Same, can you please provide an explanation why C is the correct answer choice?
RaviFebruary 9, 2019
@hallerae and @Christy-Earls,
Happy to help.
The argument is saying that cars that have antitheft devices like alarms are more likely to be stolen or broken into than cars that don't have these anti-theft devices. The argument concludes that anti-theft devices don't do anything to protect cars from thieves.
This argument is bad. What if the cars that have alarms are expensive ones and ones that are parked in bad parts of town? In other words, what if the fact that the cars are at high risk of theft is why they have alarms? The argument fails to consider this.
The question stem asks, "The pattern of flawed reasoning in the argument above is most similar to that in which one of the following?"
We're looking for a parallel flaw in the answer choice we select.
(C) says, "Studies reveal that people who are regular users of libraries purchase more books per year than do people who do not use libraries regularly. Hence using libraries regularly does not reduce the number of books that library patrons purchase."
Similar to the stimulus, (C) presents a poor comparison. Just because regular library users buy more books per year than people who don't use libraries regularly doesn't mean that using libraries regularly doesn't reduce the number of books that people buy. It could be that frequent users of libraries would buy even more books if they didn't go to libraries often. This answer choice fails to take this into consideration, just as the stimulus failed to take into account the alternative explanation for anti-theft devices in cars. As a result, (C) matches the pattern of flawed reasoning we see in our stimulus since both (C) and the stimulus fail to take into account potential independent causes of the phenomena they're looking at.
Does this make sense? Let us know if you have any more questions!
