Logical Reasoning

PT156 · S4 · Q15 Historian: Scholars writing histories of

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Historian: Scholars writing histories of an era's business practices must, of course, analyze the practices and strategies employed by firms of that era.

Conclusion (therefore)

Business historians overestimate the success of past businesses.

Evidence

Historians tend to study more successful firms when investigating business practices than study unsuccessful firms.

Evaluate

The author's logic seems to be that if you study successful businesses more often than unsuccessful ones, it will skew your perception. You'll start thinking most companies are successful, because you spend most of your time looking at Apple and Google.

But maybe historians are wise enough to study successful ones in order to learn what methods seemed to work, but also look at overall statistics for the number of businesses that succeed vs. fail, when it comes to estimating the success of past businesses.

Goal

We want an answer that rules out the idea that historians account for the fact that they're mainly looking at successful businesses / that they factor in that potential bias, an answer that supports the connection between , or any other answer that would make it more plausible that they tend to overrate the proportion of businesses that were successful in past eras.

15.

Which one of the following would, if true, most support the historian's argument?

  1. The specific factors that cause

    No Impact

    This choice, if anything, undermines the idea that historians will be able to look at successful businesses and ascertain exactly what MADE them successful. But that has nothing to do with the conclusion, which is just about whether the historians will end up with a skewed sense of what portion of businesses were successful.

    20% picked this

  2. Those who study past first-person

    Trap

    Unclear Impact (first person accounts) No Impact (present day cultural assumptions) This choice mentions studying first-person accounts, which are not relevant to the argument. The argument doesn't tell us whether historians are studying first-person accounts, so we wouldn't know what to do with this detail. Even if we did know they approach old business stories with present-day cultural assumptions, that doesn't have any common sense link to "overrating how many businesses in the past were actually successful".

    3% picked this

  3. The many public legal documents

    No Impact

    This seems to be suggesting an alternate method for what historians could be looking at, as though it would be wiser to look at public legal documents than at firms' internal documents. But not only are we never told whether historians are looking at public or private documents, in either case it doesn't have any impact on whether what they are currently doing is leading them to overestimate the proportion of successful past businesses.

    2% picked this

  4. Correct

    The records of businesses that

    Why this is right

    This option increases the plausibility that historians end up with a distorted sense of past businesses (favoring the more successful ones), since the records don't even exist for them to learn about the businesses that did the worst (went bankrupt). It's a weird answer in the sense that it really just supports the author's opinionated premise, that businesses "probably" end up looking at more at successful firms than unsuccessful ones. It doesn't help at all with the connection between premise and conclusion: "if you're looking more at successful firms, then you'll have a sense of businesses overall that's skewed towards the successful firms".

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

    73% picked this

  5. Scholars who study businesses of

    No Impact

    This choice discusses scholars being trained in effective business techniques, which does not directly relate to overestimating success. The training of scholars is not inherently connected to how they represent business success in history.

    2% picked this

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