Logical Reasoning

PT131 · S2 · Q23 This year a flood devastated

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This year a flood devastated a small river town.

Background Facts

A few years ago - there was a highly publicized earthquake elsewhere, and Hollyville sent a small amount of aid to victims.

Last year - there was a deadly tornado in Hollyville, and a large amount of aid was sent to Hollyville.

This year - there was a terrible flood elsewhere, and Hollyville sent a large amount of aid to victims.

Evaluation

From the timeline, it looks like Hollyville became more generous about giving out aid once they had gone through their own disaster and been the recipient of aid. It's also possible that Hollyville gave more aid to the flood victims because those victims, like Hollyville citizens, live in a river town. But in order to think that Hollyville didn't give as much to earthquake victims because citizens couldn't relate as well to that tragedy, we'd have to assume that Hollyville doesn't get earthquakes, which we don't know.

Goal

Look for a safely worded answer that sounds like,

23.

The situation described above most closely conforms to which one of the following generalizations?

  1. People are more likely to

    Out of Scope Comparison

    Hollyville gave more aid to the flood victims than to the quake victims, but we can't relate that comparison to this answer choice's distinction of "people they know vs. strangers".

    2% picked this

  2. Those who have received aid

    Out of Scope: "government relief programs"

    This answer starts off promisingly, but we would want to hear "Those who have received aid are more likely to give aid", not more likely to support govt. aid relief.

    1% picked this

  3. The amount of aid that

    Too Strong: "unrelated"

    We only know about 1 of the 3 events, in terms of whether or not it was publicized, so there's no way to draw any inferences about whether there's some connection between amount of aid given and publicity. For the one event we know about, there was high publicity but low aid. So it's possible that publicity and aid are inversely related: "the more a tragedy is publicized, the less likely people are to give aid" (perhaps because they assume there are already so many other people hearing about the tragedy and donating)

    7% picked this

  4. Correct

    Once a disaster has struck

    Why this is right

    This reinforces the timeline. Hollyville went from giving little aid (quake) to giving more aid (flood), and what transpired in between was that Hollyville went through its own thing (tornado) and received aid from others.

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

    68% picked this

  5. People are more likely to

    Unsupported Comparison

    The three hardships we hear about are all different: quake, tornado, flood. Hollyville went through a tornado, so according to this answer choice, they would be more likely to give aid to other people who have been through a tornado. But the facts we're dealing with is that they gave less aid to quake victims and more aid to flood victims, and there's no common sense way to argue that a flood is more similar of a hardship to a tornado than a quake is.

    22% picked this

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