Q13 - I. Room air conditioners produced

[lhermary]

I don't get why A is a better answer then E in the situation. To me it looks like they are both right.

Thanks

[timmydoeslsat]

Good question.

I believe we can all say that B, C, and D are out of contention.

The two statements can be seen as this:

1. Japanese ACs tend to be more reliable than American.

2. The average lifetime is the same for Japanese and American.


So we are wondering how/why is it that the average lifetime is the same, but Japanese ACs are more reliable. We need something that distinguishes these Japanese ACs from these American ones.


A) Reliability is a measure of how long a product functions without needing repair. Hmm. This is telling us that it may be the case that the lifetime is the same for both, but that American ACs will need repair sooner. This helps put the two statements together.


E) Japanese manufacturers often use more reliable components in their ACs than do Americans.

Often = sometimes. We cannot infer most necessarily. So just because Japanese manufacturers do this sometimes is not enough for us to conclude that something tends to be something else.

Also, you could argue this is a part to whole issue. Just because something has more reliable parts does not mean necessarily that the entire AC will be more reliable.


Answer choice A gives us a statement that shows how the first two statements can coexist together. It shows that the Japanese ACs are not repaired as soon as the American ones are on a general basis.

This choice essentially defines what reliability is, while (E) tries to explain to us why something tends to be more reliable than the other and fails in this attempt.

[bbirdwell]

This choice essentially defines what reliability is, while (E) tries to explain to us why something tends to be more reliable than the other and fails in this attempt.

I like this summary. I think timmydoeslsat is correct in saying that reconciling the two statements requires us to distinguish "reliability" from "lifetime."

(A) provides us the means to do this by bringing up the notion of repair. We can reasonably infer now that "lifetime" is how long the product lasts, period, and "reliability" is pre-repair. Now there's a difference between the two, and our statements are therefore reconciled.

[coco.wu1993]

I think my foundation of Paradox questions is still a bit shaky.

I did this one right through POE, but normally I would not consider A as a good answer. It brings about the "repair" issue, but does not tell us whether Japanese air conditioners need fewer repairs than American ones, thus leaves the paradox unsolved.

I remember in many Paradox questions, an answer choice is wrong because, even if it provides a possibility of reconciling two statements, it lacks of some information and leaves the paradox uncertain. Is this a good reason to eliminate answers on Paradox questions?

About E, "often" is indeed an issue, but I think it is wrong also because it only strengthens statement I but says nothing about statement II. Not sure if such thought is correct.

Thanks for help in advance!

[ohthatpatrick]

You nailed it, Coco.

The big problem with (E) is that it helps explain why Japanese AC’s are more reliable … cool, but then why the heck don’t they have a longer lifetime than American AC’s?!!

We haven’t generated any answer to the paradox!

I’ll put up a complete explanation.

For most Paradox questions, I endeavor to arrange the facts presented to fit this format:

Given that ____________ how can it be true that _____________ ?

Essentially, I try to think of one of the facts as the GIVEN, the background, and the other one as the SURPRISE we need to explain.

Here I would think
Given that Japanese AC’s are more reliable than American AC’s
how can it be true that Japanese AC’s have the same lifetime as American AC’s

What would we normally expect?

We’d normally expect that the more reliable AC would have a longer lifetime.

(A) “Reliability” = how long you last without needing repair.
Whereas “Lifetime” = how long you last until you no longer function / we must replace you.

Okay, well then Lifetime and Reliability are two completely different things. Maybe both AC’s last 20 years before they’re defunct. The Japanese ones tend to go for 15 years before they need repair, whereas the American ones start needing repairs by year 7.

It’s possible to harmonize the facts.

(B) Knowing that some “American” manufacturers have some facilities that are located out of the US doesn’t help explain fact I or fact II.

(C) This equates the US and Japan in terms of initial AC damage, which works for fact II, but it doesn’t do anything to harmonize it with the INEQUALITY of fact I.

(D) This gives an inequality of history of manufacturing AC’s in favor of the US. Does that explain either fact? Given that it’s an inequality, it would be trying to explain fact I, but we’d have to make some crazy assumption that the longer you’ve been manufacturing something, the less reliable your goods.

(E) This gives an inequality in favor of Japan, and thus explains fact I. But how does this answer account for the equality of fact II?

Ultimately, our paradox is one of UNEQUAL “reliability” vs. EQUAL “lifetime”.

That feels paradoxical because we think that “reliability” = “lifetime”.

But correct answer (A) indicates that reliability is NOT the same as lifetime, thus we had no reason to think the two facts were contradictory.