Q12 - West: Of our company's three...

[mshinners]

Question Type:
Procedure

Stimulus Breakdown:
West: This Haynes guy is bad because half of our returns were inspected by him.

Young: But Haynes works the most.

Answer Anticipation:
For these response procedure questions, it's generally a good idea to analyze the response in terms of the breakdown of the first argument. Is the second person questioning and/or responding to the premise, conclusion, or an assumption of the first argument? For example:
Premises - Y doesn't question W's premise.
Conclusion - Y doesn't state feelings towards the quality of H's work, but it seems there's disagreement ("But...").
Assumption - Y definitely gives us information that calls the connection between number of returns and inspection skill into question. It seems this is where the answer should come in - Y adds information that calls the assumption into question and thus suggests the conclusion might not hold.

Correct Answer:
(E)

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Tricky wording here. Whenever you have answers that seem abstract, try summarizing them in your own words and substituting language from the stimulus for abstract language in the answer. Presupposes = assumes and the first argument is "trying to prove" that Haynes is the worst, which would be an example of a circular argument. This doesn't happen, especially since Y introduces new information instead of addressing how W's argument is constructed.

(B) While Y might question the correctness of it, she doesn't question its relevance. This answer choice would be more appealing if Y responded by talking about why being the best/worst inspector doesn't actually matter.

(C) W's stated premise is about the percent of their returns that Haynes inspected, and Y doesn't question whether that's true.

(D) Y doesn't argue for anything; rather, she brings up a fact calling an assumption into question.

(E) Bingo. Again, a presupposition is an assumption, and Y questions the connection between the percent of overall returns vs. the skill of the inspector. She does this by stating that Haynes also inspect the vast majority of items, so of course more of the returns come from items he returned.

Takeaway/Pattern: For Procedure response questions (two speakers; the question asks about the second speaker's response), see if the second speaker talks about/contradicts the premise, conclusion, or assumption, as the answers usually revolve around that. And if you see tricky abstract language, substitute from the stimulus and summarize in your own words.

#officialexplanation

[DavidP715]

"Denying" one of the assumptions is extremely strong here. He is most definitely calling into question the assumption being made but DENYING it?? Not sure about that.

[AbigailR445]

I agree with the comment above, DENYING seems very strong of a word choice but also, it seems that the explanation for why choice C is wrong is just suddenly assumed in choice E.

If Y does not dispute the percent of appliances that Hayes inspected, then how could Y possibly be denying that same factor in choice E?

[hzj184]

I agree with the comment above, DENYING seems very strong of a word choice but also, it seems that the explanation for why choice C is wrong is just suddenly assumed in choice E.

If Y does not dispute the percent of appliances that Hayes inspected, then how could Y possibly be denying that same factor in choice E?

West is talking about the percentage of the overall return inspected by H.

Y is talking about the percentage of all products inspected by H.


If C is correct, Young should provide some evidence like percentage of the overall return inspected by H is less than half.