Candidate: The government spends $500 million more each year promoting highway safety than it spends combating cigare...

Mehran November 18, 2013

The conclusion of the argument is: "So the government would save lives by shifting funds from highway safety programs to antismoking programs." Why? Because the government spends $500 million more each year promoting highway safety than it spends combating cigarette smoking but each year many more people die from smoking-related diseases than die in highway accidents. The argument is assuming that if we increase the spending on something (i.e. programs preventing smoking) that it will have a positive effect on saving lives. This is a big jump to make. We do not know whether or not either of these programs have reached their "saving lives cap," or whether increasing spending on a program geared toward anti-smoking will then help increase saving lives, as opposed to merely increasing awareness of smoking health-hazards. Our correct answer will be the answer choice that most closely parallels the reasoning of the passage, and, in so doing, wrongly assumes a positive correlation between two things that do not necessarily have a relationship, i.e. more spending on antismoking programs and higher number of saved lives.

(A) while incorrect is a very popular answer choice amongst students. Let's take a closer look at what makes (A) wrong. This answer choice proposes shifting funding from enforcing the speed limit on freeways to enforcing the speed limit on tollways, where fewer people die in auto accidents. Unlike the stimulus, enforcing the speed limit, will actually have an impact on deaths caused by automobile accidents but what makes (A) even more problematic is that we are shifting the funds from the more dangerous freeway to the less dangerous tollway and concluding that this will save lives. Notice, however, that in the stimulus, we were shifting funds from the less dangerous, i.e. highway accidents, to the more dangerous, i.e. cigarette smoking.

(B) is CORRECT because just as in the argument, the answer choice assumes the existence of a positive correlation between practicing more hours on the saxophone and booking more gigs to play saxophone without offering any evidence for it. What if playing the guitar is harder, and therefore, requires more practice? What if there are merely less guitar gigs available? Thus, just as in the argument, there is a false assumption of a positive correlation between two things that do not necessarily have to have a relationship, i.e. more time practicing the saxophone and more saxophone gigs booked.

(C) is incorrect because it does not parallel the flawed reasoning in the passage. Even though you'll save gas if you drive less on residential streets, since you get fewer miles per gallon on them, you still might not necessarily save gas if you drive more on highways, as automobiles burn more gas per minute on highways. We are looking for a positive correlation between two things that are not necessarily related.

(D) is incorrect because it does not parallel the flawed reasoning in the passage. Just because the team's lap times for the breaststroke are much better than its timing for the backstroke, does not mean that they are winning in the breaststroke more than they are winning in the backstroke. The passage tells us which program has more deaths, in that way we have a little bit of information on which could possibly save more lives. However, in this answer choice we do not know which one has more wins or losses. We have no relative evidence supporting the jump from spending more time practicing to winning more. Thus, it does not follow the same reasoning as the argument.

(E) is incorrect because it does not parallel the flawed reasoning in the passage. The passage ultimately recommends increasing the option that would save the most lives. This answer choice opts to increase the option where the banks have a lower profit margin based on the idea that borrowers will borrow more money and, as such, the bank would be more profitable (i.e. volume sales). However, we have no idea how much money the bank can lend at lower rates or how much money the bank can lend at the higher rates. As such, this argument is flawed, but clearly not the flaw that we encountered in the stimulus.

Hope that was helpful! Let me know if you have any other questions.

mjt222 April 9, 2020

I don't see how the explanation for why B is correct is any different from the explanation for why D is incorrect. Aren't they both saying that the answer choice reasoning is flawed because it assumes a correlation between two things (practicing --> booking bigs & practicing --> winning)?

alliehall21 May 26, 2020

I agree ^ B and Ds explanations are very similar