Q8 - There is ample evidence that the model of car

[lichenrachel]

I don't see how A weakens the argument. Even if the model of car that was stolen most often last year was indeed the most common model of car in the country, how does it weaken the conclusion that the model of the car still affects the chances that it gets stolen?

Many thanks in advance.

[bbirdwell]

Time and again we see that understanding the choices is dependent on a good understanding of the argument itself.

It's very important to see that this is a causal conclusion. The author states that the model of car "greatly affects" the chances of being stolen. Paraphrased, this is like saying that a car being a certain model can cause it to be stolen.

And what is the evidence for this conclusion? That the top stolen model last year was also the top stolen model the year before.

(A) weakens this reasoning because it proposes another possible reason that this particular model of car was stolen because it was a certain model. The choice brings up the idea that it could have been stolen so much simply because it's the most common car out there. If there are more of a certain car, that's a good reason to suspect it might be stolen more often. And then, it's not being stolen more because it's a certain model, but because it's more available.

This is a tricky one to spot on a first pass through the choices. A good strategy here, as always, is process of elimination. Here's what that might look like:

(A) introduces another possible "cause." Maybe.
(B) there can be other affects, no problem. Eliminate!
(C) well, high resale value is probably dependent on the model. If anything, this strengthens. Eliminate.
(D) Eliminate! The argument doesn't say that's the ONLY way.
(E) not even close.
"Hmm. Must be A after all..."

Hope that helps...

[sloan_galler]

I did not ask this question, and funny enough I got it right initally. I did, however, have a hard time (spent a long time) deciding between D and A ... Your reasoning why D is incorrect goes a long way ...

Thank you. I find I get stuck on this too often, and I guess I assume that the wrong only is in the conclusion, but indeed it is not! Thanks.

[timmydoeslsat]

(A) introduces another possible "cause." Maybe.
(B) there can be other affects, no problem. Eliminate!

Hope that helps...

But isn't B another possible cause?

I saw both of these options as other causes the author did not consider. Perhaps it was not the model of car that caused it to be the one likely stolen, but rather the age of the car. For example, in 2011, a 2012 Camry is the one most often stolen, and the year prior to that, a 2011 Camry is the one most often stolen. Instead of it being about a "Camry" and it is about the year (age).

[bbirdwell]

The argument is that "model greatly affects."

(B) says, "age greatly affects." Great. These two go together just fine. There's no conflict here, because there's room in the original argument for other things to greatly affect.

(A) could be thought of as being more about numbers than cause, I guess. The most common car gets stolen the most. That indicates a sort of correlation that makes it somewhat less likely that the thieves are choosing the car based on model than that they're just stealing proportionately to the general pool of cars.

This is why my process went down the way it did. Four choices can be confidently eliminated, and the one left over isn't perfect, but it's reasonable.

[t-haga-k42]

Hello,

Unfortunately, I still do not understand the difference between choice A and B.
Although I have chosen A when doing this problem, I chose it because of my gut feeling, and because I thought that choice B merely adds another cause to the argument, but not necessarily replaces it (?)
May that be the right reasoning?

[ohthatpatrick]

Yes, you're basically right.

We don't need it to "replace", but we need it to somehow invalidate the original claim in order to weaken.

If I say "your LSAT score greatly affects your chance of getting into a law school",
does it weaken that claim in any way to say
"your GPA also greatly affects your chances"
?

Of course not. More than one thing can be a causal influence on the same thing. If the author had claimed something harsher, like "your risk of getting your car stolen depends completely on what model of car it is", then (B) would be an objection.

[hayleychen12]

Hi!
I understand that what seems to makes A plausible: maybe it's not the model but the availability that gets the car to be stolen.

But, isn't model's availability also a character of the model itself? Because this model is most prevalent this year and last year, I think we can perfectly conclude that the model of the car greatly affects the chances that the car be stolen.

Any help!

[LukeM22]

Based on the above analysis, it appears "most often" should be interpreted as the "total number of car thefts" rather than "frequency of car thefts given X number of cars". Is this correct? I ask because when I see the word "often", I instinctively think of a frequency, which I would assume to be more causally connected to a qualitative factor (high resale value) rather than a quantitative factor (total number of cars). Is this the wrong way of approaching it?

I guess another way I would put this is this: if I owned a Honda Civic, I wouldn't expect the fact that many other people own Honda Civics to increase the likelihood that MY Honda Civic would be stolen; on the other hand, if I owned a Benz, I would it find it plausible that the re-sale value of my car would increase the likelihood of it getting stolen.

[ohthatpatrick]

The car "most likely" to be stolen is a per capita, relative idea.

The car "most often" stolen is a quantitative, raw number idea.

You're looking at the list of all car thefts and figuring out which model most often appears on that list.

Hope this helps.

[WilliamS846]

I think the real reason B is incorrect is because of the word "also", it has actually confirmed the causal relation in the argument, but just to add some useless information, this answer would be much better if there is no "also" in it.