Logical Reasoning

PT121 · S4 · Q23 Company president: Our consultants report

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Company president: Our consultants report that, in general, the most efficient managers have excellent time management skills.

Conclusion

To improve productivity, we should make available to our middle-level managers a seminar in time management.

Evidence

According to our consultants, the most efficient managers generally have excellent time management skills.

Evaluate

Since we have to weaken this four times over, we might allow our imagination to think of different attack points:

- do we trust these consultants? Maybe their advice applies in general, but not to our company - are our middle-managers currently struggling at all with time management? Who says, they're not already excellent? - would this Plan work? (would the middle managers actually attend the seminar, change their behavior, and improve their time management?) - would this Plan backfire? (would attending the seminar itself be an ironic instance of poor time management?)

Goal

Get rid of four answers that weaken, either by making it seem like the Problem of time-management doesn't apply to our company or to our middle-managers, or by making it seem like the Solution of making available a seminar wouldn't be likely to help the situation.

23.

Each of the following, if true, would weaken the support for the company president's recommendation EXCEPT:

  1. The consultants use the same

    Weakens

    This is a weird objection, but it's basically saying that the consultants are handing us a garbage statistic. They're making it seem like there's a correlation between time-management and efficiency (leading us to think, "if we could only get our middle managers to manage time better, they would be more efficient). But if the metric for efficiency is the same as the one for time-management, then the consultants are basically saying "The people who are the most X are the most X", which is a hollow circular idea.

    41% picked this

  2. Successful time management is more

    Weakens

    This suggests that the Solution of the time management seminar is unlikely to be an effective one, since the middle managers don't really need to learn a technique, they just need to care more about time management.

    3% picked this

  3. Most managers at other companies

    Weakens

    This makes it seem like the Solution is unlikely to be effective since there are many data points of people who tried this Solution and did not seem to make meaningful progress on the Problem.

    2% picked this

  4. Correct

    Most managers who are already

    Why this is right

    This has no real impact. Assuming our middle managers are not already efficient, this doesn't apply to them. We think that our middle managers, who aren't yet efficient / good at time management, still have room to grow when it comes to productivity. Notice that wrong answers on EXCEPT questions are usually still very clever about filling it with familiar sounding keywords. All the words in this answer choice are in the paragraph, but the meaning is not relevant to our situation.

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

    46% picked this

  5. Most managers who are efficient

    Weakens

    This casts some doubt on the seminar as a likely Solution, by suggesting that the road to efficiency for most managers did not include taking a time management seminar. It's not a strong weakener, but it's showing many examples of "Effect (efficiency) present, but Cause (time management) absent".

    7% picked this

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