Of 2,500 people who survived a first heart attack, those who did not smoke had their first heart attack at a median a...

Naz December 19, 2013

The conclusion of the argument is: "it can be concluded that nonsmokers tend to have a first heart attack eleven years later than do people who smoke two packs of cigarettes a day." Why? Because "of 2,500 people who survived a first heart attack, those who did not smoke had their first heart attack at a median age of 62. However, of those 2,500, people who smoked two packs of cigarettes a day had their first heart attack at a median age of 51."

The data is from a sample of nonsmokers who "survived a first heart attack," and smokers who smoked two packs of cigarettes a day "who survived a first heart attack." However, our conclusion is about ALL nonsmokers and ALL smokers who smoke two packs of cigarettes a day. Our evidence is not about ALL nonsmokers and smokers, therefore we cannot draw a conclusion about them.

Answer choice (E) is correct because it clearly points this out. "The conclusion is incorrectly drawn from the information given because this information does not include data on people who did not survive a first heart attack." If it had included data from those who did not survive, as well, then it would have provided us with information on ALL, so we could have made a conclusion about ALL.

Hope that helped! Please let us know if you have any more questions.

neel116 August 9, 2018

i am still a little confused because the passage state nothing about surviving a heart attack and it doesn't seem to correlate with the conclusion

DDL April 17, 2019

I am confused as well.

The domain for this problem has been set to "first heart attack." Whether a person survives that first heart attack, doesn't change when the first heart attack occurred. If one of the 2500 people had their first heart attack at fifty-one (51) or sixty-two (62), even if they passed away, their first heart attack still occurred at fifty-one (51)or sixty-two (62). Even though the conclusion pertains to all smokers, the only affect (E) would have is if the arguments conclusion was pertaining to survival of first heart attacks or discussing multiple heart attacks. First, can only happen once.

If possible could you explain how, in this question, survival of the first heart attack affects statistics as to the average of when someone, smoker or nonsmoker, has their first heart attack?

Jacob-R April 18, 2019

Hi @neel116

The first sentence in the passage states that of 2,500 people who SURVIVED a first heart attack . . . etc. We therefore explicitly have a data set that is about people who did survive!

Thus, the conclusion that non smokers “tend to have a first heart attack 11 years later” is based only on people who survived — even though we don’t know what the numbers would be for smokers/non smokers who didn’t survive the first heart attack. That is why answer E is correct.

I hope that helps! Please let us know if you have further questions.

husky07 September 30, 2020

can you do a video about this? :(

Victoria October 2, 2020

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