Q17 - Detective: Because the embezzler

[nanagyanewa]

Hello,

Can someone please explain to me how answer choice C weakens the argument? Why is D the right answer ?I did this question in June and I did it today and still chose C as the answer. How does having only 2 actuaries weaken the argument? Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[giladedelman]

Thanks for the question!

This is a weaken question, which means it's in the assumption family, so we know we need to find and evaluate the core. The argument is pretty straightforward:

Because the embezzler had specific inside information, we know he was either an accountant or an actuary for XYZ Corporation. And because an accountant probably wouldn't make the error he made, the embezzler was likely an actuary.

Are there any gaps in the logic? The only big one I see is the assumption that only accountants and actuaries for XYZ Corporation had access to the inside information. On questions that ask, "Each of the following weakens the argument EXCEPT," it's pretty standard to have gaps that we don't see at first. So let's look at the answer choices. Remember, there will be four choices that weaken the argument and one that either strengthens it or is out of scope.

(D) is correct. The argument is about the identity of the embezzler, not about the corporation's overall vulnerability to embezzlement. This doesn't affect the argument one way or the other!

(C), the one that's been bugging you, is incorrect because it does weaken the argument: if there are only two actuaries compared to eight accountants, this weakens the case, from a probability perspective, that the embezzler was more likely an actuary.

(A) weakens the argument by suggesting that it would be more difficult for an actuary to embezzle than for an accountant.

(B) weakens the argument by attacking the assumption we pointed out, that only accountants and actuaries had access to the inside info. Maybe it was someone from the outside!

(E) weakens the argument by suggesting that the accountants would be more likely than the actuaries to have access to the inside information.

Does that answer your question? Let me know if the (C) vs. (D) debate is still bugging you.

[nanagyanewa]

Thanks for the response. I guess I have to look at the details of the argument this time round. I didn't really consider the fact that D referred to the corporation as a whole rather than the identity of the embezzler. I'll take note of that. Thanks once again!

[mrudula_2005]

hmm...I don't know, I feel that D still weakens the conclusion that it is likely that the embezzler is one of the actuaries just because if a corporation is deemed generally vulnerable to embezzlement, it's likely that the culprit does not have to be someone with such close and specialized knowledge and access to their internal financial records...maybe because it was so vulnerable it was really just an embezzlement waiting to happen by even an unsophisticated random, which makes the conclusion of this argument less forceful...or am I adding in my own assumptions?

thanks

[tamwaiman]

hmm...I don't know, I feel that D still weakens the conclusion that it is likely that the embezzler is one of the actuaries just because if a corporation is deemed generally vulnerable to embezzlement, it's likely that the culprit does not have to be someone with such close and specialized knowledge and access to their internal financial records...maybe because it was so vulnerable it was really just an embezzlement waiting to happen by even an unsophisticated random, which makes the conclusion of this argument less forceful...or am I adding in my own assumptions?

thanks

I have the same question, (C) is not a good weakening choice, for an accountant would probably not make the kind of mistakes explains why the detective believe it is likely an actuary instead of accountant, and (D), which undermines the claim "because the embezzler must have had specialized knowledge and access to internal financial records" and in turn negates the cause of this relationship.

LSAC should remove this question from scoring just like S4Q22 of the same PT.

[gotomedschool]

I'll offer my .02 since I also had it down to C and D and was able to eliminate C as an answer choice.


C states that there were eight accountants, relative to two actuaries on its staff. We know that it has to either be an accountant or an actuary. Ceteris paribus, that still means that probability of it being an accountant is 80% to an actuary being 20%. Now say it employs 98 accountants and 2 actuaries--that's a 98% to 2% chance. See where I am going with this? Does that mean that there is no chance it was an actuary? No, but that's besides the point. We aren't trying to demolish the detective's argument--simply weaken it.

By defining the number of employees in each category, it gives you a perspective on the probability of chance occurrence.

Now to counter that you might say, but the stimulus says an accountant would not make the kind of mistakes in ledger entries. True but the keyword in that sentence is probably. The detective says would PROBABLY not make the kind of mistakes that would lead to discovery--it doesn't completely eliminate the probability of an accountant being the culprit. If he said, an accountant would not under any circumstance make the kind of mistake that would lead to discovery then thats a different story, but the stimulus allows for the chance that the accountants would be liable.

Furthermore, if you knew that there were 4x as many accountants as actuaries, don't you think that there would be a greater chance that one of them might screw up and be the person?

it's likely that the culprit does not have to be someone with such close and specialized knowledge and access to their internal financial records...maybe because it was so vulnerable it was really just an embezzlement waiting to happen by even an unsophisticated random, which makes the conclusion of this argument less forceful...or am I adding in my own assumptions?

"

As for D, the fact that XYZ was deemed vulnerable to
embezzlement is irrelevant to the issue of who actually did it. I think you are misunderstanding the meaning embezzlement. For a brief wikipedia definition: "Embezzlement is the act of dishonestly appropriating or secreting assets by one or more individuals to whom such assets have been entrusted."

That means the embezzling must be done by someone who is a part of the company. That doesn't mean some random joe sitting at home reads an article how the corporation is vulnerable to embezzlement and thinks to himeslf, "im going to embezzle these bastards! " He could STEAL or LAUNDER or EXTORT from them but from MY understanding, embezzlement has to deal with an "inside job" per se. I might be wrong here, but after reading more on extortion I'm pretty sure I am right.

LSAC should remove this question from scoring just like S4Q22 of the same PT.

Lol, I feel this way sometimes about questions I cannot fully grasp but in the end, I realize that sometimes our misunderstanding of an issue can be so deeply ingrained in our heads that we refuse to believe we are wrong. We all make this mistake. I hope that in answering this question, I will help you realize that it is not a flawed question and it just a simple case of misunderstanding what it is asked/said.

Let me know if this helps.

Also, if you still aren't getting it, try to explain to me why you think that D weakens the argument. Instead of thinking, C doesn't weaken it, tell me why you think the answer you chose is right.

[acechaowang]

I think C is incorrect because it provides additional evidence to say that since there are 8 accountants, it is more likely that someone will commit a mistake.

[Shea.y.schneider]

I recently joined the forum, so please forgive me as I learn to properly post and reply. Regarding your definition of embezzelment, as being an inside job, answer choice D in my opinion attacks the logical gap in the stimulous, where the embezzler must have specialize knowledge..... If the company was vulnerable to embezzelment then any employee in addition to actuaries and accountants could have the potential to embezzel funds. Thus, weakening the argument which restricts the embezzler to being one of the actuaries. The issue with the probability element of answer choice C it relies too much on a uniform understanding of testers perspection of the fact that if there are four times the amount of accountants to actuaries then dispite the fact accountants " would probably not make the kind of mistakes in ledger entries......" it is possible that they did thus weakening the argument that the embezzler must have been an actuary. How does one figure that four times the amount 8 employees to 2 employees discredits the probability of an accountant making mistakes in ledger entries.

[raziel]

I think the answer can be most easily answered by forming your answer before looking at the answers. If you try to analyze the answers one by one, you will often find that there is some possible way in which they could make sense. This leads you to form the belief that there is more than one possible answer for the questions.

I also took a second glance at answer choice (C), because proportions are a good way to make mistakes in the test.

But after reading the question, you must know that
1. The author is assuming that making mistakes is a possible indicator that actuaries embezzled from the company.

You can weaken this argument by providing further evidence that makes it less likely that it was the actuaries that embezzled from the company.

Notice that all other answer choices attack this assumption by making less likely that it was the actuaries

(a) more closely scrutinized
(b) outside people
(c) less actuaries than accountants
(e)more difficult for actuaries

(d) Notice that the passage says that the embezzler must have had access to internal financial records. Even if the company was so vulnerable that anybody could have embezzled from it, it doesn't change the fact that it was somebody in the company with internal access. This does nothing to attack the argument that it was probably an accountant since it doesn't tell us that the company was vulnerable to appropriation of internal financial records.

[yli.angela]

I'm still having trouble grappling with C over D.

How does probability have anything to do with this?

First, the 80% vs. 20% thing is only valid if the accountants and actuaries are equally weighted/qualified, but they're aren't. The stimulus puts less weight on the actuaries because accountants "would probably not make the kind of mistakes".

So we can't say that there is higher probability of randomly selecting an accountant because these two things aren't equally probable. 1 accountant =/= 1 actuary. (Also, probability in the mathematical sense and "probably" used in the stimulus are not really used in the same sense. And if it is argued that they are, there's no evaluation of that probability. It could be that 1000:1 accountants make that mistake whereas, there are only 2:8 accountants. I'm not a math superstar, but there seems to be something gaping about this.)

Second, choice D seems to weaken the stimulus because, like choice B, it suggests that the "specialized knowledge" was more vulnerable to outsiders than originally thought, which then removes the either/or situation of actuaries and accountants. (Especially since it was done by a 3rd party. So much for specialized knowledge.)

This question frustrates me. Please help.

[jacob.n.cruise]

Exactly. For C to be correct, we'd have to assume that the probability is uniformly distributed over accountants and actuaries. But that assumption is questionable, since we're given additional information, with which the detective uses to "refine" his guess. Therefore, what is relevant here is the conditional probability that the embezzler is an accountant or an actuary, based on this new information. The conditional probability distribution clearly gives more weight to the likelihood that the embezzler is an actuary. Therefore, the uniform distribution assumption required for C to be correct is invalid.

[Alvanith]

I stand for (d) is the correct answer.

Let's see what would happen if (d) were true:

The corporation was vulnerable to EMBEZZLEMENT and the EMBEZZLER MUST have special knowledge and access to embezzle, so the possible EMBEZZLER was either an account or an actuary.

Compared to the original argument:

The EMBEZZLER MUST have special knowledge and access to embezzle, so the possible EMBEZZLER was either an account or an actuary.

I don't see much difference between these two stimulus. Whether or not the corporation was vulnerable to embezzlement and even if you do not bother to figure out if embezzlement could only be an insider job, the embezzler still must have required knowledge and access to embezzle and therefore it is still reasonable to infer that the embezzler can be presumed to be either an accountant or an actuary. The issue of vulnerability hardly weaken the embezzler can be presumed to be accountant or actuary.

If you say the vulnerability could make it easier for some outsiders to steal the money, then I have to say you are making a huge assumption here since we are not told much about what does this vulnerability mean and, more importantly, it is very unsafe to make some unwarranted or superfluous assumptions on the LSAT. Instead, since we are specifically told in (d) that corporation is vulnerable to EMBEZZLEMENT and, according to the stimulus, the EMBEZZLER MUST have knowledge and access, it is still reasonable to infer that accountant or actuary did it.

As for (c), the detective just says the embezzler is LESS LIKELY to be an accountant because an accountant would PROBABLY not make the kind of mistakes. Since the detective just gives a probable reason to make one kind of people more likely, why can't we give another reason to make the other kind of people more likely? And, most important of all, our work here is just to WEAKEN.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

[judaydaday]

While everyone here seems confused between (C) and (D), I'm actually having a hard time eliminating (B). Isn't it a rule not to attack the validity of the premise?

the first sentence " we can presume that the embezzler worked for XYZ as either an accountant or an actuary," seems to eliminate the possibility that B is correct as it attacks exclusiveness of the premise. Additionally, if you're eliminating (D) by defining embezzlement as an inside job, that would seem to counterdict the process of eliminating (b).

[rinagoldfield]

Thanks for your question, Judaydaday. You are absolutely right that we don’t want to attack the premise. The issue here is that the line you cite is not a premise, but rather an intermediary conclusion!

The only “facts” we have are that the embezzler must have had specialized knowledge, and than an accountant would probably not make ledger mistakes. The author “presumes that the embezzler worked as an accountant or actuary.” The language of “presume” indicates that this is not a fact, but rather a (questionable) deduction the author makes.

Both (B) and (D) suggest that the embezzler may not have been an accountant or actuary working for XYZ. Attacking intermediate conclusions is ok, so these choices stand as weakeners.

[DanielZ772]

Add me to the roster of those confused by this question.

D clearly doesn't weaken the argument, and so I have no problem with it being chosen as a correct answer. I ultimately went with it over C as it seems to call into question whether "specialized knowledge/access to internal financial records" would be required for embezzlement. But this is a poor reason for choosing the answer, as it simply calls into question a premise.

However, the reasons being given in favour of eliminating C are just as weak. The number of accountants vs. actuaries is simply irrelevant. Any attempt to establish its relevance would bring into play information that simply cannot be assumed. This is particularly true of the probabilistic argument being advanced on this board, which as a form of reasoning requires us to make the assumption about our sample that actuaries and accountants are roughly comparable. Indeed, we have reason to believe that they are NOT comparable in the stimulus itself.

As I see it, the probabilistic justification for eliminating this answer is not only a poor reason to strike the answer choice, it is actively a form of fallacious reasoning that itself would seem to justify C being a correct answer!

[ohthatpatrick]

We have reason to believe that accountants and actuaries are NOT comparable from the stimulus?

Where are you getting that?

Are you saying /thinking that we were told, "UNLIKE an actuary, an accountant would probably not this kind of ledger mistake"?

Because we were just told that an accountant would probably not make that mistake.
It could also be true that an actuary would probably not make that mistake.

Even if we DID have that contrast, it would rule out "most" of the accountants as suspects, which is compatible with thinking "5 of them wouldn't make that mistake, but 3 would."

That's still more ("comparable") accountant suspects than actuary suspects. So why would it be LIKELY to be an actuary?

All things being equal, that's a 60% chance of acct and 40% chance of actuary.

I think part of your concern about probabilistic fallacies stems from thinking to yourself, "That doesn't PROVE that an accountant is more likely."

This is just WEAKEN, so if it raises doubt, it suffices to weaken.

[LizaK873]

I also thought C was the right answer. But here is my thinking to eliminate it..
since let's always give the benefit of the doubt, that LSAT test creators really go through each question more than most people else ever would.

C is wrong the same way A and E is wrong.

---
Why were they easily eliminated? because if one was more scrutinized, it reduces the possibility of it being that one over the other. Same with E.
So C does the same -
A, C, and E, while kind of unrelated to the premises/intermediate-conclusions and its link to the argument, it reduces the probability.
AKA, weakens directly the conclusion itself, unrelated to premises, by attacking the probability between actuary and accountant.
----
So we're left to choose between B and D. Both super similar. Why does B weaken and D not?

B explicitly attacks the intermediate conclusion;
Premise of "had special knowledge and access to financial records (SKFR)" cannot be attacked, but you can attack the "so it must be an insider".


D actually does not do this on closer inspection...

It was vulnerable, so SKFR isn't required and anyone could do it. BUT, the premise of "THIS incident had SKFR" is always true. So... if it didn't have SKFR, then D would weaken. But it doesn't, because THIS incident required SKFR. So it eliminates other people who would have embezzled easily because THIS incident HAD skfr happen.

-> analogy:
Q: this store had bullet cases when police came to investigate a robbery. so the thief must have had a gun.
D would sound like: this store is vulnerable to theft.

ok, anyone can steal from this store. but that doesn't mean the thief had LESS likelihood of having a gun for THIS theft.