Logical Reasoning

PT126 · S1 · Q23 A professor of business

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A professor of business placed a case-study assignment for her class on her university's computer network.

Evidence

A professor of business placed a case-study assignment for her class on her university’s computer network.

She later found out that instead of reading the assignment on the computer screen, 50 out of the 70 students printed it out on paper.

Conclusion

Thus, it is not the case that books delivered via computer will make printed books obsolete.

Evaluate

The conclusion generalizes from the anecdotal evidence observed by the professor. To support this argument it would be helpful to know that what is true of the students in the professor’s class is true of people more generally.

23.

Which one of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument?

  1. Several colleagues of the professor

    Too Weak

    The data point this offers is that "several students" have behaved similarly. Several means 3 or 4. If only 3 or 4 of the 70 students had printed out the assignment, would that have been good evidence that "books via computer won't threaten printed books"? No, that would sound like 66 out of 70 people preferred the computer version. Also, this answer isn't addressing our bigger concern, which is whether we can generalize from whether students want assignments on paper vs. on computer to whether adults will want books on paper vs. computer. It seems like there could be an important difference that students want to mark up the pages of what they're reading, whereas that's probably a less common urge for people reading books.

    18% picked this

  2. Correct

    Studies consistently show that most

    Why this is right

    This provides the same behavior as was observed by the professor but for computer users more generally.

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

    73% picked this

  3. Some people get impaired vision

    Too Weak

    This is true for some people, which could be a small proportion of computer users more generally.

    4% picked this

  4. Scanning technology is very poor,

    Too Weak

    This is not strong enough to undermine the use of books delivered via computer since editors could carefully read the scanned versions.

    4% picked this

  5. Books on cassette tape have

    Irrelevant Comparison

    This does not address books delivered via computer.

    1% picked this

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