Q9 - In a recent poll of chief

[lhermary]

Why is B wrong here?

Thanks

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

The issue with answer choice (B) is that we don't know that the CEO's consider the needs and aspirations of employees a top priority. We know that the CEO's claim that the needs and aspirations of employees have the same "high" priority as that of customer satisfaction, but that's not quite the same as saying it's the top priority.

Let's look at this one from the beginning. The CEO's claim that the needs and aspirations of employees are important. The author concludes from this that the CEO's are not indifferent to the needs and aspirations of their employees. But just because the CEO's claim something to be true, does not in fact make it true. This issue is perfectly addressed in answer choice (D).

Let's look at the incorrect answer choices:

(A) addresses another common flaw, but not one committed here. This is addressing the possibility that the term "top management" was used with two different meanings throughout the course of the argument. But that's not the case in this argument.
(B) is tempting but incorrect for the reasons stated above.
(C) is not presumed in the argument, since it's trying to prove that the CEO's care about their employees, not that the concerns of the CEO's are misplaced.
(E) represents a common flaw, but not one occurring in this argument. There is no reason to believe that the large corporations in the survey were unrepresentative of large corporations in general.

Hope that helps!

[leejihyungrace]

I"m still actually confused about (E) I came down to both answer choices (D) and (E). However I chose E because we don't know what the 125 is out of.

Then, when would it be the case that E would be correct? In an argument?

[eiwon21]

Hello,

The problem I had with (E) was that the poll is of 'CEOs' and the conclusion is about 'top management.'

To me, top management includes CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, etc., and doesn't strike as the equivalent of CEOs. Thus, I thought the argument made a generalization based on an unrepresentative sample (generalizes about top management based on poll about only CEOs).

I know the default answer would be that top management can be seen as only CEOs- but the lines for what can be considered synonyms in LSAT often strikes me as too hazy. And in this case, I thought the term would make or break the logical foundation that the question is based on.

[Camiller]

Will an LSAT Geek please add further insight as to why (E) is incorrect?

I narrowed down my answer choices to (D) and (E), and I chose (E) because I thought it left the argument MOST vulnerable to criticism.

(E) states: "makes a generalization based on an unrepresentative sample"

I thought that the sample was unrepresentative for the following reasons:
(1) the argument equivocates between CEO and top management when the two are not the same; by polling only CEOs this sample was not representative;
(2) "large corporation" is not defined, and I believe that making the assumption that a sample of 125 large corporations is representative of all large corporations would be a violation of LSAT's rule: "You should not make assumptions that are by commonsense standards implausible..."; for example, there are over 2,800 companies traded on the NYSE, so 125/2800 is less than 5%; and
(3) the argument equivocates between the claim "that employee training and welfare is of the same high priority as customer satisfaction" and "top management of large corporations behaves indifferently to the needs and aspirations of employees"; in other words, a relative claim about employee training and welfare is not representative of indifferent behavior to the needs and aspiration of employees.

[maryadkins]

Hey guys,

I want to tell you something important. "Unrepresentative sample" is often an answer CHOICE on flaw questions. I would NOT say it's often a CORRECT choice. In fact, I only choose it if one of the others isn't clearly better.

When the LSAT gives you an unrepresentative sample, it'll give you a reason to pick that. It'll call the sample small, or limit it in some very concrete way that makes it too narrow. It will NOT give you a standard poll or survey and expect you personally to decide that based on your subjective opinion of what constitutes a representative sample that the poll or survey is flawed.

(E) is wrong because this is not an unrepresentative sample.

[alexandredinizdeoliveira]

Is there not a logical gap between assuming that "top management" refers only and exclusively to "CEOs"? None of the answer choices quite match this issue, which could mean that the question-makers simply decided to ignore this error and focus on the belief/practice issue. But still, given the nature of these questions, it does feel, like a previous poster mentioned, that "top management" could include board members, COOs, CFOs etc.

Thanks!

[maryadkins]

Sure, you will see a lot of term shifts in Logical Reasoning arguments that don't come up in the answer choices, so the fact that it doesn't appear there does not mean it isn't a problematic shift logic-wise. The shift from CEOs to top management doesn't strike me as a problem though, since CEOs are at the very top by definition. If it had said something like CFOs I might be more concerned about the overlap, but even that may be too nuanced for the LSAT in terms of insider, corporate-structure knowledge. Do be keeping an eye out for those term shifts, though. You're right to do so!

[MeenaV936]

Still don't understand why B is wrong here. I don't buy that top priority and high priority are different. Can someone give me another reason why B is wrong, or is this the only reason?