Altogether, the students in Ms. Tarnowski's Milton Elementary School class collected more aluminum cans than did the ...
SorooshKoshaJanuary 28, 2020
Flaw in the Stimulus
Hello,
I got the question correct and understand why because of the wording of the stimulus and answer choice, but wanted to make sure that the flaw I prescribed was correct. What is the main error of reasoning in the stimulus? Thanks in advance!
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The flaw in the passage's reasoning is the Fallacy of Division (Whole-to-Part error), in which we are told that the whole has certain characteristic and then mistakenly take this to mean that the individuals who make up the whole also have this characteristic.
Specifically, we are told that "altogether" Ms. Tarnowski's class collected more cans than did any other class. The passage then mistakenly takes this to mean that the student who collected the most cans in the entire school must have been in Ms. Tarnowski's class.
Let's create a hypothetical example to shed light on why this is incorrect. For the purposes of simplicity, let's say there are 2 classes in the school and 2 students in each of these classes. Their collection numbers are as follows:
In this example, we see it is true that altogether Ms. Tarnowski's class collected more cans (20 total) than did the other class (17 total). However, the single student who collected the most cans was not in Ms. Tarnowski's class- it was Student #1 in Mr. Kay's class with a total of 15 cans, which is 5 more than either of the students in Ms. Tarnowski's class. Ultimately, this shows that equating the characteristic of a whole to the characteristics of its parts is flawed.
Does that make sense? Please let us know if you have any other questions!
