Logical Reasoning

PT142 · S4 · Q11 A university professor researching

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A university professor researching sleep disorders occasionally taught class after spending whole nights working in a laboratory.

Statements

Correlation (when X happened, Y happened) The professor reports that when she pulled an all-nighter, she found it harder to lecture for a number of reasons, (tired, no enthusiasm, poor focus).

Pivot (interestingly) Her students, when asked, were generally not able to guess which lectures were the ones when she was feeling so crappy.

Evaluate

When we get a surprising idea as our final fact (usually introduced with "But, Yet However"), the correct answer usually Reconciles the Pivot idea with what came before it, but it does so in very safe, measured language.

EXAMPLE: Jennifer always assumed Tom was from New York, because she thought of him as a big Yankees fan. However, Tom isn't a Yankees fan. In fact, Tom doesn't even like baseball.

The temptation is to go overconfidently in any direction: - Tom isn't actually from New York - Jennifer has Tom confused with some other person - Tom doesn't like any sports - all New Yorkers like baseball

The supportable (i.e. provable / defendable) truth is something weak and watered down like, (A) Not all reasons people have for believing Tom is from New York are legitimate ones.

Decoded, that just means, . That would Reconcile the Pivot idea (Tom isn't a Yankees fan) with what came before the pivot (Jennifer thought Tom was a Yankees fan and thus thought Tom was from New York).

Goal

Without going too far, what can we derive from the fact that the teacher felt like lecturing was harder than normal. She probably perceived that she was doing a worse-than-average job, given her perception that she was less good-humored and less focused with her speaking.

The students clearly didn't perceive a marked difference. That could be because she was hiding it well. That could be because they aren't paying enough attention to her, or are paying too much attention to themselves or their phones.

It's less safe to speculate on why this mismatch occurred. It's safer to just find an answer that reiterates that there was a mismatch that occurred. But some correct answers are speculative in a Solve the Causal Mystery kind of way, if everything else is less supportable.

11.

Which one of the following statements is most strongly supported by the information above?

  1. Correct

    The subjective effects of occasional

    Why this is right

    This speculates a reason for the mismatch between the professor's self-perception of her inferior teaching and her students' oblivion as to any big difference in her performance as a lecturer. Ultimately, this goes with the hypothesis that "she felt like she was bombing, but in reality she was holding it together well". Why are we justified in supporting this hypothesis over the converse, "in reality she was bombing, but the students didn't notice it for some reason"? Well, we have to play the common sense card. If there's 100 students in a lecture hall, and 90+ of them think the lecturer is acting normally, while there's 1 sleep-deprived professor who thinks that she, the lecturer, is acting abnormally, there's a better chance that the 90+ students have the more accurate perception.

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

    80% picked this

  2. No one can assess the

    Too Strong: no one can

    This answer would be dangerous, even if it were more softly worded like, "A sleep-deprived person can better assess the overall effects of sleep deprivation on them than can an audience of people listening to a lecture." After all, in the Battle of Different Perceptions of whether or not the professor was actually bombing during these sleepy lectures, this answer arbitrarily awards the "correct" perception to the professor. The professor was better in assessing the effects of sleep deprivation than her students were. In the correct answer, we validate both perceptions as correct. The inner and the outer are different, (A) says, so it's possible the professor was right that internally things were way off and that the students were right that externally things were pretty normal. That would be enough to get rid of this answer, but the easiest way to get rid of it is the hyperbolic phrasing of "nobody can do X better than Y".

    15% picked this

  3. Sleep deprivation has less effect

    Out of Scope Comparison

    This passage only involves data on the effect of sleep deprivation on one professor. We can't really assume we know anything about other professors' experience with sleep deprivation, nor can we leap to a broad comparison with how people of other professions experience sleep deprivation.

    0% picked this

  4. Occasional sleep deprivation is not

    Out of Scope Comparison

    This passage only involves data on occasional sleep deprivation from one professor. We can't really assume we know anything about other people's experiences with occasional sleep deprivation, nor can we leap to a broad comparison between occasional vs. extended sleep deprivation.

    3% picked this

  5. University students in a lecture

    Opposite, if anything

    We don't know whether the "correct" perception of the professor's performance was "She's struggling" vs. "She's normal", so we have no way to say whether the lecture audience was generally correct or incorrect in their observation of their professor. In the event that she was really struggling and they were too obtuse to notice, that would suggest the opposite of what this answer is saying.

    2% picked this

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