Employee: My boss says that my

Answer choices

1. A

   Not Assumed / Too Strong: generally1% picked this

   takes for granted that the boss's assessments of employee presentations are

   Since this answer begins with takes for granted / presumes that X, we can just ask ourselves whether the argument needed to assume X. Is this author clearly assuming that "the boss's assessments are usually incorrect (more than 50% of the time)?" No, the author is only saying that the boss's assessment, in this case, is incorrect.

   1%
2. B

   Correct86% picked this

   fails to distinguish between more of something and too much

   Why this is right

   Answers that are structured like confuses X with Y mistakes X for Y fails to distinguish X from Y are saying that the author made an illicit shift from talking about X to talking about Y. The author is responding to the idea that the presentation should have had more detail. And her premise is about the danger of having too much detail. Well, who said that having "more detail" is the same as having "too much" detail? It's possible that she could have more detail without having too much. But in her argument, she is acting like more detail would automatically have pushed her into the realm of too much detail, which would have caused people's attention to wander.

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

   86%
3. C

   Not an Objection9% picked this

   fails to consider that an audience's attention might wander for reasons other than being presented

   Since this answer begins with fails to consider / overlooks the possibility that X, we can just ask ourselves whether X would weaken the argument. Would it be an objection if we said, "Hey, author -- presenting people with too much detail isn't the only thing that can cause their attention to wander"? No. The author would correctly say, "Cool. I never said that it was the only thing that can cause attention to wander. I was just saying that if I had added more detail then it would have caused attention to wander, which would have been bad."

   9%
4. D

   Not Sampling1% picked this

   infers a generalization based only on a

   Since this is structured infers X based only on Y we would want to make sure that X matches the conclusion and Y matches the evidence. Is the conclusion "a generalization"? Nope. It's a specific claim that "my boss was incorrect [about what she said about my presentation]." So we can eliminate it just from that. This answer alludes to the Famous Flaw, Sampling, in which a premise shows that X is true for some small sample of things and then the conclusion argues that X is true for a wider set of cases (without appreciating that the sample of things might be unrepresentative or atypical).

   1%
5. E

   Not Equivocation3% picked this

   confuses two distinct meanings of the key

   The idea of "detail" is used consistently. It means "specific facts/numbers". This answer alludes to the Famous Flaw, Equivocation, in which an author uses the same term or concept multiple times but the term has a very different meaning from one usage to the next. This answer is almost never correct.

   3%