Branson: Most of the air pollution

Answer choices

1. A

   Bad Conclusion Match6% picked this

   Similarly, we could conclude that Monique spends most of her salary on housing. After all, people are bound to spend more on housing if

   The original conclusion was a conditional that had an outcome that sounds like it's reducing a problem. This conclusion is just a factual statement about where Monique spends most of her salary. It would be a good move to bail on this, simply from the bad conclusion, and only return to read the rest if no other answer pans out.

   6%
2. B

   Bad Evidence Match7% picked this

   Similarly, we could conclude that Karen's family would have more living space if they moved from an apartment to a single-family home. After all,

   The conclusion could potentially match: If they move from an apartment to a single-family home, they will have more living space. Does the premise make it seem like making this move would just re-allocate the "not having enough space" problem so that now there's less of it in the apartment and more of it in the single family home? No, partly because the family wouldn't own both homes. It's not like one of their accounts goes down while another goes up. More importantly, it's because single family homes actually have more space! Going from an apartment to a single-family home usually means you do have more space than before, so it might be a genuine solution to the problem, as opposed to the flawed solution that just re-allocates the problem into a different place.

   7%
3. C

   Bad Conclusion Match4% picked this

   Similarly, we could conclude that most of Ward's farm is planted with corn. After all, in Ward's county most of the fields that used

   The original conclusion was a conditional that had an outcome that sounds like it's reducing a problem. This conclusion is just a factual statement about what most of Ward's farm consists of. It would be a good move to bail on this, simply from the bad conclusion, and only return to read the rest if no other answer pans out.

   4%
4. D

   Correct71% picked this

   Similarly, we could conclude that Javier could consume fewer calories by eating for breakfast, lunch, and dinner only a portion of what he now

   Why this is right

   The conclusion could potentially match: If he moved a portion of his breakfast, lunch, and dinner into snacks, he would consume fewer calories. Does the premise make it seem like making this move would just re-allocate the problem rather than solve it? Yes! If you save half your breakfast, half your lunch, and half your dinner and then eat those portions as snacks, then you haven't reduced total calories at all. You've just re-allocated where those calories are found. In the original argument, we didn't reduce air pollution by moving some people from big cities to smaller cities ("Snack" cities, if you will). We just re-allocated that overall amount of pollution into different areas. This answer also contains a similar premise to "Most air pollution comes from largest cities", because it has "Most calories come from breakfast / lunch / dinner".

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

   71%
5. E

   Bad Evidence Match Topic Trap11% picked this

   Similarly, we could conclude that most of this city's air pollution would be eliminated if this city built a public transportation system. After all,

   The conclusion could potentially match: If we built a public transportation system, we could reduce the problem of air pollution. Air pollution? Wasn't that the topic of the original argument? Trap Alert! Trap Alert! Does the premise suggest that by building a public transportation system we would just be re-allocating a problem from one place to another? No, the evidence sounds like the solution would actually work. Switching cars for public transportation should actually cut down on pollution.

   11%