Q13 - President of the Regional Chamber

[clarafok]

hello,

i chose B instead of D and i'm not really getting why i got it wrong. I'm assuming 'the case' mentioned in D is that there were never more than 1000 businesses in the region. but i kind of just accepted that as a true statement, so it didn't make any sense to me to choose D, because it's true?

could someone please help clarify?

thanks in advance!

[giladedelman]

So, the president criticizes the Planning Board for claiming that businesses are leaving at the rate of four per week. Why does he dismiss this claim as an exaggeration? Well, he says that there were never more than 1,000 businesses, and that if the Planning Board's claim were true, all the businesses would be gone by now.

Well, wait a minute. The Planning Board never said that businesses were leaving at this rate for the past however many years. They just made a "recent estimate" that this is the case currently. So the president is mistakenly extending this estimate into the past.

(It's exactly the same as if I said, "I'm losing ten pounds a week on my new diet!" And you said, "That's impossible -- if you lost ten pounds a week, you would have disappeared by now!" Well, yeah, if my diet started in 1993. But I never said it did.)

That's why (D) is correct. The president treats the claim about the current rate of business loss as if it were a claim about the rate of loss for an extended period. This has nothing to do with questioning the premise about there not being more than 1,000 businesses.

(B) is incorrect because the president doesn't confuse the claim about rate of change for a claim about absolute size; those two claims are kept clearly distinct.

Does that help?

[jh2352]

Is E not right because he doesn't explicitly say that it is not a precise estimate?

[christine.defenbaugh]

Is E not right because he doesn't explicitly say that it is not a precise estimate?

That's right!

If we're going to accuse someone of 'attacking X on the grounds that Y', then two things have to be true: 1) they have to have actually attacked on those grounds and 2) that has to be a flawed attack. Since the author did not attack the Planning Board's lack of precision, (E) can't be the flaw!

While we're here, let's take a brief glance at each of the other incorrect answers as well:

(A) The President does not ignore the issue of what's coming in - he states clearly that no new businesses have started up over the last ten years.

(B) As giladedelman points out above, the author does not mix up absolute size and rate of change. The author uses the information about absolute size to draw a conclusion about the what the rate of change must be, but he does not confuse or equate the two ideas.

(C) The author never mentions anything about the position 'serv[ing] the interest of the Planning Board'.

Please let me know if that helps clear things up a bit!

[littletiger]

This has nothing to do with questioning the premise about there not being more than 1,000 businesses.

gila, your response was super helpful, but can you clarify the quoted sentence? Who is questioning the premise that there are no more than 1000 businesses? I'm confused as to what work this sentence is doing in your solution.

[seychelles1718]

Regarding E, I am not sure if the author is really not attacking the Board on the grounds of precision. Isn't the author criticizing how the estimate by the Board is "grossly exaggerated" (which is not accurate/ precise) ? This is why I couldn't eliminate E...

Can anyone help? Thanks

[maryadkins]

The President accepts it as an estimate, explicitly: "in its recent estimate."

Saying it's grossly misrepresented is different from saying it's not precise. One attacks an estimate for being a bad estimate (what the guy does, here). The other attacks a number for being an estimate, at all. He does not do that.

[roflcoptersoisoi]

Premise: There have been at 1000 businesses here, so if companies were leaving at a rate of 4/week then they would all be gone by now.
Conclusion: The Planning Board is exaggerating in it's estimate about the rate at which businesses are leaving the town.


Fails to consider that the businesses started leaving at that rate just a few months ago.
Takes for granted that the rate at which the businesses have been leaving have been consistent over an extended period of time. Perhaps no businesses left for 9 years and they within the past year they've started leaving at such a rate.

(A) Descriptively inaccurate, he addresses the fact no businesses have set up shop in the town over the past 10 years.
(B) Trap answer choice and this got me the first time round. He doesn't confuse the absolute size of a system with rate of change, I mean he uses the former to refute a claim about the latter, but by virtue of doing so he is clearly showing that he understands and is able to distinguish between the two.
(C) Descriptively inaccurate
(D) Bingo, this corresponds nicely with a flaw I identified, that the author takes for granted that what is currently true (the rate at which businesses are leaving) has always been true (constant), perhaps it has only been true for the past few weeks.
(E) He attacks the estimate of the rate of change but not on the grounds that it is imprecise, but on the grounds that not all of them have left.