Q26 - Historian: Flavius, an ancient Roman

[giladedelman]

26. (B)
Question Type: Identify the Flaw
The historian concludes on the basis of the number of satirical plays written about Flavius that this Roman governor, who removed state funding for the arts, was widely unpopular. But playwrights are unlikely to be a representative sample in this case, because Flavius’s policy directly and negatively affected them. Maybe most of the public loved the Flav, but the playwrights were pretty ticked off about him cutting off their funding! Answer (B) identifies the author’s oversight of this potential sample bias.

(A) is tempting, but wrongly equates a play that satirizes a person with a play that is explicitly about that person.
(C) is incorrect. The historian identifies a specific way in which Flavius tried to discourage the arts.
(D) is out of scope. The historian never addresses Flavius’s success or lack thereof.
(E) is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether these were widely regarded as virtues.

[perng.yan]

could you please explain answer (A) more thoroughly?

let's say the percentage of satirical plays about Flavius was only 0.001% and that so many more plays didn't even talk about Flavius.. (since "large number" can be small when compared to an even larger number).

wouldn't that be a flaw in the argument?

thanks!!

[giladedelman]

You're right that the percentage of favorable vs. unfavorable plays could be relevant here. But again, answer (A) is talking about plays "that were not explicitly about Flavius." That doesn't help us at all here, because a play can satirize someone without being explicitly about that person. So even if 99% of plays written were not explicitly about Flavius, they could still have been satirizing him.

Does that answer your question?

[perng.yan]

hm... yes.. so the issue is not about sample size here? it's more about how the sample may be biased?

[giladedelman]

Yep, exactly right. The problem is sample bias, not sample size.

[T.J.]

I find this question to be peculiar in family of flaw questions.
The historian first acknowledges that playwrights might be potentially biased because of what Flavius did, and then uses the satirical plays as the support for his argument. Isn't the flaw just obvious? You admit that your sample might be partial and you still go on and use it as your support?
I'm not being cocky here, cause I honestly think that this would still be a legit question with less information given in the stimulus.
Feedback please.

[andrewgong01]

[b]26. (B)

(E) is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether these were widely regarded as virtues.

Was the first sentence until "Also Flavius" just background info? It was stated that Flavius was like a moralist with certain views and "E" is attacking this idea that maybe these "moralist" views were widely accepted and loved in ancient rome. However, I do agree that the main argumentation was from "as we can conclude from the large number of plays" , which gives us a direct link between the premise and the conclusion.

However, this seems like a weird argument because the conclusion is "also Flavius was widely unpopular" where "also" is a weird way to conclude an argument as it intially read like another premise . I intially thought, when I first it, that the conclusion would be like "Therefore Flavius was a bad leader" because people disliked him and he was a 'moralist'.

[EmilyL849]

Hi, everyone

For (A), Wow I did not see plays could be satirical without explicitly mentioning Flavius.

However, is it also correct to think an overall number of “plays that did not explicitly mention F” does not have much relevance here?
So, there are a ton of plays (1,000,000) and let’s say 1,000 plays are about Governor Peter, casting him in funny ways.
As long as 1,000 plays are justifiably large enough number to make a judgment on Governor’s popularity, how many plays overall exist do not matter.

Would this be correct?

Thank you!

[ohthatpatrick]

In response to this ...
For (A), Wow I did not see plays could be satirical without explicitly mentioning Flavius.


We know from the argument that "a large number of satirical plays were written about Flavius". Gilad was pointing out that plays that aren't written about Flavius (maybe they focus on some middle-class married couple in ancient Rome) could still have satirical content aimed at Flavius. But those wouldn't be included in the "large number of plays" the author brings up.

We're really just saying that whether or not a play is ABOUT Flavius tells us very little about whether or not a play satirizes Flavius.

It does us no good to consider, "Out of all the plays written during his administration, what % were about Flavius, and what % were not about him?"

Who cares?

We'd probably be interested in this: "Out of all the plays written about Flavius, what % were satirical and what % cast him in a positive light?"

That would help us assess the author's claim that he was "widely unpopular".

We'd also be interested in knowing whether this "large number of satirical plays" came from many different playwrights (which would help with corroborating "WIDELY unpopular" ) or whether it came from just a couple playwrights who happened to write tons of satirical plays about Flavius.