Logical Reasoning

PT127 · S3 · Q10 Concert promoter: Some critics claim

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Concert promoter: Some critics claim that our concert series lacks popular appeal.

Conclusion

Critics are wrong; our concert series does have popular appeal

Evidence

Income from T-shirts and other memorabilia at our concerts is at least as much as that type of income for comparable concert series.

Evaluation

Given that the memorabilia income at this concert series is at least as much as the memorabilia income for similar concert series, how would we argue that this concert series does not have popular appeal? - We could say those other concert series aren't that popular either - We could say that you don't measure popular appeal by memorabilia sales - We could come up with some weird alternate explanation for why memorabilia sales are as high (maybe in our case it's not indicative of tons of people buying stuff, but rather a few people buying tons of stuff or really expensive stuff)

Goal

Tough to say where this is going. There are missing link assumptions that could be called out, and there are questions surrounding how fair a comparison this is. Look for stuff calling out a missing linking idea or raising an objection that would make the comparison feel like an apples and oranges one.

10.

The concert promoter's argument is flawed in that it

  1. attacks the critics on the

    Bad Premise Match

    Nothing in the evidence is an emotional consideration. The evidence is a quantitative comparison of merchandise revenue.

    0% picked this

  2. takes for granted that income

    Too Strong

    Too Strong: "sole indicator" Only Thing Mentioned vs. Only Thing Does the author need to assume that income from merchandise sales are a possible / reliable indicator of popular appeal? Definitely. Does she need to assume that it's the only indicator of popular appeal? Definitely not. The fact that she is attempting to point to memorabilia sales as an indicator of popular appeal doesn't mean she thinks it's the only metric for determining popular appeal. Assumption trap answers love to bait people into thinking that "the only thing the author mentioned is therefore the only thing".

    32% picked this

  3. Correct

    takes for granted that the

    Why this is right

    Is the author assuming the comparable series have popular appeal? Yes, definitely. She is saying, "We have popular appeal. Look: our memorabilia sales are just as high as their memorabilia sales!" She's using these other comparable series as a benchmark for popular appeal. If they didn't have popular appeal, then it wouldn't be impressive that her concert series has just as much revenue from memorabilia sales. When author's are making comparisons, they're frequently assuming that they are relevantly similar on all the intended levels. Our author is trying to argue that, "My series has equivalent memorabilia revenue to that of these other series. And since those other series have popular appeal, this shows that my series has popular appeal."

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

    60% picked this

  4. draws a conclusion about the

    Bad Premise Match

    Is the conclusion about the popularity of a series? Yes. Is the evidence a comparison to other, dissimilar events? No. Obviously these other comparable concert series are not identical; there will be dissimilarities. But calling them dissimilar overall contradicts the stated premise that they are comparable.

    6% picked this

  5. fails to adequately distinguish the

    Not Part vs. Whole

    The distinction between the whole series and individual concerts is similar to a Whole vs. Part flaw, but this argument was not arguing, "Since the concert series overall was popular, each individual concert in the series must have been popular."

    1% picked this

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