Logical Reasoning

PT155 · S2 · Q20 Social observer: Advertising agencies

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Social observer: Advertising agencies are willfully neglecting the most profitable segment of the market: older adults.

Conclusion

If ad agencies gear their ads mainly to older adults, they can maximize clients' profits.

Evidence

Older adults control more of this nation's personal disposable income than does the rest of the population combined.

Evaluate

If this were anything other than Sufficient Assumption, I would be tempted to start marshaling counterarguments, like , or .

But Sufficient Assumption just needs a math-y connector that adds on to what we're told in the premise and allows us to derive the conclusion.

Since there is a New Idea in the Conclusion, (maximizing clients' profits), that idea must be in the correct answer.

The one thing we know from the Evidence that we can swap out in the conclusion is the detail we're told about "older adults" (they're the overlapping idea).

Goal

Maybe something like, .

Naturally, they might disguise the correct answer in contrapositive form, and we should wary of illegal reversals / opposites.

20.

Which one of the following, if assumed, would enable the conclusion of the social observer's argument to be properly inferred?

  1. Older people generally have larger

    Unrelated to Goal

    This doesn't have any language about "maximizing clients' profits", so it is functionally useless to us.

    5% picked this

  2. No company can maximize its

    Illegal Reversal / Opposite

    This says: max out profits → market mainly to [older people] But our conclusion is saying market mainly to [older people] → max out profits Unless = if it is not the case that. So one way to diagram this is, not marketing to won't population segment → maximize that controls most profits disposable income Our conclusion is the Opposite of that --- do market to will population segment → maximize that controls most profits disposable income (i.e. older people)

    21% picked this

  3. Advertising that is directed toward

    Trap

    Unrelated to Goal Out of Scope = reputation This doesn't have any language about "maximizing clients' profits", so it is functionally useless to us. Also, the correct answer to Sufficient Assumption will not bring up any new ideas, such as "enhancing the reputation of products".

    2% picked this

  4. No advertising agency that tailors

    Illegal Opposite

    This, like (B), is giving us an opposite/reversed version of the conclusion. It's saying: tailor ads mainly to segment of pop won't maximize that doesn't control → clients' profits much disposable income(i.e. not older adults) Meanwhile, this argument is saying, tailor ads mainly to segment of pop will maximize that does control → clients' profits much disposable income.(i.e. older adults)

    17% picked this

  5. Correct

    Any advertising agency that gears

    Why this is right

    We know that "older people" are a population segment that controls more than 50% of the nation's personal disposable income. There is another modern question (a Principle question about completing the space agency's current project, since the money we'd still have to spend on it is more than the money we've already spent) that uses this same mathematical rephrasing: if one chunk is bigger than the rest combined, then that first chunk is more than 1/2. Since older people control more than everyone else combined, they have more than half the disposable income. Pick any number for older people, make sure it's more than the combined total for non-older people, and you'll see why it's always more than half. Older people: 10 billion not older people: 9 billion nation's total: 19 billion (older people > 1/2) So since we know that this language of "pop segment that controls 50% or more" applies to "older people", this rule allows us to say that, If an ad agency gears its ads mainly to [older people], then it will maximize its clients' profits. Thus, we've derived the conclusion.

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

    56% picked this

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