Q5 - Company president: For the management

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Flaw

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: We'll definitely pick one of the best management consultants available.
Evidence: We're only going to interview people who have worked for one of the top 1% of firms.

Answer Anticipation:
Just because someone worked for a top firm doesn't mean I can assume she is one of the best consultants out there. Maybe she got FIRED from the top firm because she wasn't very good, and that's why she's applying for our job! Our conversational objections would just be stories that involve crappy employees who neverthless had a job at a top firm. Our formal objection is that the author is assuming that "because their previous firm was one of the best, THEY are one of the best". That is one of the top 10 classic flaws: Part vs. Whole The whole (the firm) has a quality (top 1%) that the author assumes can be applied to any part (former employee) of the whole.

Correct Answer:
A

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Yes! Can we justify saying the author made the extreme assumption of "ONLY the BEST" work at the top firms? Extreme assumptions are justified when the conclusion is certain of itself. Since this author's conclusion is "we can be SURE we'll have one of the best", then, yes, the author assumes "if you worked at a top firm, you'll be one of the best", which is how we could diagram "worked for top firm ---only--> the best". If we negated this assumption, it's saying "Some of the people who work for top firms are NOT the best", which would blow up the certainty of the author's conclusion.

(B) The author doesn't generalize from a sample (that involves going from evidence about small to conclusion about broad). "Firms worldwide" is indeed a large sample, and focusing on the narrow slice of "top 1%" is what the author's whole argument is about, so it is appropriate.

(C) Mean trick. Our argument went from a premise about WHOLE to a conclusion about PART. "Because you were part of a top 1% firm, you are a top 1% consultant." This answer choice describes an argument that flows the opposite direction: "if each consultant is top 1%, then the firm comprised of them must be a top 1% firm".

(D) The conclusion only speaks about "selecting" someone. It's irrelevant whether the applicant accepts the offer.

(E) Extreme assumption: "highly competent at EVERY task"?

Takeaway/Pattern: This sort of bait and switch with Classic Flaws happens a lot more nowadays. This is a classic Part vs. Whole argument, but you can go from Part to Whole or from Whole to Part. Since (C) describes the wrong form for this argument, we have to stay flexible and think about a different way to describe the flaw. (A) has unnervingly strong language for an assumption answer, but we can feel okay about accusing the author of assuming something extreme if the author's conclusion was black and white certainty.

#officialexplanation

[hyewonkim89]

I now understand why (A) is the answer. The firms being in the top 1 percent doesn't necessarily mean ALL the consultants of those firms were the best.

And I think (C) is wrong because it is reverse. In other words, (C) would have been right if it said "takes for granted that if something is true of the collection as a whole, then it is also true of each member of a collection."

Will someone please confirm if I'm correct?

Hye-Won

[ohthatpatrick]

You nailed it.

This was a WHOLE to PART flaw, whereas (C) describes a PART to WHOLE.

Like so many things in the LSAT world, the order matters.