Q21 - The only songs Amanda has ever written are blues song

[raiderz4lf]

Can someone help me understand why answer choice C is incorrect?

[kkw539]

I think the issue here is the difference between "the next song" in the stimulus and "any pet the Gupta family ever owns" in C).

In E) it perfectly matches the stimulus by saying "the next pet the Gupta family owns".

[christine.defenbaugh]

That's exactly it, kkw539!

We need to match up each and every piece of this argument. Let's start by laying out the core:

PREMISE:
1) The only songs Amanda has written are blues and punk.
2) Most punk are 3 chords or fewer.
CONCLUSION: If Amanda's next song is not blues, it probably won't have more than 3 chords.

Each answer choice has at least some matching elements here, but each incorrect answer choice twists something! Notice that some answer choices jumble up the order of sentences, but that's okay!

Let's take a look at each wrong answer choice:

(A) "if the next pet is a parrot" is not parallel to "if the next song is not blues". The original argument makes a leap from 'not blues' to 'punk' to get to the conclusion that the song will likely not have more than 3 chords. This answer choice misses that leap by using a trigger "if parrot". The trigger "if NOT fish" would have been parallel!
(B) The conclusion here has two major differences from the original. First, this is a conclusion about the past, while the original conclusion was a prediction about the future. Second, the original conclusion claimed that song type allowed us to predict a characteristic; this conclusion claimed that the characteristic of the pet allows us to predict the type!
(C) As mentioned above, this conclusion goes much further than our original - this is a claim about ANY pet they will EVER own! The original was a prediction about the next song only.
(D) This conclusion focuses on the wrong pet type. The original conclusion's trigger was "if not blues", while the premise was "most punk". In this answer, the premise is "most parrots", while the conclusion's trigger is "if not a parrot"!

Remember to match up each item, logical line by logical line!

Please let me know if this helped clear things up a bit!