Logical Reasoning

PT119 · S3 · Q21 Baumgartner’s comparison of the environmental

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Baumgartner’s comparison of the environmental hazards of gasoline-powered cars with those of electric cars is misleading.

Conclusion (misleading = opinion)

Baumgartner's comparison of the environmental impact of regular vs. electric cars is misleading.

Evidence

He only looks at how each type of car's production impacts the environment. But we need to consider the environmental impact of the cars' use and eventual recycling/disposal. Electric cars consume 1/3 as many resources and produce 1/20 as much pollution as regular cars do.

Evaluate

Whenever we're doing Main Conclusion or Role, we actively listen for First Sentence Conclusions and Pivot/Rebuttals, because about 85% of the arguments on Main Conclusion and Role have one of those two types of conclusions.

Is this first sentence an opinion (and therefore, potentially, the conclusion?)

Yes. It's both a rebuttal and a first sentence conclusion. (a double rainbow, [sniff] so beautiful .... )

The first sentence is saying, "Baumgartner, your comparison is misleading." Does the rest of the paragraph go on to support that claim? Is it showing us how Baumgartner's comparison is misleading?

Yes. The author complains that

Then he suggests that electric cars might have better environmental impact, when it comes to use and recycling, because they consumer fewer resources and produce less pollution.

Goal

The first sentence is the conclusion, so we just want an answer with an equivalent meaning.

21.

Which one of the following most accurately expresses the conclusion of the argument?

  1. Correct

    Baumgartner makes a deceptive comparison

    Why this is right

    This matches the meaning of the first sentence, which was our conclusion. Is saying "X is misleading" the same as "X is deceptive"? Yes, mostly. The word deceptive seems to imply an intent to mislead, whereas misleading is neutral. Someone could write a headline that we might say is accidentally misleading. The writer didn't realize the headline was misleading. But it sounds weird to say that such a headline is accidentally deceptive. But even if there is some nuance between 'misleading' and 'deceptive', they are at least cousins, and this answer is the closest available match to the meaning of the first sentence.

    Skill tested: Main Conclusion · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    77% picked this

  2. The use of a typical

    Unrelated to Goal / Premise Last-Claim Trap

    This doesn't look anything like the first sentence, so we don't really need to read it. If we did, we would see it's basically re-stating a fact from the final sentence. Facts are never conclusions. We want to find an opinion that is supported by facts (or by other opinions). Main Conclusion questions usually have a trap answer that sounds like the last claim, because students are most accustomed to seeing conclusions at the end of the paragraph (they do usually show up at the end, throughout LR, except for Main Conclusion and Role!)

    2% picked this

  3. Baumgartner uses inaccurate data in

    Inaccurate vs. Incomplete

    This is temptingly similar to the first sentence, but (A) is closer in meaning. ORIG: B's comparison is misleading. (A): B's comparison is deceptive. (C) B's comparison is based on inaccurate data. Our author wasn't complaining that Baumgartner's data was inaccurate, she was mad that it was incomplete. She was complaining that he only considered the environmental impact of each type's production, when a full assessment required consideration of other environmental impacts, like its use and end-of-life disposal.

    12% picked this

  4. The total life cycle of

    Unrelated to Goal / Premise

    This doesn't look anything like the first sentence, so we don't really need to read it. If we did, we would see it's stating a premise in the 2nd sentence. We can tell that this isn't any sort of conclusion, because there's no support for it. We can't point to any claims in the paragraph that are trying to persuade us to believe that the TOTAL life cycle is what matters. No one needed to persuade us of that because it seems self-justifying that the total of all X and Y's effects are needed to compare the relative impact of X and Y.

    8% picked this

  5. The production of gasoline-powered cars

    Unstated

    This doesn't look anything like the first sentence, so we don't really need to read it. If we did, we would see that it's saying something never said in the paragraph, so by definition it's not going to be the conclusion. The passage never told us whether the production of gas cars was better/worse than that of electric cars.

    2% picked this

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