Q14 - A survey of alumni

[kmewmewblue]

I picked the correct answer (A) just because it sounded right and this is not the way I supposed to pick the answer.

So if 100 of alumni of class of 1960 were surveyed, 50 responded claiming they were top quarter.
If 100, then top quarter will be only 25people.
Right?

So (A) says disproportionately large number....
What is that?
So, let's say 1000, and half will be 500 and top quarter will be 250...
Okay, then my brain stops here.

Could anybody lead me through this?

[noah]

You're just about there! All you needed to do was tweak your numbers. Remember, you're trying to make the numbers work to explain the discrepancy. So, play with them until they do. Take a look:

The discrepancy in this stimulus is that half the respondents to an alumni survey reported they were in the top quartile of the class. How can half fit into a quartile?

If you're not seeing it, compare what I just wrote with this: The discrepancy in this stimulus is that half the alumni reported they were in the top quartile of the class.

See the difference? The real stimulus (the top one) is about the folks that responded to a survey. Perhaps only the smarties responded. Let's imagine there were 100 people in the class, and 50 responded to the survey. If all the top 25 students responded, that would make up half the respondents, even though they're a quarter of the whole class. This is what (A) hinges on.

(B) is tempting if you thought that the solution had to be that folks were lying or delusional about their ranking. But (B) tells us that most people were correct!

(C) is in some ways the reverse of (A). We need to see a higher proportion of smarties responding, not fewer of them.

(D) makes the discrepancy harder to explain. If almost everyone responded, than how did a half fit into a quarter?!

(E) is out of scope. Who cares how they calculated the grades?

I hope that clears it up.

[Aquamarine]

Can you tell me why (B) isn't correct?
I still don't get why (B) isn't right.
I thought (B) could be possible because the result of the survey can turn out to be just like that (50% of the respondents said they were in the top quarter of the class) if few respondents were mistaken about their class rank.

[noah]

Can you tell me why (B) isn't correct?
I still don't get why (B) isn't right.
I thought (B) could be possible because the result of the survey can turn out to be just like that (50% of the respondents said they were in the top quarter of the class) if few respondents were mistaken about their class rank.

(B) is saying that not many were mistaken, i.e. that most of them were correct.

How does that help explain this apparent contradiction? (Or were you turned around about what (B) meant?)

[adisadeliovsky]

too be honest, I didn't pick A because it just stated "high ranking alumni"

High ranking in what? athletics?

Are we suppose to assume they meant academically high ranking?

Sometimes i look way to deeply into the language...