The National Association of Fire Fighters says that 45 percent of homes now have smoke detectors, whereas only 30 per...

shunhe January 28, 2021

Hi @andreaskormusis,

Thanks for the question! We’re negating the answers because it’s a strengthen with necessary premise question, so we can do that to test the answer choices. This question does kind of seem like a strengthen with sufficient premise, but is in the middle of the two since it asks for an assumption that HAS to be made, and so the negation test is applied.

So first, let’s break the argument down. The conclusion is the part that says having more smoke detectors doesn’t make early detection of house fires more likely. Why? Because half the smoke detectors are without batteries or inoperative.

So now we want something that will get us to that conclusion. Say (D) is true. The proportion of defective smoke detectors has increased. Then doesn’t that make the conclusion able to be true? Sure, there are more fire alarms, but also, more of them are defective.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.

andreaskormusis January 29, 2021

This question was In the strengthen with sufficient section. I get that maybe I should have figured that with the question but when I'm in these specific sections I don't always read the answers. This needs to be switched out

Ryn March 13, 2022

The question stems is a common S.A question stem... if this is a n.a it still in the wrong section s this is a s.a section.

Emil-Kunkin August 18, 2024

This is indeed a necessary assumption question!