LR Question 24 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: In university towns, police issue far more parking…
QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Parallel Reasoning
CONCLUSION: Most parking citations are issued to students.
REASONING: In university towns, more parking citations are issued during the school year.
ANALYSIS: This is a terrible argument. It doesn’t tell us how many extra citations are earned by students. It could be a very small number. Most students don’t have cars.
E.g. Suppose typical parking citations are 200 per month and they are 220 per month when the students are there. That hardly supports the idea that “most” citations go to students.
The structure is the following: more of event Y happens when X is present. So X must account for most cases of event Y.
___________
- This is close but not quite the same. It doesn’t say sales go up when more children are present. It says sales go up when there is a higher ratio of children. Very similar structure, but slightly different. E is better. This answer also incorrectly switches from snacks in general to popcorn.
- This is a bad argument, but only because some plants are naturally more green than others. It doesn’t compare two situations or claim that one plant gets most of the sunlight.
- This isn’t a good argument, but only because studying is not enough to make someone “studious.” Studious means someone who studies quite a lot, whereas most students may just study a bit. This is a different error from the stimulus: if studying meant studious then this would be a good argument.
- This is a bad argument. It’s assuming that variety equals quantity. But this doesn’t make an error with most.
- CORRECT. Here we go. When X (other people’s children) are present then more of Y (snacks being given out.) happens. That does not mean that most snacks go to other people’s children. One’s own children probably eat most of the snacks, because they are at home most often.
More Resources for Flawed Parallel Reasoning Questions
- Conditional Reasoning Article: Learn about conditional statements.
- LR Diagrams Guide: Learn how to draw LR diagrams.
- Flaw drills: Practice identifying flaws.
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Flawed Parallel Reasoning questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers flawed parallel reasoning questions.
Hi Graeme,
the actual text of the question reads: “In university towns, police issue FAR more parking citations…etc”. Doesn’t the inclusion of “far more tickets” seriously undermine your analysis? Based on this, the reasoning in the premise just doesn’t seem flawed to me.
What do you think?
Not really. I should have picked a bigger number, such as 280. But the point remains the same: there could be more parking citations given to people OTHER THAN students during the school year. There’s no reason the increase must be students. University towns are just more active in the school year.
That said, I think I could have written a better analysis on this one. The key point is that the fact of an increase doesn’t show that an increase was caused by a certain group – even if that group is more present.
Dear Graeme,
For answer choice A, it says “most of the SNACKS . . . because POPCORN sales increase . . .” Emphasis added. So, there is a slight scope shift here, from snacks in general to popcorn. Another reason to toss this attractiveish answer choice.
Good point, that’s an excellent additional reason to eliminate that answer. Often there are multiple flaws. This was a major one though, so I updated the explanation.