Please Help

Same here, and more specifically with C?

@heidiz and @mwilson1615, Happy to help. Let's take a look. The argument is a causal one. It's saying that heavy sunspot activity causes a rise in positively charged ions, which in turn causes people to become anxious and irritable. The argument then concludes that the sunspot activity has caused the popular uprisings. However, there's a problem. The stimulus fails to connect irritability to uprisings at all, so there is a large correlation to causation flaw in this argument. The basic structure of the argument in the stimulus is that A causes B and B causes C. Therefore, A caused D. (A) says, "The ancient Greeks sometimes attempted to predict the outcome of future events by watching the flight patterns of birds. Since the events themselves often matched the predictions, the birds were probably responding to some factor that also influenced the events." (A) is saying that two things were caused by a third thing. This is different from the causal argument made in the stimulus, so it's out. (B) says, "Martha, Sidney, and Hilary are the city's three most powerful politicians, and all three graduated from Ridgeview High School. Although Ridgeview never had a reputation for excellence, it must have been a good school to have produced three such successful graduates." (B) is saying that one thing caused 3 things (the success of Martha, Sidney, and Hilary), but it doesn't offer any evidence, and there is no causal chain present, so (B) is out. (C) says, "Unusually cold weather last December coincided with a rise in fuel prices. When it is cold, people use more fuel to keep warm; and when more fuel is used, prices rise. Therefore if prices are high next winter, it will be the result of cold weather." (C) applies the transitive property to a couple of principles and then confuses the necessary and sufficient conditions for each other (if it's cold, the prices rise; therefore, if prices rise, it will be cold). This doesn't match, so it's out. (D) says, "The thirty healthiest people in a long-term medical study turned out to be the same thirty whose regular diets included the most vegetables. Since specific substances in vegetables are known to help the body fight disease, vegetables should be part of everyone's diet." (D)'s argument arrives at a conclusion that says something should be done. The argument in the stimulus arrived at a causal conclusion, so these conclusions don't match. Thus, (D) is out. (E) says, "Acme's most productive managers are consistently those who occupy the corner offices, which have more windows than other offices at Acme. Since people are more alert when they are exposed to abundant natural light, the greater productivity of these managers is probably at least in part a result of their working in the corner offices." (E) has a causal chain, just as the stimulus does. (E) is the only one of the answers with a causal chain, so it's the correct answer choice. Does this make sense? Let us know if you have any more questions!