Q2- Twenty Percent of the population of Springhill

[lolitatrekkie]

I am confused why answer choice B is correct and not D?

When I read the stimulus to this question I thought the flaw was that it was confusing proportion with amount but when I went to the answer choice it didn't address that. Instead I reread the conclusion and thought that the flaw was that it from the 50% of the citizens that went to Italy and France went to Europe when in fact the citizens could have went to a different European country besides Italy and France which was why I picked D.

Thank you!

[ohthatpatrick]

Good instincts seeing the 20% and 30% premises and anticipating a percent to amount switch.

Is "half" a percent or a number?

It's a percent (50%). It's still relative. So we didn't make a switch from proportion to number.

In order for the answer choice to be correct here, it has to help us tell the author that her conclusion could be wrong.

She thinks that 50% of Springhill has been to Europe at least once in the last five years.

If we're telling her she might be wrong, we're arguing "less than 50% of Springhill residents have been to Europe at least once in the last five years".

Does (D) help us do that? It suggests that there are even MORE people who have been to Europe in the last five years.

Whether they went to Italy, France, or some other European country, they still went to Europe. So how is that interfering with the truth of the author's conclusion?

Meanwhile (B) is saying that the 20% and 30% figures don't represent distinct groups of people, so you can't just add them together to get 50%.

Let's say that there are ten members in our family.
Bill and Jane, 20% of our family, like spaghetti.
Bill, Jane, and Kurt, 30% of our family, like rigatoni.

Can we say at this point that 50% of our family likes pasta?

We can't. We only have evidence that 3 family members (30%) like pasta.

The author is assuming that the Italy group and the France group are all unique people, thus she thinks she can add them together.

But (B) is pointing out that if some people are in both groups, then you don't have as many people as you think you do.

This is in the realm of % vs. amount, but it's more about the idea that two separate % facts might have overlapping members.

== other answers ==

(A) That doesn't hurt the author's argument. She's only trying to prove that at least half of Springhill has been to Europe, so there's plenty of room for many Springhill residents to have not gone to Italy, France, or any other European country.

(C) This actually drifts towards strengthening the argument, because it's doing the opposite of what (B) is doing.

(E) "More than once" wouldn't do anything to hurt the author's claim about "at least once".

Hope this helps.