Logical Reasoning

PT112 · S1 · Q24 Columnist: George Orwell’s book 1984

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Columnist: George Orwell’s book 1984 has exercised much influence on a great number of this newspaper’s readers.

Conclusion

1984 has exercised much influence on a great number of this newspaper's readers.

Evidence

One thousand readers were surveyed about the one book that had most influenced their lives, and 1984 was the second most chosen book.

Evaluate

This argument relies on a survey/sample, so we could ask ourselves Sampling concerns, such as .... - is the sample size big enough? yes, 1000 is plenty big for a sample - is the sample representative? probably, since the conclusion is only claiming something about "the newspaper's readers". In order for this sample to be unrepresentative, we'd have to think that 1000 surveyed readers are not similar to the other readers of the same newspaper. That would be a weird concern for us to introduce. LSAT doesn't seem to be offering us a reason to doubt the normalcy of the survey respondents.

Okay, so it doesn't seem like a Sampling problem. Let's try to argue Anti-Conclusion:

given that ... 1984 was the book chosen 2nd most often in a survey about "the book that's most influenced your life",

how can we still argue that ... 1984 has not exercised much influence on a great number of this paper's readers?

There's no way to argue there's a language shift between the survey and the conclusion, since both of them are talking about "having the most influence / exercising much influence".

So we could only take issue with

Say I surveyed 50 people the same question, and this is how the voting broke down. 1. The Bible (45 votes) 2. 1984 (3 votes) 3. Art of the Deal (1 vote) 4. Everybody Poops (1 vote)

We can see that 1984 could be ranked 2nd, even though it wouldn't be fair to say that "a great number of people" voted for it.

Goal

Look for an answer addressing the idea that you could be ranked #2 without representing a 'great number of readers', or any other answer that we could answer in a way that would Weaken the argument.

24.

The answer to which one of the following questions would most help in evaluating the columnist's argument?

How many books had each
No Impact
There's no version of this answer that weakens the argument. Whether someone has read 1 book or 1,000 books, if they say that 1984 is the one that had the most influence on their lives, they still count as a data point in the author's tally of "a great number of readers".
13% picked this
Correct
How many people chose books
Why this is right
Here, we can think of potential answers that weaken the argument. If we say that 990 people chose books other than 1984, then only 10 people chose 1984, and that would make it hard for the author to say that a great number of readers have been influenced by this book. 10 out of 1000? That's 1% of the readers. If you're thinking, "Yeah, but if 1984 only got 10 votes, then it wouldn't be the 2nd most frequently chosen book." It still could be. It's possible that almost everyone chose the Bible. 1. Bible (988 votes) 2. 1984 (10 votes) 3. Atlas Shrugged (1 vote) 4. If it Happened (1 vote) It's also possible that like 500 different books each only got 1 vote, 100 or so got 2 votes, and 1984 ranks ahead of all of them with 10 votes.
Skill tested: Evaluate · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
50% picked this
How many people read the
No Impact
Whether it's 1000 people (the minimum, given the survey) or 1 million people, it would have no effect on the conclusion, since the author is assuming this sample of 1000 readers is roughly representative of the paper's overall reader base. This sample could be untrustworthy, but this answer choice isn't addressing that possibility. That would sound more like, "Are the people who answer a survey similar to the typical reader?"
16% picked this
How many books by George
No Impact
The author isn't saying that George Orwell has had a big influence on the paper's readers, just Orwell's 1984. Whether that's the only book Orwell wrote or the 500th book wouldn't make any difference to the argument, since 1984 is the book ranked 2nd.
2% picked this
How many of those surveyed
Weaker than Correct Answer
You could definitely make the argument sound a little wacky if you said that "zero of the people surveyed have actually read the books they chose". However, that would only weaken the argument if we thought that, "you need to read a book in order for the book to have much influence on you." We all know (or are) people whose lives have been influenced a lot by the Bible, and there's a good chance they (or we) have not actually read the Bible. Similarly, most of us are familiar with the gist of what 1984 is about and we're influenced enough by it to say intelligent-sounding stuff on Twitter like, "Jeez ... looks like Orwell was right about Big Brother watching our every move", even though we've never actually read 1984. So answering "0 people have actually read the book" would do less weakening to the author's claim that "a great number of readers have been influenced by this book" than would saying "995 out of 1000 people voted for a book other than 1984."
18% picked this

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