Q22 - Politician: From the time

[shariferguson]

I got the answer to this question. But not sure I understand why. Can someone breakdown this argument for me please. Thanks in advance.

Shari

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

The conclusion of the politician is completely contradicted by the evidence the politician offers in support of his/her conclusion.

The conclusion is that fewer people find themselves among the ranks of the unemployed.

The evidence for this is that the number of people unemployed increased. Sure it increased less than it did under the previous administration, but it still increased.

We need an answer choice that identifies this flaw and answer choice (D) best expresses this flaw.

(A) is not true. There is no claim offered by the opposition that is simply dismissed. We would need to be able to point to a claim made by the opposition that the author dismisses, and even then the claim would need to be central to the politician's argument.
(B) is too specific. The argument never concludes that the unemployment was uniform throughout all areas of the city.
(C) is too narrow in scope. Definitely season fluctuations could be at play, but could not influence numbers that span a four year period.
(E) is the most tempting of the incorrect answers. It addresses a possible alternative cause, but those programs under the opposition, might yet have been supported by the politician's party.

Does that help clear this one up? Let me know if you'd still like some more help with it!

[shariferguson]

Hi, thank you for your reply. I get it, I actually had the same reasoning, so I wanted to make sure that I was correct.

Thank You, for your help.

Shari

[sumukh09]

I thought he meant "fewer people now found themselves unemployed" relative to the number of unemployed during the oppositions four year's of being in office. If we go by the statistics cited then doesn't this claim by the politician hold?

[WaltGrace1983]

I thought he meant "fewer people now found themselves unemployed" relative to the number of unemployed during the oppositions four year's of being in office. If we go by the statistics cited then doesn't this claim by the politician hold?

No. Let's say this is the year 2008 and we are comparing the 2000-2003 terms to the 2004-2007 terms. The first term is for the opponents and the second term is for us.

Opponent's Term: >20% increase in unemployment
+
Our Term: <20% increase in unemployment
→
Due to our leadership, fewer people find themselves unemployed

No matter what the increase for our term is in unemployment, it is still an increase! Thus, how can we say that, under us, there are less people unemployed? The only way we could say this is if there was a huge shift in population but, since we have no evidence of that, we cannot actually make such a claim.

We can do this by assigning numbers too. Let's say the opponent's term has a 20.01% increase in unemployment and we had a 0.5% increase in unemployment. There are 1,000,000 people in the city.

Their term: 200,100 more are unemployed (1,000,000 x 20.01%)
Our term: 6,000 more are unemployed (1,200,100 x 0.5%), ultimately making it 206,100 unemployed

As you can see. No matter what, any increase will mean more people - barring a crazy population swing.

(E) is by far the most tempting answer. One I think I have selected before. However, the big key word here is "supported." Just because the opposition "supports" the measure doesn't mean that the conclusion doesn't follow.

[joewoo198256]

I thought he meant "fewer people now found themselves unemployed" relative to the number of unemployed during the oppositions four year's of being in office. If we go by the statistics cited then doesn't this claim by the politician hold?

let me put it this way: U0 is the number of unemployed four years ago, U1 is the number of unemployed right now. According to the politician, U1-U0/U0 is less than 20%; U0' is the number of unemployed when the opposition party took office, U1' is the number of unemployed when the opposition party stepped down, again, according to the politician, U1'-U0'/U0' is larger than 20%.

OK, now we have a disagreement here: Fewer! If the politician is comparing U1 and U0, then no doubt U1 is larger than U0 (even if the increase is less than 20% the absolute number is still increasing.). But if we are comparing U1 and U1' like you said, we just don't know which one is bigger, because we just cannot derive an absolute number from a percentage.

Either way the politician is not right! Hope this can help.