Logical Reasoning

PT151 · S3 · Q24 A recent poll of a large number

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A recent poll of a large number of households found that 47 percent of those with a cat had at least one person with a university degree, while 38 percent of households with a dog had at least one person with a university degree.

Conclusion

People with degrees are more likely to live in a house with a cat than one with a dog.

Evidence

47% of houses with cats have someone with a degree. 38% of houses with dogs have someone with a degree.

Evaluate

The statistics presented in the evidence aren't very useful when it comes to ascertaining what the conclusion is talking about.

The conclusion wants to know whether there are more people with degrees living in a cat house or a dog house. (Houses with both don't really matter, because they "cancel each other out". If they have both a cat and a dog, then they won't affect the conclusion in either direction)

Does the evidence tell us whether there are more people with degrees living in a cat house or a dog house?

No, it just tells us that cat houses are more likely to have a college grad in them than are dog houses. That doesn't mean, however, that there are more college grads living in cat houses than in dog houses, because there could be 100 cat houses and 10,000 dog houses.

Goal

There are a lot of different ways to describe the problem here, but essentially the statistics presented don't allow us to make any judgment on the conclusion.

The premises are about Percent's whereas the conclusion comes down to a raw number comparison. It's expressed in "most likely" language, but the way you would decide whether people with degrees are more likely to live in a cat house vs. a dog house would simply be to ask, ?

The author's reasoning is that 47% is bigger than 38%, so there must be more people with degrees in cat houses than in dog houses, but those percentages are taken of different totals (47% of cat houses vs. 38% of dog houses), so they're not possible to directly compare.

24.

The reasoning in the argument is flawed in that the argument

  1. ignores the possibility that a

    No Impact

    Does it hurt the argument to say that lots of houses have both cats and dogs? Nope. Any house that has both a cat and a dog would be totally neutral to this conclusion. We need to assess whether more college grads live with a cat or live with a dog. The ones that live with both a cat and a dog are just meaningless when it comes to figuring out which way the overall number tilts (because by having both cats and dogs in the same house, those college grads won't tip the comparison in either direction). Suppose students A, B, C, D live in cat-only houses. E and F live in cat-and-dog houses. G, H, I live in dog-only houses. How many of those people live in a house with a cat? 6. How many live in a house with a dog? 5. The cat-and-dog house make no difference to the final comparison. We can tell that cat houses beat dog houses simply by comparing cat-only houses (A, B, C, D) to dog-only houses (G, H, I) to see that there is one more cat house than dog house.

    16% picked this

  2. Correct

    takes for granted that there

    Why this is right

    Does the author need to assume this? Well, whenever we're looking at a Necessary Assumption answer (which is what "takes for granted / presumes / fails to establish" indicates), we know that it's tempting to see an idea being ruled-out with the word "not". If we negate this idea, does it become an objection? Does it hurt the argument to say, "There are significantly more dog houses than cat houses?" Sure, it hurts. Let's say there are 100 houses with cats and 1000 houses with dogs. 47% of the 100 cat houses have college grads, so that's 47 college grads that live in a house with a cat. 38% of the 1000 dog houses have college grads, so that's 380 college grads that live in a house with a dog. That would mean the conclusion is wrong. College grads are more likely to live in a dog house than in a cat house. Since negating the answer choice turned it into an objection, we know that this really WAS something the author was assuming.

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

    49% picked this

  3. fails to consider how many

    No Impact

    People without a degree are meaningless to the tally we care about for the conclusion: how many college grads live with cats vs. how many college grads live with dogs

    3% picked this

  4. fails to consider to what

    Out of Scope

    Out of Scope: why they have cats/dogs This argument doesn't care about why these houses have a cat, dog, or both. This is only a statistical argument. The author isn't trying to come up with a causal story that accounts for why college grads may be more likely to live with one type of pet than another. The math doesn't care whether the college grad picked the pet or whether one of her housemates did. If she lives in a house with a cat, she counts towards that tally.

    6% picked this

  5. ignores the possibility that two

    Wrong Flaw

    This describes the famous Causal flaw, in which the author's evidence presents a curious fact and the conclusion overconfidently posits a causal explanation for that fact. This conclusion (as well as all the evidence) isn't causal. It's just mathematically descriptive.

    25% picked this

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