All students at Pitcombe College were asked to label themselves conservative, liberal, or middle-of-the-road politica...
hajdariMay 17, 2020
why is A not correct
I am confused as to why A is not correct. if 77% of students were more liberal on the issue, wouldn't that mean that all the 24% of students who said they are liberal voted on the more liberal choice?
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We know that 24% of students labeled themselves as liberal. However, 77% of students endorsed a typical liberal position when asked about a specific set of issues. Does this mean that all students who originally labeled themselves as liberal endorsed the typical liberal position? Not necessarily.
It could be the case that the 51% of students who labeled themselves as middle-of-the-road and the 25% of students who labeled themselves as conversative all ended up endorsing the liberal position on the specific set of issues. This would mean that 76% of students endorsed the liberal position on the issue set, all of whom were not self-labeled as liberal. So, the other 1% of students who endorsed the liberal position would be taken from those labeled as liberal. This would allow us to reach 77% of students who endorsed a liberal position on a specific set of issues without all of the 24% of students who labeled themselves as liberal endorsing that position.
There are many more ways to achieve this mathematically. Perhaps 50% of students took the liberal position on this specific set of issues and were labeled as middle-of-the-road students, 10% of students took the liberal position on this specific set of issues and were labeled as liberal students, and 17% of students took the liberal position on this specific set of issues and were labeled as conservative students. Again, this would result in not all students who originally labeled themselves as liberal taking the liberal position on the set of issues.
Finally, remember that we are asked what "must be true," not what is likely to be true.
Does that make sense? Please let us know if you have any other questions!
