Logical Reasoning

PT139 · S1 · Q22 Company president: Most of our best

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Company president: Most of our best sales representatives came to the job with a degree in engineering but little or no sales experience.

Conclusion

When we hire sales reps, we should favor applicants who have engineering degrees but little sales experience over applicants with lots of sales experience but no engineering degree.

Evidence

Most of our best sales reps came to the job with engineering degrees but little sales experience.

Evaluate

The author is taking a trait possessed by most of her best sales reps and assuming that this trait is causally important to their superlative performance at this job. She could have just as easily argued, .

This is a Correlation → Causality type move.

Curious Fact: Why is it that most of our best sales reps had engineering backgrounds, but no sales experience? Author's Story: Apparently this type of background makes you a great salesperson at this company.

We can weaken this by appealing to one of two pressure points: 1. what is some OTHER WAY to explain why most of the best sales reps have this engineering + no sales background? 2. how could we make the AUTHOR's WAY seem less plausible, i.e. how can we make it seem like this engineering / no sales background is not one of the main reasons for their success as sales reps?

Goal

Whenever we're weakening a Causal interpretation, we either want an Alternate Explanation for the curious fact or to hurt the Author's Explanation.

22.

Which one of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the company president's argument?

  1. Some of the company's sales

    No Impact

    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% picked this

  2. Correct

    Most of the people hired

    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.

    46% picked this

  3. Most of the customers that

    Strengthens, if Anything

    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% picked this

  4. Most of the people who

    Out of Scope: % of applicants

    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.

    11% picked this

  5. Some of the people who

    Too Weak

    "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.

    23% picked this

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