Merriweather: It isn’t that the school paid more for each computer than it was worth, but that the computers that were purchased were much more elaborate than they needed to be.
Speaker 1 Summary
Sanchez says that the school did not spend too much money on some new computers. How do we know? Because the computers weren’t actually as expensive as many people believe. According to Sanchez, this makes their cost reasonable.
Speaker 2 Summary
Merriweather’s implied conclusion is that the school did spend too much on computers, even though they only paid what the computers were worth. How can this be? Because the school bought fancier computers than they needed, thus ultimately still overspending.
Objective
We want to find a point of disagreement. Sanchez and Merriweather disagree about whether the school spend too much on the new computers.
A
needed sixteen new computers
Like (B), neither speaker expresses an opinion about this. Whether or not the school needed new computers in the first place is not discusses by either Sanchez or Merriweather.
B
purchased more computers than it should have
Like (A), neither Sanchez nor Merriweather talks about this. The question of how many computers the school actually needed just doesn’t come up, so we can’t say either speaker states an opinion.
C
spent more in purchasing the sixteen computers than it should have
Sanchez disagrees and Merriweather agrees, so this is the point of disagreement. Sanchez explicitly states that the school did not overspend on the computers. Merriweather explains that the computers were fancier than necessary, thus implying that the school did spend too much.
D
paid more for each computer than it was worth
Both speakers disagree with this statement, meaning they are in agreement with one another. Sanchez takes the position that the school didn’t pay too much, and even Merriweather concedes that the school paid what each computer was worth.
E
has been harshly criticized for purchasing the sixteen computers
Neither Sanchez nor Merriweather discusses whether and how much people have criticized the school for this purchase, so we cannot say that either speaker has an opinion.
Summarize Argument
The author concludes that existing laws have legitimacy simply because they are the laws. This is based on a subsidiary conclusion that, if the purpose of laws is not to contribute to people’s happiness, then we don’t have a basis for evaluating existing laws. This sub-conclusion is based on the premise that if the purpose of laws is to contribute to people’s happiness, then we have a basis for criticizing laws.
Identify and Describe Flaw
The author confuses a sufficient condition for having a basis for criticizing existing laws with a necessary condition. Although we know that if the purpose of laws is to contribute to happiness, then we have a basis, that doesn’t imply that if the purpose of laws is not to contribute to happiness, that we no longer have a basis to criticize laws. So the author’s jump to the sub-conclusion is flawed.
A
takes a sufficient condition for a state of affairs to be a necessary condition for it
The purpose of laws being happiness is sufficient to have a basis for criticizing laws. But the author thinks this purpose is necessary for having a basis to criticize.
B
infers a causal relationship from the mere presence of a correlation
The evidence doesn’t present a correlation.
C
trades on the use of a term in one sense in a premise and in a different sense in the conclusion
The author doesn’t use any term in two ways. “Legitimacy” means legitimacy throughout the argument. “Laws” mean laws throughout the argument.
D
draws a conclusion about how the world actually is on the basis of claims about how it should be
The evidence does not assert anything about how the world “should” be.
E
infers that because a set of things has a certain property, each member of that set has the property
The argument doesn’t commit a whole-to-part fallacy. There is no whole presented in the premises, and no individual parts of a whole presented in the conclusion.
"Surprising" Phenomenon
Why did the moose herd continue to grow while the wolves that were supposed to prey on them prospered?
Objective
The right answer will describe some aspect of the environment, the wolves’ behavior, or the moose’s behavior that caused the wolves’ introduction to have little or no negative impact on the moose population’s growth.
A
The presence of wolves in an area tends to discourage other predators from moving into the area.
This doesn’t help. Even if other predators did not move into the area after the wolves were introduced, the wolves themselves are predators, and we would expect the moose herd’s growth to have been impacted by their presence.
B
Attempts to control moose populations in other national parks by introducing predators have also been unsuccessful.
This doesn’t help. We’re looking for the reason why this particular attempt to control the moose population did not work, not other examples of failed attempts.
C
Wolves often kill moose weakened by diseases that probably would have spread to other moose.
This is what we need. If wolves often kill sick moose, they’re protecting the healthy moose from contracting illnesses which might have otherwise killed off more moose and slowed the population’s growth. Also, the diseased moose the wolves kill presumably would have died anyway.
D
Healthy moose generally consume more vegetation than do those that are diseased or injured.
This is irrelevant. We’re not looking for information about how much vegetation healthy vs. diseased or injured moose eat, and this answer choice tells us nothing about what happened when the wolves were introduced.
E
Moose that are too old to breed are just as likely to die of natural causes as of attack by wolves.
We’re not interested in moose that are too old to breed, because the factor we’re examining is population growth. Furthermore, even if older moose are just as likely to die of natural causes, wolf attacks would still presumably kill additional moose, both older and younger.
Summarize Argument: Phenomenon-Hypothesis
The author hypothesizes that hospital staff have become more careful in their patient care because they know their errors are being monitored. This is based on the observed phenomenon that patient injuries have decreased significantly at hospitals that have started to monitor staff errors that result in patient injury.
Notable Assumptions
The author assumes that the incidence of injury at these hospitals was not affected by another change that happened around the same time. The author also assumes that the staff at these hospitals knew that they were being monitored during the last year.
A
Before the plan was implemented the hospitals already had a policy of thoroughly investigating any staff error that causes life-threatening injury to a patient.
This is irrelevant, because it only applies to life-threatening injuries, whereas the author is discussing patient injuries in general. This pre-existing policy doesn’t tell us anything new about why overall patient injuries have decreased with the new monitoring plan.
B
The incidence of patient injuries at a regional hospital that did not participate in the plan also decreased over the year in question.
This weakens by making it more likely that there is an alternative explanation for the decrease of patient injuries that is unrelated to the consequences of the plan. After all, the other hospital saw the same outcomes without the plan as a possible cause.
C
The plan did not call for the recording of staff errors that could have caused patient injuries but did not.
This is irrelevant, since the argument already tells us that the plan specifically records staff errors that do cause patient injuries. This doesn’t help us figure out whether the plan was the true cause of the decrease in injuries.
D
The decrease in the incidence of the injuries did not begin at any hospital until the staff there became aware that the records were being closely analyzed.
This strengthens the author’s hypothesis by more closely correlating the staff’s knowledge of their being monitored with the decrease in patient injury, making it more plausible that the former is a direct cause of the latter.
E
Under the plan, the hospitals’ staff members who were found to have made errors that caused injuries to patients received only reprimands for their first errors.
Without more information, it isn’t clear how the plan’s policy toward reprimanding or otherwise punishing staff members might have affected the incidence of patient injury, so this doesn’t give us more reason to believe that the plan succeeded.