Q19 - Viewers surveyed immediately after

[GeneW]

Can someone please explain why D is the correct answer?

It will be greatly appreciated if you can also go through the wrong answers especially why B is wrong.

Thank you in advance.

[Yangyi.vita]

Hi, for this question the key point is to locate the conclusion. To me, it is: survey respondents who reported that L's arguments were better may have been biased in favor of L. And the last sentence is the supportive premise to this conclusion.

If we could prove that the respondents voted in favor of L weren't biased to him, then we succeed. From all the four answers, only D addresses to this purpose properly: they were actually in favor of T, so their votes shall not be considered biased towards L.

As for B: if they really thought T was more persuasive, but they ended up voting for L, it is just the demonstration of being biased to L, right?

Make sense?

[tommywallach]

Hey All,

Yangyi made some good points here, but I thought I'd take it all the way through.

Conclusion: Respondents who said Lopez was better may have been biased.

Premise: Lopez won election

The assumption here is that most people watching the debate were already Lopez fans (because most people voted for Lopez), so they were biased.

(A) This doesn't change the fact that the people who DID watch the debate could have been biased.

(B) This tells us only about the live audience people, but our conclusion is about everyone (specifically, the people who DID think that Lopez made the better arguments).

(C) This is a devious comparison trap. We know that the people who watched the debate were more likely to vote for Tanner than were people who didn't watch the debate. But that could simply mean that 3% of people who watched debate wanted to vote for Tanner, and 2% of the people who didn't. It still wouldn't tell us if most of the people responding to the survey were Lopez fans.

(D) This one finally tells us that most of the viewers were Tanner fans, so their saying that Lopez made better arguments wasn't biased.

(E) is totally irrelevant.

Hope that helps!

-t

[tian.application]

actually after got it wrong first time, got it right second time and wrong again the 3rd time, i think there is an easy way to tell which answers are wrong - A/B/C/E all four of them are not comparing the same group of people --> viewers

(A) says who voted --> NO
(B) says most people in the live audience --> NO
(C) says people who watched televised debated --> NO, because there might be even more people watch debate in person, which is key for us to untangle the mystery
(E) completed irrelevant

only (D) gave us a right group to compare --> viewers (same ambiguity presumably refers to the same group of people?)

I know this sounds tricky but if time runs out during the actual test i feel this could be a pretty good tactic.

[GeneW]

Thank you for the explanations.

[dean.won]

ughh i dont think im understanding this correctly

i crossed out d because what if the ppl surveyed immediately before were completely different from the ppl surveyed after?
wouldnt this mean that the survey respondents afterwards could still have been biased in favor of lopez?

or... does the fact that lopez won (thus the majority was in favor of lopez) create some kind of unresolvable overlap?

sorry if none of this makes sense..

[tangdanni422]

Just curious about how to get the assumption that "most tv viewers were already L fans?"

Thanks in advance!

[tommywallach]

Hey Tang,

We get there because it connects up the premise (Lopez won the election) with the conclusion (people were biased).

The argument is assuming that the people watching thought Lopez did better because they ALREADY liked him (that's why they went out voted for the guy). This assumes that the people watching are mostly Lopez fans. If the people watching were mostly Tanner fans, then if they believed Lopez did well in the debate, it can't be because of bias.

-t

[kyuya]

I got this question right in blind review but honestly it makes my brain hurt. In blind review I realized exactly why it was correct, however, still ... it takes me a while to fully comprehend for some reason.

I think this question is difficult because the argument is not made very clearly in my opinion. There is an assumption that is implicitly made which supports the authors argument, and that is made clear by the last line beginning with "After all...".

Argument breakdown:

Premise: The opinion of people who watched the televised debate who said Lopez had better arguments may be biased. Why?


Conclusion: because Lopez won the election.

What is the implicit assumption here? It is assuming that since Lopez won the election most people voted for him (duh and this is true BUT..) it also assumes that a lot of people who ALREADY wanted to vote for Lopez were watching the televised debate.

What happens if this assumption was not true - and a lot of the people watching the televised debate actually thought previous to the debate that Tanner was their guy? It would mean that the people who watched the televised debate changed their minds because Lopez's arguments were so compelling - and therefore bias is not an issue. In fact, even despite their bias in the other direction, Lopez has them convinced he is making better arguments.

Lets go through the answer choices, because they are also extremely difficult to eliminate.

(A)

Lets imagine most people who voted in the election that Lopez won did not watch the debate.

This means at least 51% of people did not watch the debate. Does this now mean, that the televised debate could not have been a vast majority of Lopez supporters? We are still left with a 49% of people who may have watched the debate - and indeed, may have composed the vast majority of people who watched the televised debate.

What does this mean? it means that the argument made in the stimulus actually is not weakened at all. It is actually very consistent with the argument, and therefore has no real logical force.

This answer choice is tough because you really have to know what "most" means and be able to tell what the implication of this word is on the likelihood of weakening the argument.

(B) The key here is that even if people in the live audience thought Tanner was more persuasive than Lopez, we have no idea how many people were at the live event. Perhaps the live audience made up only a small fraction of people who viewed this televised event, and therefore their opinions are not all that telling of the overall feelings of people and what their apparent bias may or may not be.

In other words, just like (A), this argument is pretty consistent with the facts given and provide no grounds for weakening it.

(C) The issue with this question comes in the latter part of the sentence ".. than were the people who did not watch the debate."

If we dig deeper, what does this really tell us about the feelings of these people? Is it possible that even though one group is more likely to vote for someone, that they still won't do it anyway?

Consider this parallel with two groups of kids who just hate apples. Although they both hate apples, one group is more likely to eat an apple than the other. Does that mean an apple being eaten is likely, however? No! This relationship does not tell us much about the overall possibility of an event happening.

Therefore, knowing that the people who watched the debate were more likely to vote for Tanner than the people who did not watch doesn't tell us much. Even if they were more likely, it is consistent with the idea that they are die hard Lopez fans and still will not vote for Lopez.

It tells us so little that ultimately I think it is irrelevant. We can't draw any solid conclusions from this.

(D) Okay here is the right answer..

If we know that most people who viewed the debate were more likely to vote for Tanner, yet conceded that Lopez made the better arguments it eliminates the idea of bias being present.

Why?

Because they already favor Tanner, but realize the other candidate is making great points. As I alluded to in the first part of the post, this actually means Lopez must have done an especially good job for him to make these voters look past their own bias and vote for him even in spite of them not leaning toward him previous to the debate.

(E) This does nothing to tell us about potential bias in the viewing! A closer election tells us nothing about the people who watched this debate and what their feelings were toward these two candidates. We NEED to know what the candidates that watched this event previously thought in order to draw a conclusion about bias. This tells us nothing.

[nibs7985]

Hey!

D says "most of the viewers surveyed immediately prior to the debate said that they would probably vote for Tanner"

I was hesitant to choose this answer because I felt that it required an additional assumption that wouldn't be warranted.

Namely, that those who were surveyed immediately prior to the debate were the same people who were surveyed immediately after (which is the group of people that the author claims are biased toward Lopez).

Can you clear this up for me please?

Thanks a ton!

Hey All,

Yangyi made some good points here, but I thought I'd take it all the way through.

Conclusion: Respondents who said Lopez was better may have been biased.

Premise: Lopez won election

The assumption here is that most people watching the debate were already Lopez fans (because most people voted for Lopez), so they were biased.

(A) This doesn't change the fact that the people who DID watch the debate could have been biased.

(B) This tells us only about the live audience people, but our conclusion is about everyone (specifically, the people who DID think that Lopez made the better arguments).

(C) This is a devious comparison trap. We know that the people who watched the debate were more likely to vote for Tanner than were people who didn't watch the debate. But that could simply mean that 3% of people who watched debate wanted to vote for Tanner, and 2% of the people who didn't. It still wouldn't tell us if most of the people responding to the survey were Lopez fans.

(D) This one finally tells us that most of the viewers were Tanner fans, so their saying that Lopez made better arguments wasn't biased.

(E) is totally irrelevant.

Hope that helps!

-t

[maria487]

(C) This is a devious comparison trap. We know that the people who watched the debate were more likely to vote for Tanner than were people who didn't watch the debate. But that could simply mean that 3% of people who watched debate wanted to vote for Tanner, and 2% of the people who didn't. It still wouldn't tell us if most of the people responding to the survey were Lopez fans.

I wanted to elaborate on C because I still struggled with it after reading the explanation. This AC is comparing 2 groups of people: those who watched the debate and those who didn't. It's telling us that it's more likely that the viewers would vote for Tanner as opposed to non-viewers. This AC has very little power though, because, for example, if 3% of the viewers wanted to vote for Tanner, and 2% of non-viewers wanted to vote for Tanner, then the conditions of the AC are being met. However, given those rates (of 3% and 2%), that doesn't help the argument at all! 97% of the viewers still favor Lopez, which means that it still could very well be bias which makes survey respondents think that Lopez did better in the debate. This does not weaken the idea that bias influenced the survey results.

[JoyZ920]

I had trouble eliminating C as well.

But I think if C is right, then it actually supports the argument a little bit. The argument is talking about if Lopez's arguments were better.

C is saying that, people who watched the debate were more likely to vote for Tanner than those who didn't watch. I guess it's assuming that Tanner made better arguments in the debate.

Thus, for people who watched the debate but still voted for Lopez, they are biased, because otherwise they would be convinced by Tanner's better arguments.

So I think it helps the argument.

[JeremyK460]

Breakdown:
Viewers surveyed immediately after the televised political debate last year between Lopez and Tanner tended to think that Lopez made better arguments.

Lopez eventually won the election.

But these survey respondents who favored Lopez's arguments may have been biased in favor of Lopez.

Analysis:
Lopez won the election, but perhaps the survey respondents were not biased in favor of Lopez.

Answer Choices:
(A) I know nothing about the numbers of the election, or its relationship with those who didn’t watch the debate. This answer would have to play off that sort of information. I could play out the numbers, but the results are bidirectional. The argument is about people who watched the debate; this answer is about its complementary class (nonviewers). The argument doesn’t indicate any relevance of this class.

(B) This is about ‘most people in the live audience thought Tanner’ and the argument is about ‘most tv viewers survey thought Lopez’. Information about a class that is seemingly contrary to the class talked about in the argument is going to have a tough time impacting the rationale.

(C) The first part is pretty satisfying, but the last part is where it shows its faults. This comparison is not warranted: tv viewers of the debate evaluated against non-tv viewers of the debate on the basis of being more likely to support Tanner. This evaluates the wrong items. The argument evaluates ‘viewers who surveyed after’ and ‘viewers who are biased / perhaps not biased in favor of Lopez’. This compares a class with its complementary class on the basis of evaluating relative support for Tanner.

(D) Those who are biased in favor of Lopez must’ve gone into the debate loving Lopez. This answer says most viewers surveyed before the debate were team-Tanner. It’s possible then that the viewers who polled after the debate changed their minds. This states that ‘most of the viewers surveyed before said Tanner’ and the argument states that ‘most of the viewers surveyed after said Lopez’. This could shift the burden of proof back onto the author who would be forced to (maybe) get into the numbers.

Most V are T before D
Most V are L after D
Some T before D are L after D

(E) I don’t know what the significance is of the election being won by a narrow margin.