Q18 - Travel agent: Although most

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Flaw

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Safer to fly on a major vs. new low-fare airline.
Evidence: Even though low-fare airlines have had few, if any, accidents, they're too new to have established safety records. Meanwhile, major airlines have long standing records that reliably indicate how safe they are.

Answer Anticipation:
How would we counterargue that the new, low-fare airlines are actually safer (or as safe)? We might say, "Just because the data isn't in yet for the low-fare airlines doesn't mean they are ACTUALLY less safe.i.e. Just because we don't KNOW they're safe yet doesn't mean 'we know they're not safe'. (Unproven vs. Untrue flaw) Another objection is simply to want more details about the safety records of major airlines. How do they compare to prelimary safety data with low-fare airlines? Are all major airlines comparable in safety compared to each other? Maybe some major airlines are safer and others are much more dangerous.

Correct Answer:
C

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Fails to address = would this weaken? A little tempting, because same total number of accidents sounds like "major is as safe as low-fare". But -- we don't care about total number of accidents; we care about accident rate (what % of flights have an accident). If a major airlines had 5 accidents over the course of 10,000 flights and a low-fare airline had 5 accidents over the course of 1,000 flights, we would judge the major airline to be 10 times safer.

(B) Concludes __ on the basis of __ = does this match the core? Is the conclusion about how safe passengers are on different airlines? Yes. Is the evidence about safety records that are each too brief? No. In fact, the whole point of the evidence is that the safety records for low-are are too brief but the safety records for major airlines are long-standing and reliable.

(C) Fails to consider = would this weaken? Yes it would! If the long-standing records of major airlines indicates that they are UNSAFE, then that directly attacks the author's conclusion.

(D) Takes for granted = did the author need to assume this? Nope, too extreme. The author doesn't need there to be a match between the SAFEST and the MOST RELIABLE safety records. The author just needs to assume that these reliable safety records are telling us something positive about the safety of major airlines.

(E) Fails to address = would this weaken? No, it wouldn't. Still having "one or more" accidents isn't a powerful objection. We don't expect airlines to be perfect.

Takeaway/Pattern: A lot of us are going to miss the fact that evidence INSINUATED that major airlines have a well-documented history of safety, when all the evidence said is that major airlines have a well-documented history of THEIR DEGREE OF SAFETY, which could be quite low. Keep thinking flexibly as you consider the answer choices and understand how different answer choice intro-phrasings work.

#officialexplanation

[qtcherrysyrup]

I couldn't decide between choices C and E.
Why is the correct answer C? Because it says "unsafe" and weaken the argument the most, instead of having "one or more accidents"?

Thank you.

[cyruswhittaker]

(C) is correct because the author assumes that by mere fact that there are such records, they indicate that the airline has a high degree of safety.

And choice (C) points this out by saying that the records could exist but actually show that rather than being safe, the airlines are unsafe.

Choice (E) is incorrect because the argument is in regards to the safety records. The author acknowledges, in the first sentence, that the number of accidents might not be representative of an airline's safety. So, overlooking that the airlines are likely to have "one or more" accidents isn't strong criticism of the argument.

[bbirdwell]

Yep. This one is all about the records. Here's the argument in a nutshell:

p:
1. major airlines have long-standing records that indicate their safety
2. small airlines don't have reliable records

C: major airlines are safer


What's the big assumption here? That merely having records = being safe!

(C) brings attention to this idea.

[timmydoeslsat]

I was tripped up on this one in my timed section.

I picked A. I understand that the presence of reliable safety records for the major airline does not imply that the major airline is safe.

I was down to A and C on this one.

The conclusion is that passengers are safer on major airline than on one of the newer low-fare airlines.

The argument has left open the possibility that low-fare airlines are safer of course. That is why I picked A. Since we do not know the safety results of these reliable records, they could be indicating that it is not safer.

This one was tough to choose between A and C.

[tamwaiman]

I was tripped up on this one in my timed section.

The argument has left open the possibility that low-fare airlines are safer of course. That is why I picked A. Since we do not know the safety results of these reliable records, they could be indicating that it is not safer.

This one was tough to choose between A and C.

Hi, timmydoeslsat
Maybe the number is not adequate to judge the safety.
And the conclusion comes from the long-standing records in major lines, not the accident number.

[bbirdwell]

The argument has left open the possibility that low-fare airlines are safer of course. That is why I picked A. Since we do not know the safety results of these reliable records, they could be indicating that it is not safer.

(A) doesn't really address this, timmy! Just because the majors have the same total # of accidents as the low-fare airlines, this does not indicate anything about the SAFETY of either airline. Not until we know how OFTEN those accidents occur.

Say the low-fare guys have 10 accidents, and so do majors. If the majors have a billion flights, and the low-fare guys have 12, then we'd wanna go with the majors. If the opposite were true, we'd wanna go with the low-fare guys.

Since this could either way depending on the numbers, then, it's not a great choice.

(C) on the other hand cuts right to safety. All we need here is the CORE to see that (C) is correct: we should choose the majors, because they have longer records.

If that record indicates that I have an 89% chance of crashing, then the conclusion above is severely threatened, wouldn't you say?

I think you could've avoided choosing (A) by really sticking to your understanding of the whole CORE and not only the conclusion. The argument isn't really a numbers game -- it could be, but there's much more emphasis on the presence or absence of records than on statistics, ya know?

[evelina.chang]

I can see why (C) is correct, however, I went with (D), since I reasoned that the argument is mistaken in equating long standing safety records with safety, and I saw (D) kind of fit what I was thinking in my mind.

I think I misunderstood something there...

[bbirdwell]

(D) is a tempting choice. One of way of thinking about it is that it's sort of backwards.

The original argument says something like:
they have reliable records, therefore they're safe.
Which we might think of like this:
reliable records --> safe

(D) says "the ones that are safest are also most reliable," which we might think of like this:
safest --> most reliable.

In other words, the original leaves open the possibility that there is a safe airline out there that does not have reliable records. It mere says that, since majors usually have records, they must be safe.

[joseph.m.kirby]

I think another problem with (D) is that it uses the superlative. The argument doesn't need to assume that the safest airlines are the most reliable in documenting. The focus for the argument is the relationship between low-fare airlines and major airlines and which one is safer (and not necessarily the overall safest).

[ganbayou]

Hi,

Why is A wrong? Because the argument does not have to assume this?
I thought if they want to compare something, they have to have the common denominator...

Thank you

[ohthatpatrick]

What did you think about the discussion of answer choice (A) previously in this thread?

I would add to that discussion that if major airlines and low-fare airlines had the SAME total number of accidents, it would seem like major airlines are safer.

After all, major airlines have "long-standing" records, while "very few low-fare have been in existence long enough" for that to be true.

So the average major airline has been in existence for much longer than the average low-fare airline.

If they've racked up the same total of accidents, that speaks poorly of the low fare airlines.

[estellaW580]

This really fails me. The problem of C for me is that it could be unsafe but nonetheless SAFER than low-fare airlines. The conclusion only said they were SAFER not safe........ I do not understand from this point of view how C weakens. But D may imply a correlation ... which is what I assumed the argument based its conclusion on. more reliable data= safer.......

[Nathand820]

The conclusion is the airline should focus more on the comfort of leisure travelers and less on the comfort of business travelers. Why? Because leisure travelers purchase 80% of the airfares. https://travelsites.com/cheap-flights/

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[mswang7]

I think another problem with (D) is that it uses the superlative. The argument doesn't need to assume that the safest airlines are the most reliable in documenting. The focus for the argument is the relationship between low-fare airlines and major airlines and which one is safer (and not necessarily the overall safest).

If D has said, "The argument assumes there is a direct correlation between the the safety of an airline and and it's reliability to document" would it have been the correct answer?