The cities of Oldtown and Spoonville

Answer choices

1. A

   Contradicts Author23% picked this

   presupposes without warrant that the health problems that are widespread in any particular city cannot be caused by the

   Since this answer begins with presumes without justification / presupposes without warrant, we treat it like Necessary Assumption. Was the author assuming that "health problems widespread within a city cannot be caused by living conditions in that city"? No, the author said the opposite. She said that certain widespread health problems within Oldtown are caused by crowded living conditions in that city.

   23%
2. B

   Doesn't Fail to Distinguish15% picked this

   fails to distinguish between the size of the total population of a city and the size of the geographic

   The author talks about both the area (the size of the geographic region) and the total population. The author doesn't need to distinguish them. She's telling us about both of them because you combine those two things in order to know what a city's population density is.

   15%
3. C

   Out of Scope: life expectancy1% picked this

   fails to indicate whether average life expectancy is lowered as a result of living

   It's true that the author failed to talk about life expectancy, but that's not why we're mad at the author's logic. We're mad that the author is overconfidently assuming that since cities O and S have the same population density, they will have the same level of health problems related to crowded living conditions.

   1%
4. D

   Out of Scope: easy vs. hard1% picked this

   fails to distinguish between those health problems that are easily treatable and those

   We aren't mad at the author for failing to differentiate between easy to treat health problems and harder to treat ones. Her argument had nothing to do with the how treatable these health problems are; It only had to do with how widespread they are.

   1%
5. E

   Correct61% picked this

   fails to take into account that having identical overall population density is consistent with great

   Why this is right

   Since this starts with fails to consider / overlooks the possibility, we treat it like Weaken. Can we object to this author by saying, "Hey, author -- even though these two cities may have identical population density (same population / same area), they may be way different in terms of living conditions"? Sure! That's sort of what we were saying before. Maybe Oldtown has a lot of high-rise apartment dwellings and thus a lot of crowded living conditions, whereas Spoonville has a bunch of single-family homes more evenly dispersed throughout its land area. The general form of this answer is, "fails to consider that [evidence] is consistent with [something that goes against conclusion]"

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

   61%