Consumer advocate: There is ample evidence that the model of car one drives greatly affects the chances that one's c...

Annie on November 2, 2019

Hi @Ali,

This stimulus has two parts. The premise is that the model of car stolen most often last year was the same as the one most stolen the previous year.

Then, based only on that premise, the conclusion is that the model of car one drives greatly affects the chances that your car will be stolen.

You're looking for the flaw in the reasoning, aka the jump in the logic between the premise and the conclusion.

Answers:

(A) is correct. This answer choice directly addresses something that the stimulus missed, aka that it may not be the model of car that matters but rather how prevalent that type of car is. For example, there may be just ONE model of car in the whole country. If that were the case, it would get stolen the most because there were so many of them, not because it was a particular model.

(B) is incorrect. This fact is irrelevant to the discussion. A car can be the same model but a different age, so this wouldn't alter the reasoning.

(C) is incorrect. This actually supports the consumer advocate's argument. If the certain model of car had a high resale value that would explain why it was stolen more. We're looking for an answer choice that shows a flaw in the logic, not one that supports it.

(D) is incorrect. The consumer advocate is not discussing the thieves considerations. This answer choice therefore cannot be used to attack the argument as it is off topic.

(E) is incorrect. There is no discussion of what type of car you should drive. This answer choice is therefore again off topic.

ali on November 5, 2019

got it