Q3 - Despite the enormous number of transactions

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Weaken (claim, not argument)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Claim: a bank's internal audit procedures will normally know if you accidentally got credited with a large sum of money.

Answer Anticipation:
There's no argument/reasoning here, so we just have to find an answer that helps us believe that a bank's internal audit procedures will find out if a random sum of money is suddenly deposited into someone's account.

Correct Answer:
A

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This looks okay. There's a fallback system for large transactions, which is what we're focused on. So a mistake would have to make it past two separate computer programs.

(B) This has nothing to do with someone getting an accidental infusion of money in their account.

(C) This might help the customer spot the unusual credit, but this has nothing to do with the bank's internal procedures.

(D) Slowly increased is not very strong. There's also an implication that "nowadays" we have significantly more transactions than 100 years ago.

(E) We don't care about hackers getting into bank's computers. We care about bank auditors discovering that a bunch of money was accidentally put in someone's account. This answer tells us nothing about how they do that.

Takeaway/Pattern: The only answers that sound like information about a bank's internal audit procedures are (A) and (D). And (D) is very weakly worded, especially since it's counterbalanced by the idea in the stimulus that there are many more transactions nowadays.

#officialexplanation

[imasexybastard]

Could someone please explain why A is the correct answer instead of D?

[dtangie23]

Breaking down the stimulus...

1) Banks process zillions of transactions today.

2) But if your account is accidentally credited with a large sum of money, the bank will somehow, via its internal audit procedure, detect this error.

Look at (A) and (D) a bit closer. (D) really isn't that strong. The ratio between auditors and accounts has slowly increased over the last 100 years.

So the ratio has increased. But does that give us any indication that banks are adequately equipped to deal with the accidental credits to these accounts, especially in such a high-volume environment? Suppose ratio has increased. What if that increase is miniscule? The stimulus gives no reason to believe why that can't be the case.

Now reexamine (A). Banks actually have another set of programs that specifically target large transactions. So large transactions must not only face the scrutiny of an initial blanket review, but also of this second program.

That makes it quite unlikely that accidental large credits to accounts will slip through the cracks. Choice (A) is much more closely tailored to the stimulus.

Just because "auditor" appears in choice (D) and "audit" appears in the stimulus doesn't make (D) automatically correct. Of course, I'm sure that double use of the word wasn't intentional...right LSAC?

[LSAT-Chang]

I think the reason why (D) is incorrect is because it actually weakens the idea.. if the ratio of bank auditors to customer accounts increased (whether slowly or not), it makes it even less likely that it is unlikely for them to detect large amounts since each bank auditor has to deal with more customers. Any thoughts?

Also, I was quite tempted by (C). Does anyone have a strong reason for eliminating (C)?

[ohthatpatrick]

I don't think (D) would weaken.

The conclusion is:
it's extremely likely that the error will be detected by the bank's internal audit procedures.

(I rephrased the double negative of "unlikely it will NOT happen" as "likely it WILL happen")

If the ratio of auditors to customers is increasing, that means the numerator (auditors) is growing faster than the denominator (customers).

That means that each auditor has fewer customers to deal with than auditors did in the past.

If an auditor has fewer customers to deal with, it seems reasonable to think it's more likely the auditor might catch a mistake.

Of course, the original respondent's explanation about how weakly worded, and thus meaningless, (D) is to the original was spot on.

In terms of (C), you're thinking that because a bank has to send a customer a monthly statement, it's more likely that the bank will spot an error?

In order to believe that, you'd have to assume that the bank is actually reading these detailed monthly statements, transaction-by-transaction, in order to spot an error. That's a pretty big assumption.

Or you'd be assuming that the customer would see the error when he gets his monthly statement and alert the bank. That's also a pretty big assumption, since most of us would probably rather keep quiet and hold on to the extra money.

Focus on the fact that this answer only tells you that "a detailed statement is sent to someone", nothing about who reads it and checks it for errors.

Meanwhile, the language of (A) is more directly to related to the issue of whether a bank's internal audit procedures would catch an error.

Let me know if you were thinking (C) would work in a different way, or don't find my reasoning clear/persuasive.

[americano1990]

Just adding something about (D)

The stimulus is simply describing a state of things. Put it basically: we have these crazy number of transactions but error detection is likely."

We want to strengthen this by saying this IS the case, as (A) does.

But (D) is telling about how things have SLOWLY changed since a century ago. Although the adverb 'slowly' makes this answer choice less than desirable, my first reaction when seeing this was that "we dont care." I mean, its good that we get higher auditor to customer ratio than before, but this past to present comparison is of no interest to us here.

Heres an analogy. Lets say we are trying to strengthen the claim "Despite taking 10 more units than an average student at Harvard, Susie manages to ace all her exams."

Choice (A) would be something like "Susie has exceptional organization skills" whereas (D) would be "Susie is more organized now than when she was in kindergarten" So? The point is that since we are only talking about the present circumstances, how things compare now to back then (and espcially if the changes werent that conspicuous) doesnt matter

[vik]

The conclusion is about the audit procedures. A is directly related to these procedures, showing one plus point for them.

D is not related to the procedures. Hence D needs an extra assumption: more auditors lead to a better procedure.

[joseph.m.kirby]

The argument tells us that even though there are an enormous amount of transactions presently, even if a customer mistakenly receives a large sum transaction, the bank's internal audit procedures would most likely catch the error.

(A) focuses on the "internal audit procedure" by telling us what those procedures may be. The procedures are basically a double-check system for "large transactions." Does that arrangement make error detection for large transactions more likely? Yes!

(D) runs amiss because it doesn't focus on the action inside of a person's account (the transactions). It focuses on the auditors to customer ratio (which would not necessarily strengthen the argument). For example, let's say that in the past (1950) 1 auditor monitored 10 customer accounts and each person made 10 transactions a month. Today however (2012), 1 auditor monitors 5 accounts (an increase in ratio) and each person makes 100 transactions a month. Would (D) strengthen? No!

[LolaC289]

I think we would be tripped into thinking all five choices attractive if we weren't clear what the task is, since all 5 answer choices have something to do with promoting the safety of money transactions in banks.

However, the argument the author gave is it is unlikely that errors not be detected by some "internal audit procedures". It's not required for us to know or even have some sense of what this "internal audit procedure" means. He assumed that if there happened error, that error would be detected.

Thus the correct answer that supports his argument will boost this point, focusing on detection of error, instead of prevention of error. The main difference between (A) and the rest is while the others are all about banks being better at preventing errors, (A) is all about double-checking possible mistakes. IF errors were prevented in the first place, then our author's argument about errors becoming easier to detected would be irrelevant. because hello, no errors for you to discover!

Hope this helps.