, it features an illegal reversal. There could be other sufficient means by which an officer would get themselves suspended—the board probably doesn't look too kindly on embezzlement!

Answer Explanation:
This answer describes the illegal reversal from the stimulus. While it doesn't use the standard language to describe the flaw (confusing a sufficient and necessary condition), it does use language that has shown up multiple times, so make sure you're familiar with it. An illegal reversal is flawed because it's possible there are other sufficient conditions that would lead to the necessary condition, just as there are other potential ways to get suspended. This answer even reflects the OR sufficient condition ("certain events each produce"), and answers that better reflect the argument tend to be correct.

Key Takeaway:
While there are other question types where conditional logic is more common, it does show up in a significant number of Errors in Reasoning questions, so you should be looking for it!

Incorrect. This answer uses sufficient/necessary language, but it's describing assumptions, not conditions. The former has to do with the "completeness" of an assumption in addressing the gap in the argument, whereas the latter has to do with conditional logic. The stimulus only discusses sufficient and necessary conditions, never assumptions. If it did, it would say something along the lines of, "For that to be true, it would need to be the case that . . . "

Incorrect. This answer would only be relevant if the argument stated that Thibodeaux showed up 30 seconds after the meeting's start time to establish that he was late. Since it just discusses lateness as a condition for suspension, it doesn't need to specify what that means.

Incorrect. The stimulus never establishes tenure as a consideration in suspension. Picking this answer would require you to go down a path of thinking about how Thibodeaux might not have missed these meetings or been late for them because he wasn't on the board during those meetings, but that's a stretch with how the argument is phrased.