Q16 - When surveyed about which party

[lmedward]

I got stuck between C and D for this questions. I liked C, the correct answer, the best upon first reading it but got hung up on where the answer states "most individual members". We are not given how many people are surveyed so we don't know if most members were surveyed. Went with D instead. This just did not seem to line up right for me. Can someone explain?
Thanks!

[tombradyisgod]

I got stuck between C and D for this questions. I liked C, the correct answer, the best upon first reading it but got hung up on where the answer states "most individual members". We are not given how many people are surveyed so we don't know if most members were surveyed. Went with D instead. This just did not seem to line up right for me. Can someone explain?
Thanks!

This is a flaw the LSAT has used before. Think of it this way- if you were conservative and got called for the survey, you would probably say you want to see a 100% conservative parliament. Now, picture the survey company combining your response with liberals and independents, and then drawing the conclusion that you actually want to see 40 percent conservative, 40 percent liberal, 20 percent moderate. That would be crazy, right?

In other words, that company would be "Assuming that the preferences of a group as a whole are the preferences of most individual members of the group."

The correct inference from the survey is that 40 percent of people want conservative control, 40 percent of people want liberal control, and 20 percent of people want moderate control.

[ohthatpatrick]

Great response. I'll put up a complete explanation, but this is definitely one of the weirdest Whole to Part arguments I've seen them come up with.

Question Type: Flaw

Argument Core
conclusion
If survey is reliable, most citizens want 40% Con, 20% Mod, 40% Lib for the legislature

evidence
Survey found that 40% want to see Con in legislature, 20% Mod, 40% Lib

Analysis of Core
As the previous poster explained, in our political climate we would interpret this survey to mean "40% of people want to see mostly Conservative legislature". Our author is interpreting it as "most people want to see a 40% Conservative legislature."

It's hard to articulate that flaw; I certainly wouldn't have anticipated calling it Whole to Part, but it does sounds like "aggregate preferences are assumed to be individual preferences".

=== answers ===

(A) This describes the flaw of "What is" vs. "What should be". The premise is definitely a "what is" type claim. Is the conclusion about "what should be"?

Nope. Eliminate.

(B) This describes the flaw of Circular Reasoning. This answer choice is wrong 95% of the time you see it (or more). The conclusion is not a restatement. We shift from talking about chunks of respondents to speaking about most citizens. Eliminate.

(C) The premise is definitely about "preferences of a group as a whole" .... 40% of respondents said they would like

The conclusion shifts to speaking about most individual members' preferences ... most citizens would like ... Keep it.

(D) Depending on how you wanna categorize it, this is a Sampling Flaw or Attacking the Source, not the argument. Since the author tacked onto her conclusion, "IF the survey results are reliable", we cannot possibly hurt her argument by attacking the reliability of the survey. Eliminate.

(E) Match these two parts up with Evidence / Conclusion. Does the evidence only support rough estimates? Yeah, that's fair. It's a survey. We wouldn't interpret it precisely.

Does the conclusion draw a precisely quantified conclusion? No, in fact it uses the word "roughly". Eliminate.

So we'd have to go with (C) as the correct answer.


I'll be honest: I have issues with (C). Who is "the group" in (C)?

The conclusion is about most individual citizens, i.e. most members of the whole country. So if we're calling "the group" = "whole country", then the first half of (C) seems inaccurate.

The premise was based on the preference of a different group, the survey respondents.

What seems to be LSAT's thinking here is that when the author says "if the survey results are reliable", she is essentially saying, "if we extrapolate the survey results to the whole population of citizens, then most citizens ...."

In other words, LSAT wants us to hear the first clause of the conclusion as,
"If we assume that the whole nation would also have these 40/20/40% preferences, we can conclude that ... "

Hope this helps.

[lmedward]

Thank you!

[contropositive]

I'll be honest: I have issues with (C). Who is "the group" in (C)?

The conclusion is about most individual citizens, i.e. most members of the whole country. So if we're calling "the group" = "whole country", then the first half of (C) seems inaccurate.

The premise was based on the preference of a different group, the survey respondents.

What seems to be LSAT's thinking here is that when the author says "if the survey results are reliable", she is essentially saying, "if we extrapolate the survey results to the whole population of citizens, then most citizens ...."

In other words, LSAT wants us to hear the first clause of the conclusion as,
"If we assume that the whole nation would also have these 40/20/40% preferences, we can conclude that ... "

I just assumed that the survey respondents are the citizens of the country. So it's essentially the same group in the premise and conclusion. One could argue that the survey respondents were foreigners and not the citizens, but I guess to make C work you could reasonably make that assumption.

[daijob]

the thing I was not sure about was the part *most citizens* in the stimulus and *most individual members* I thought those two do not match...is it still Okay bc the question asks *most accurately* ?

[jm.kahn]

I find "preferences of a group as a whole" a very misleading way to capture what really is:

"the distribution within the group (all citizens) of subgroups that have different preferences (40, 20, 40)"

Group = all citizens in the country

3 Subgroups with different preferences=
Conservative preferring
Moderate preferring
Liberal preferring

Distributions respectively:
40%
20%
40%

In a way, choice C never really pins down the real issue which is that the word preferences is used to mean 2 different things in its two usages in C.

1st is: "preferences of a group as a whole":
But it really means --
"the distribution within the group (all citizens) of subgroups that have different preferences (40, 20, 40)"

2nd is:
Preferences of most individual members:
But it really means--
The distribution of parties in the legislature that most members would prefer

So the word preferences itself is "overloaded" with 2 different ideas in choice C and doesn't really pinpoint the flaw.

It seems like a very crude choice to write the flaw as, and I think LSAC sort of stretched it in trying to fool test takers in this instance.

Anyone else found this troubling??

(C) The premise is definitely about "preferences of a group as a whole" .... 40% of respondents said they would like

The conclusion shifts to speaking about most individual members' preferences ... most citizens would like ... Keep it.


I'll be honest: I have issues with (C). Who is "the group" in (C)?

The conclusion is about most individual citizens, i.e. most members of the whole country. So if we're calling "the group" = "whole country", then the first half of (C) seems inaccurate.

The premise was based on the preference of a different group, the survey respondents.

What seems to be LSAT's thinking here is that when the author says "if the survey results are reliable", she is essentially saying, "if we extrapolate the survey results to the whole population of citizens, then most citizens ...."

In other words, LSAT wants us to hear the first clause of the conclusion as,
"If we assume that the whole nation would also have these 40/20/40% preferences, we can conclude that ... "

Hope this helps.

[ganbayou]

I'm also not sure about what the "group" is in ans. C...I think that makes this choice very confusing.
I thought the group refers to the responders of the survey.
The argument takes for granted that the preferences of a group (survey responder) as a whole are the preferences of most individual members of the group (=using "the" so it's refering to the same ppl, which means the survey responders).
Since the conclusion says "most citizens" this also includes most individual of the group...? maybe? this is the part I was not sure.
Or,
does this argument says some % prefers something does not mean in individual preference they have some% preference for something etc...and it's strange because usually ppl only choose one favorite party?
So confusing that I am not sure I could explain what I thought or what my question is...but any response please?

Thank you

[andreperez7]

Here's the TL;DR version guys:

Premise: 40% of citizens want Conservatives in the legislature; 20% Moderates; 40% Liberals.
Conclusion: Citizens want a legislature of 40% Conservative, 20% Moderate, and %40 Liberal.

The flaw is obviously that everyone said they wanted they wanted the party they like in the legislature, not in that breakdown; the author mistakes those surveyed (a group) wanting their preferred parties along a 40-20-40 breakdown to mean that people (citizens as individuals) want a 40-20-40 breakdown in the legislature. She is mistakenly applying what applies to the group as a whole (the survey group) to individuals of that group (the citizens)

This is the same as saying that since 1 ton of feathers is heavy, every individual feather is also heavy.

The AC is worded so abstractly as to make the correct AC hard to understand.

PM me with questions if you like.