A survey of a group of people between the ages of 75 and 80 found that those who regularly played the card game bridg...

Karry-Jiao April 10, 2019

Why not E?

I totally understand this is correlation type of error. But I think E also makes a lot of sense, since wrong causation is also a type of "flaw in the reasoning" (as described in E), right?

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richmlw June 2, 2019

I'm in the same boat, picking D but not really knowing what's wrong with E. Could you please explain? Thanks!

Ravi June 2, 2019

@Karry-Jiao and @richmlw,

Great questions. Let's take a look at (D) and (E).

(E) says, "describing a flaw in the reasoning on which the original
conclusion was based"

(E) is a tricky answer. The problem with it is that the passage's
author does not describe the flawed reasoning that led to the original
conclusion. If the author had done this, she would have mentioned how
the original conclusion makes the jump from correlation to causation.
However, the author merely points to an alternative explanation, so
(E) is out.

(D) says, "providing an alternative hypothesis to explain the data on
which the original conclusion was based"

The alternative hypothesis is that the proposed caused and proposed
effect are actually flipped, so (E) does a great job in discussing how
the author counters the original conclusion. (E) is the correct
answer.

Hope this helps. Let us know if you have any other questions!