Logical Reasoning

PT3 · S4 · Q21 Leona: If the average consumption

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Leona: If the average consumption of eggs in the United States were cut in half, an estimated 5,000 lives might be saved each year.

Leona

If average egg consumption in the United States were cut in half, an estimated 5,000 lives might be saved each year.

Thomas

That cannot be right. It would mean that after ten years of the change, the population would be 50,000 larger than it otherwise would have been.

Evaluate

Thomas treats "a life saved" as and then adds those people up: 5,000 a year for ten years is 50,000 extra people.

However, when Leona says that , we're thinking she means,

The savings in deaths doesn't necessarily come in the same year as the change itself. It could be that Leona is saying, .

Also, the fact that these people wouldn't any longer die of heart disease doesn't mean they'll live forever. Since people who avoid one type of death will just die a different way, it's way too literal for Thomas to think it means we have 50,000 extra humans after ten years.

Goal

Look for a statement that defines what Leona means by a life saved in a way that keeps her estimate while showing why Thomas's running total does not follow.

21.

Which one of the following is a statement that Leona could offer Thomas to clarify her own claim and to address the point he has made?

It is possible for the
No Impact
We're not trying to validate Thomas's overly literal math, and this doesn't sound anything like Leona explaining what she means by "around 5000 lives would be saved each year". This is a very specific/random idea about cherry-picking a certain year in order for a statistic to appear a certain way.
3% picked this
Correct
It is accurate to say
Why this is right
This helps clarify that we're not guaranteed 50,000 extra lives ten years later, as Thomas was thinking. Leona is clarifying that these people who didn't die of their egg-induced heart attack still might die from something else, but we can still say that lower egg consumption saves around 5,000 people from that sort of death each year.
Skill tested: Strengthen · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
73% picked this
If egg consumption were reduced
Unrelated to Goal
This is talking about a brand new estimate, not responding to Thomas's objection or clarifying the estimate that Leona actually made.
7% picked this
The actual rate of population
No Impact
This is a general truth about population growth, but it does not explain Leona's claim or respond to Thomas's objection. He was never saying that the population would be 50,000 higher ten years later. It was that the population would be 50,000 higher than it otherwise would be. If it's 2027, he's comparing what the low-egg population number in 2037 would be vs. the high-egg population number of 2037. Both of those numbers would be affected the same way by population growth in the intervening years, so this response has nothing to do with Thomas's comparison.
13% picked this
For the average consumption of
Unrelated to Goal
How individual consumers would have to change their eating to halve the average is a point about the diet, not about what "lives saved" means. Thomas's objection is about the population consequence, and this does not speak to it.
4% picked this

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