Logical Reasoning

PT146 · S3 · Q1 A nonprofit organization concerned

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A nonprofit organization concerned with a social issue sent out a fund-raising letter to 5,000 people.

Conclusion (This suggests that)

Most of the people who received the nonprofit letter agreed with their position on the social issue presented.

Evidence

283 of the 300 people who responded to the letter agreed with the position.

Evaluate

We seem to be looking at one of the Top 10 famous flaws, Sampling.

We know that most of the respondents agreed with the nonprofit's position on the social issue. The author is trying to conclude that most of the recipients agreed with the position on the social issue.

So it's a question of whether we think that "people who responded" are a fairly typical cross-section of recipients. Are they a sample from which we can extrapolate general conclusions?

Our concerns with Samples usually are that the sample is too small (like under 20), the respondents didn't provide truthful responses (out of fear of shame or retaliation), or most commonly that the people who comprise our sample population are self-selecting / biased / skewed / atypical in some way.

A sample size of 300 out of 5,000 total letters is a pretty respectable size. It could always be more robust with bigger numbers, but anything over 100 is nothing LSAT would ever complain about.

Are these 300 respondents likely to be an atypical sample of the underlying population of recipients?

Maybe. This is where our outside common sense comes into play. We might be well aware of "the Yelp phenomenon", the idea that people generally only take the time to write a review if they're really motivated (loved it or hated it), so you see mainly 5-star and 1-star reviews.

Similarly, it could be that because of the effort it takes to respond to a survey that showed up in your mail, most people wouldn't respond whether they agreed or disagreed. It would mainly be the zealots who write back.

Goal

Look for an answer objecting that it's not safe to assume that this sample of 300 respondents is representative of the underlying 5000 recipients, because respondents are a self-selecting group of people who had really strong reactions.

In general, if a nonprofit you don't agree with mailed you something, you'd pitch it in the recycling bin, thinking "not for me". You probably would only write the organization if you were super aligned with the cause and wanted to get involved. So we could even say that the low response rate overall (only 300 out of 5000) could be evidence that people mostly weren't aligned with that position.

1.

The argument is most vulnerable to criticism on which one of the following grounds?

  1. Correct

    It draws a conclusion about

    Why this is right

    This is the Sampling flaw answer we were looking for. Some of the abstract language here definitely matches up: the author did draw a conclusion about a population (the 5,000 recipients) based on observations of a subgroup (the 300 respondents). Can we say that the sample of respondents is quite unlikely to be unrepresentative of the overall population of recipients? That seems to be overdoing it a little, but this is our best available answer. Does LSAC just think that "respondents" on any mailed out survey are an inherently unlikely sample? Yes, apparently, and probably with good reason. As we covered before, it's a well documented phenomenon with product reviews / teacher evaluations and such that the people most likely to respond are the ones with the most extreme opinions. We can also enlist our common sense -- if you got a mailer from a nonprofit you didn't agree with, would you fill out their survey and mail it back? No, of course not. Why would you waste your time helping out this organization whose cause you don't even support? So LSAC seems to be counting on our real world common sense to appreciate that people would be way more likely to take the time to fill out a survey and mail it back if they already support that nonprofit's cause.

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

    93% picked this

  2. It takes for granted that

    Not Assumed

    This answer is kind of tricky. Because it starts with takes for granted / presumes / fails to establish, we treat the idea that follows as if we're reading a Necessary Assumption answer choice. If we negated this and said, "Yo, author -- most people vary significantly in their opinions on a given issue, if you ask them the same question on some other occasion", it seems like that would hurt the argument. How can the author argue on the basis of this survey that most of the recipients agree with the organization's position if most people don't stay attached to one position over time? They might have once agreed with the org's position, but if you asked them again tomorrow, most of them would disagree. However, that line of objection doesn't actually work. The conclusion isn't present tense. It isn't saying that the recipients presently agree with organization's position, just that they agreed when the letter was sent out. Beyond that technicality, we should be worried about this answer on a common sense level. It's a very reasonable assumption that most people don't change their opinions on big social issues significantly from occasion to occasion. It would be weird for the correct answer on Flaw to be chastising the author for a very reasonable assumption.

    0% picked this

  3. It relies on the accuracy

    Wrong Sampling Flaw

    This is alluding to a Sampling problem we sometimes, but rarely, see, in which people are afraid to tell the truth. For example, if your boss took a survey and asked, "Do you ever take any office supplies home? How much computer time do you spend on social media?" you probably wouldn't provide truthful responses. We don't have any reason to suspect with this nonprofit's mailed out survey that the respondents would be afraid to provide truthful responses.

    3% picked this

  4. It uses evidence about an

    Reversed Conclusion / Evidence Match

    The conclusion is about the majority of a population (the 5,000 recipients), and the evidence is about a small part of that population (the 300 people who responded). This answer switches those and says the evidence is about the majority and the conclusion is about the small part.

    3% picked this

  5. It takes for granted that

    Out of Scope: influenced opinions

    The author doesn't need to assume that the letter influenced the opinion of the recipients. She is only claiming that most recipients agreed with the position. There's no reason the letter needed to change anyone's opinion. If most people agreed with that position on a pre-existing basis before they received this fund-raising letter, the argument still works.

    1% picked this

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