Q7 - Enthusiasm for the use of calculators

[Michelle5]

Hello, I was wondering if someone could explain to me why answer choice E is incorrect? Thank you!

[maryadkins]

The core is:

Principles are more likely to be remembered if after painstaking calculation

-->

The fact that calculators make math easy means it's reasonable to restrict them

In other words, if we want students to retain knowledge of the principles, we DON'T want it to be easy. We're looking to support this argument.

(C) does so by saying that it's more important that students remember principles (invoking the premise) than that it be easy (tying it to the conclusion).


(A) is too vague. Some? How many--one?

(B) is out of scope.

(D) weakens the argument. (Let's use calculators then!)

(E) is out of scope. The core isn't about teachers' enthusiasm. That's given to us initially as background info.

Hope this helps...

[Michelle5]

Thank you! I was unable to see the first sentence as "background information" and was confusing it for being the argument!

[hstler1]

maryadkins, you stated that the core is not related to "enthusiasm" however another post by one of your reps seems to state this is the main conclusion of the argument, however you both were able to reach the correct answer? Would you care to explain this? Furthermore, for answer E is tempting, many other sources seem to state that the first sentence of the stimulus and the last are essentially reiterating the same thing, which further confuses me as to why E is wrong.

[andrewgong01]

maryadkins, you stated that the core is not related to "enthusiasm" however another post by one of your reps seems to state this is the main conclusion of the argument, however you both were able to reach the correct answer? Would you care to explain this? Furthermore, for answer E is tempting, many other sources seem to state that the first sentence of the stimulus and the last are essentially reiterating the same thing, which further confuses me as to why E is wrong.

For future viewers, I think this is why "E" is wrong and said it was out of scope :

1) We actually do not know if it i is teachers that are enthusiastic about calculators. IT just says there is enthusiasm to use it - but is it by parents, students, admins, CollegeBoard etc? We don't know. In other words, the argument was never really concerned with teacher's enthusiasm; rahter it was about calculuator use in general

2) Even if it was teachers' enthusiasm we were talking about, this is a weak strengthener to "C" (which btw seems more like a principle-justify answer choice than a strengthen question) since it says that teachers are OFTEN wrong not ALWAYS wrong; we do not know if calculator use is in the majority or minority here and that is why this is a weak strengthener