Company president: Most of our best

Answer choices

1. A

   No Impact17% picked this

   Some of the company's sales representatives completed a degree in engineering while working

   First of all, "some" is so weak that it is almost always wrong for Strengthen, Weaken, and Paradox questions (which answer, if true, most ____ ). Secondly, the evidence is about these super awesome sales reps who came to the job with a degree in engineering. The fact that other employees got a degree in engineering while working for the company doesn't tell us anything. Are those people also good sales reps? Did their abilities as sales reps get better after they'd completed their engineering education? Worse / same?

   17%
2. B

   Correct45% picked this

   Most of the people hired by the company as sales representatives have had a degree in engineering

   Why this is right

   This provides an Alternate Explanation for the curious fact. Why is it that most of our best sales reps have an engineering / no sales background? It's not because that type of background makes them more likely to succeed; it's just because most of the employees have that background. If most people are right handed, then most criminals should be right handed. That doesn't mean that being right handed makes you more likely to be criminal. It's just the idea that if we don't think two things are related, then their proportion in the general population should match their proportion in the specific population. If 90% of people are right handed, and if we don't think that there is any causal connection between being right vs. left handed and being a criminal, then we would expect 90% of criminals to be right handed. When things are disproportional, then we know there is some weird causal factor at play. When people of color are only 40% of drug users but 65% of people arrested for drug use, then we start to think, "is race/ethnicity playing some causal role in whether or not you get arrested for drug use?" So if 70% (i.e. "most") of the employees at this company were born in Pennsylvania, then you'd expect 70% of the best sales reps to be born in PA. If 70% of the employees have an engineering + no sales background, then you'd expect 70% of the best sales rep to have that background. Since we can explain the predominance of this background among the best sales reps as a simple fact of the underlying population of employees, we have less reason to believe the author's thinking, that this background is a secret causal-difference maker that makes someone a better sales rep (which she implicitly believes, if she thinks in future hiring we should be prioritizing this type of background).

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

   45%
3. C

   Strengthens, if Anything4% picked this

   Most of the customers that the company's sales representatives work with have a

   For the most part, the background of the customers is completely out of scope. But, in sales, relating to your customers can be a common sense reason for being a more effective salesperson. So if most of the customers have engineering degrees, that actually helps boost the plausibility of the author's story, that this engineering background is actually helping the sales reps to do better, because we could say it's allowing them to better relate to the company's customers.

   4%
4. D

   Out of Scope: % of applicants12% picked this

   Most of the people who apply for a sales representative position with the company do not have

   The percent of applicants who have one background vs. another doesn't really help us here. We might think that this answer weakens by reducing the feasibility of the conclusion. i.e. Good luck hiring more sales reps with engineering backgrounds .... most of your applicants don't have them. However, that's a pretty weak objection. A company might get 50 or more applications for a job opening. Even if only 2 out those 50 have engineering backgrounds, the author's conclusion that we should favor those applicants is still viable.

   12%
5. E

   Too Weak22% picked this

   Some of the people who the company has hired as sales representatives and who were subsequently not very good at the job did

   "Some" is so weak that it is almost always wrong for Strengthen, Weaken, and Paradox questions (which answer, if true, most ____ ). Some means "at least one", so there's usually not much impact by saying there's at least one data point with certain qualities. This just says "at least one sales rep who lacked sales experience wasn't very good at the job". This barely relates, since the demographic profile the author wants to favor is "engineering degree + little sales". Just saying "little sales experience" doesn't mean we're talking about the type of applicant the author wants to hire. However, even if this answer said "some sales reps who had engineering degrees but not sales experience were not very good" would still not weaken much at all. When our premise is a "most" or a "more likely to" or "on average", then the evidence happily tolerates exceptions. Saying that MOST of the best sales reps have engineering degree + no sales is not guaranteeing that anyone with that background will be great, so saying "there's at least one person with that background who's not great" doesn't go against anything the author is saying or thinking.

   22%