Q6 - Letter to the editor

[monica_luling]

I got it by POE, but I'm not sure I understood it correctly. Here is my thought.

The newspaper ad claims to provide coverage of the most popular sports. "Popular" here means most liked by students.
The author of the letter interprets popular to be "played most by students", based on that, he claims the ad to be false.
C is the correct answer.

Is that right? Can sb plaease clarify? Thanks in advance.

[maryadkins]

Exactly! You nailed it. "Popular" is a word the letter writer takes to mean "played by the most." But maybe basketball games are attended by 10 times as many students as track meets, and that's what the newspaper meant by "popular." Hence, (C) is correct.

As for the other answer choices, we don't have a correlation-causation argument here. So (A) is not correct/doesn't make sense.

(B) suggests we have too small a sample size, but on what basis would we decide this? This is only the right answer to a flaw question when they give you a solid reason to choose it.

(C) is correct.

(D) makes the argument out to be circular logic, but like with (B), you'll usually recognize when this is the case b/c the argument will seem AWFUL. It'll be like, "Jane is tall because Jane sure is tall!" (In my experience this is usually not the correct answer, by the way. It's a common trap answer choice, though.)

(E) nope, it doesn't do this. This would look something like, "The newspaper is wrong because the editors there are the WORST!"

Hope this helps!

[zacbell412]

I originally chose B, and after review I still chose B. I'm having some trouble understanding why C is correct. I mean, I understand your explanation and I see how that could be a reason for criticism, but I still thought B had stronger criticism.

The argument never says how many sports the school has, right? The letter writer only talks about track and basketball. What about the more common sports of baseball and football? Just because the letter writer can show us that track is more popular among students doesn't mean that it is one of the school's "most popular sports." What if 30 percent of students play baseball and 30 percent of student play football? The stim doesn't preclude that the newspaper covers these two sports. This means the newspaper could cover these two sports and give basketball a full page coverage. But the letter writer never looks into all of the sports the school plays, only 2 of them. Thus, he based his conclusion on sample that is too small.

Wouldn't inferring that the newspaper meant mot popular to watch and not most popular to play been an unjust inference?

[vstoever]

I originally chose B, and after review I still chose B. I'm having some trouble understanding why C is correct. I mean, I understand your explanation and I see how that could be a reason for criticism, but I still thought B had stronger criticism.

The argument never says how many sports the school has, right? The letter writer only talks about track and basketball. What about the more common sports of baseball and football? Just because the letter writer can show us that track is more popular among students doesn't mean that it is one of the school's "most popular sports." What if 30 percent of students play baseball and 30 percent of student play football? The stim doesn't preclude that the newspaper covers these two sports. This means the newspaper could cover these two sports and give basketball a full page coverage. But the letter writer never looks into all of the sports the school plays, only 2 of them. Thus, he based his conclusion on sample that is too small.

Wouldn't inferring that the newspaper meant mot popular to watch and not most popular to play been an unjust inference?

I would say no because it says the provide coverage for the MOST POPULAR Sports. And yet, track gets NO coverage at all and basketball gets FULL PAGE coverage. Something that is popular does not mean that it has more team players, it means that it is more liked, most enjoyed, people want to watch it, etc. Maybe the track team has more players just because it needs a bigger team whereas basketball team tryouts only allow for a smaller amount of players. The number of team members/players tell us nothing about popularity. Maybe hundreds of people tried out for the basketball team but only 20 made the team, whereas everyone who tried out for track made it on the team.

Also, we can't infer how many different sports teams play at the school. Maybe track and basketball are the only sports.