mshinners
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Q23 - YXK is currently the television network with the

by mshinners Fri Dec 31, 1999 8:00 pm

Question Type:
Match the Flaw

Stimulus Breakdown:
Bliss is the most-watched show on the most-watched network. Therefore, it must have more viewers than any other show.

Answer Anticipation:
Bad comparison! Also, a flavor of quantifier mismatch here.

Let's think up a situation where this isn't true:
Imagine YXK has 50 million viewers and 50 shows. The viewers each only watch one shows, and they're split up evenly, except each show loses 1 viewer to Bliss. In this case, Bliss has slightly over 1 million viewers. If there's another channel with only 49 million viewers, but only 1 show, that should would have a viewership of 49 million people (let's call it The Simpsons network) and beat out Bliss.

The bigger takeaway here is that, when comparing two things, don't go through an intermediary unless the intermediary is the same for both things (e.g., Dave is taller than Matt, and Matt is taller than Steve).

Correct answer:
(A)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Bingo. This argument compares two sets through an intermediary, and, for the same reasons listed above, the university's single chess player could hold the record as the most injured person despite chess injuries being less common.

(B) There's an additional term shift in this answer that makes it wrong (winning awards doesn't equal best). The second premise and conclusion are also reversed in this case.

(C) This argument is valid since the premise is about the tires individually.

(D) This argument is about a straight average and how the salaries are distributed between the extremes, not between jumping from one metric to another. As an example here, if 99% of police officers get paid just above the lowest salary among them, and 99% of firefighters get paid just below the maximum salary among them, the premises are all true but the conclusion wouldn't be.

(E) There's a slight term shift here between earning the most and being successful (it's possible that award wins is more determinative of success than earnings). Outside of that, though, there's not a big jump in this argument.

Takeaway/Pattern:
Don't try to do these numbers each time! Abstract the lesson from this question, and then apply it to similar situations without walking yourself through the entire explanation.

#officialexplanation
 
andrewgong01
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Re: Q23 - YXK is currently the television network with the

by andrewgong01 Sat Jun 10, 2017 2:18 am

I did not actually think of doing this question the way Matt described it above. I thought this was just a Part-Whole flaw and all I needed was to find some Part-Whole flaw and not think about the quantifier example above. Can we still consider this to be Part-Whole flaw?

Part: Most watched show in the most popular network
Whole: Most watched show across all networks

Choice A is saying Linda has the most injury in the soccer team, which on average has the most injuries. Hence, Linda is the most injured athlete across all teams. I didn't like A at first because you had to assume Linda was on the soccer team because it never said she was on the soccer team. For all we know it could have just been someone just making a comparison to soccer player like someone saying Roger Federer has earned more from sport sponsorships than any other basket ball players. It could be a valid statement even though Roger Federer is a tennis player but someone can still 'mislead' you into thinking he is a basket ball player.


Choice "D" reverses the Part-Whole flaw orginally given in the argument

From what I understand in Matt's answer the intermediary should have been the broadcast channel (not the tv show) to be the same and for choice"A" the intermediary should have been the soccer team to all other teams. The jump in the original stem was that we started comparing a show from the broad cast channel and in Answer Choice A the jump was from talking about soccer teams to Linda Wilson, who, as I stated above, may not even be on the soccer team
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ohthatpatrick
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Re: Q23 - YXK is currently the television network with the

by ohthatpatrick Sun Jun 11, 2017 1:31 pm

I don't think we want to call this a Part to Whole (though you made a good case), because we're not talking about a trait that applies to the Part and then assuming that it also applies to the Whole.

It's more like, Bill's the #1 chef in the US, thus Bill must be the #1 chef in North America.

Yes, US is a part of North America, but that move is one of
Because it's true in this subset of A, it's true in the larger set of A.

With a real Part vs. Whole, it should be like "because it's true of an individual, it's also true of a collective."

We're talking about an individual show in both the premise and the conclusion, while the trait we assign changes. (premise trait = #1 on #1 network .... conc trait = #1 on all networks)

Part vs. Whole would be

We're saying the SAME trait applies to an individual AND to a collective.

I guess if you say the trait is "Bliss is #1", then you can say
"Since that trait applies to an individual network, it applies to all networks."

The problem still is that "all networks" is not a collective idea. We're not saying that "Bliss is #1 on every network". THAT would be part to whole.

We're saying "Bliss is HIGHER in terms of audience than every other individual show."

I also would not call (D) a Part vs. Whole flaw. It's really just about outliers vs. overall average.

Finally, you can't say "Roger Federer has earned more from sport sponsorships than any other basket ball players" and then say he's not a basketball player.

The word "other" conveys that he is a member of that group.

Hope this helps.
 
TingR721
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Re: Q23 - YXK is currently the television network with the

by TingR721 Mon Oct 01, 2018 5:24 am

I understand why A is correct. But the "on average" in A and B really bothers me because the stimulus says "overall viewers". Could someone please help me? Thanks!