Q19 - Store owner: My customers are not worried

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Flaw

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Crime isn't reducing the number of people willing to shop at my store.

Evidence: Every day I talk to people who shop at my store; they say they're not worried about crime.

Answer Anticipation:
Sounds like a self-selecting sample, bruh. I bet if we only asked lottery winners "is playing the lottery worthwhile?", we'd get a resounding yes. If we only ask the people who ARE still coming to your store, "is crime keeping you from coming to this store?", you'll get a resounding no. But in order to assess whether some customers ARE worried about crime and are therefore NOT coming to the store, we'd have to also talk to people who are NOT coming to the store.

Correct Answer:
D

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) No, the author's argument isn't "there's only a small amount of evidence for X, thus X is not the case". The author is saying "everyone I talk to says not-X, thus X is not the case."

(B) He isn't appealing to his personal opinions. He is appealing to the opinions of others.

(C) The conclusion is specifically about his store, not the whole neighborhood. When he says "his customers aren't worried about crime in the whole neighborhood", it's not generalizing. His customers told him that they are not worried [about crime in this neighborhood].

(D) YES, this is definitely a biased sample, because by definition of their being in the store, these customers are clearly going to say they aren't too scared to come to the store. If we asked people whether they prefer iPhones or Samsung phones at an Apple store, we'd be similarly getting a biased sample.

(E) Would it weaken the argument if we knew crime is hurting the neighborhood, although not hurting businesses? No, if anything it sounds like it strengthens the author's conclusion that crime is not adversely affecting his business.

Takeaway/Pattern: Sampling is one of the Ten Famous flaws. If someone's evidence is, "The people I know ... The people I asked ... The examples I've seen ...", then we have strong reason to be concerned about sample size and representativeness. In this case, it doesn't seem very illuminating to the question of "are people too scared to visit this store?" to only ask people who visit the store.

#officialexplanation