Q15 - Advertisement: In a carefully controlled

[hyewonkim89]

I was so careless with this question it was a flaw question with typical flaw question answer choices... Yikes.

Now that I re-did the question, I was easily able to eliminate the wrong answers but I need some help on understanding the right answer, (A).

Since the study was carried out with five GROUPS of volunteers, it could have been possible that only 51% of each group preferred Sparkle Cola to competing colas.

So while the Conclusion is saying that Sparkle Cola is more favorable (which is true for each group), it might not be true that every volunteer in all groups prefers Sparkle Cola. And this is what (A) means?

Any help would be appreciated!

[hhyu1]

Sparkle Cola elicits a more favorable response from consumers than its competition. Why? Because most of the volunteers said they prefer Sparkle Cola.

The author doesn't specify if the responses are from most of the volunteers OR if the responses are from most of groups of volunteers.

For example, if there were 3 volunteers in each of the 5 groups (totaling to 15 volunteers) and if 14 of the 15 volunteers prefer Sparkle Cola, then the argument is indeed valid. HOWEVER! It could also be that 4 of the 5 groups (of volunteers) prefer Sparkle Cola, which can also make the argument valid.

Answer choice (A) essentially calls out this flaw. The author basically overlooks the possibility between responses from the entire group of volunteers vs. responses from the separate groups.

[rinagoldfield]

Hi Hye,

Sorry for the delayed response on this one!

As you noted, this is a flaw question. Our task is to point out logic holes in the author’s argument.

Here’s the argument:

Premise: Most of the volunteers said they preferred Sparkle Cola to the competing cola tested.

Conclusion: Sparkle Cola elicits a more favorable response from consumers than any of the competing colas tested.

(Aside: I love the name Sparkle Cola. I wish there was really a soda called Sparkle Cola.)

I found it hard to spot the flaw at first, and needed the answer choices to help me out. Let’s eliminate the wrong answer choices. As we do this, bear in in mind that our task is to evaluate the relationship between the premise and the conclusion, not the conclusion in general. The advertisement bases its claim on the result of the blind taste test, so we want something that connects to that.

(B) brings up the issue of expensive-ness. Price is irrelevant here, since we’re talking about a narrowly controlled experiment with blinded volunteers. Eliminate (B) as out of scope.

(C) is also out of scope. The conclusion explicitly compares Sparkle Cola to the other "competing colas tested." Colas that were NOT tested are irrelevant.

(D) is, again, out of scope! Packaging is relevant to consumer preferences, but not in the context of this BLIND taste test. Remember, this argument is only about what we can conclude from that test.

(E) is also out of scope! The conclusion compares colas to colas. Who cares about other beverages.

So why is (A) supported?

Let’s think about the study a little more. Let’s say there were 100 volunteers broken into 5 groups of 20. Group 1 compared Sparkle Cola to Cola V, Group 2 compared it to Cola W, Group 3 to Cola X, Group 4 to Cola Y, and Group 5 to Cola Z.

We know that most of these volunteers preferred Sparkle Cola to the other cola they tried. This means that most of the total 100 volunteers preferred Sparkle Cola, not that most of the volunteers in each group preferred Sparkle Cola.

Why does this distinction matter? Let’s say 75 volunteers preferred Sparkle Cola. In this case, it could be true that 15 volunteers from groups 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 preferred Sparkle Cola to whatever other cola they tested. In this case, the conclusion would be valid.

But.

It could also be true that the 75 volunteers who preferred Sparkle Cola were unevenly distributed among the groups. 20 members of Groups 1, 2, and 3 could have preferred Sparkle Cola. Then 15 members of Group 4 could have preferred Sparkle Cola, while 5 members of Group 4 preferred Cola Y. And then all 20 members of Group 5 could have preferred Cola Z to Sparkle Cola.

In the above scenario, it’s true that most of the overall volunteers preferred Sparkle Cola to any competing cola. But Cola Z individually beat Sparkle Cola in the taste test, making the conclusion invalid.

Answer choice (A) gets at this flaw. It points out that the argument generalizes from the whole group (most prefer Sparkle Cola) to the subgroups (most in each group prefer Sparkle Cola).

Hope that helps!

[nbayar1212]

Please look over my reasoning and let me know if I am missing something. I would really appreciate it.

I don't understand the reasoning behind why D is wrong.
It doesn't seem as obviously wrong to me. Here is why:

The premises are about a group of volunteers, drinking cola to test the taste.
The conclusion is about consumers, and makes a general claim about "a more favorable response."

The most clear problem to me seems that the conclusion is significantly more broad than the premises i.e. just because people said Sparkling Cola tastes the best it doesn't mean that their overall responses to Sparkling Cola will be more favorable than the other competing colas.

Here is an analogy: We are testing whether Nike shirts are the SOFTEST shirts and blindfold people and have them compare the softness to competing shirt companies. Wouldn't it be flawed to conclude that therefore Nike shirts elicit a more favorable response than any of the other shirts tested (notice the last word in the stimulus is "tested" and not "tasted"). I mean, people might hate Nike because their stuff isn't produced in the US, they use child labor, pollute the environment, etc. All of those things might make people hate Nike despite their softness.

I think D seems wrong for a different reason.

It seems to assume that the stimulus says something like "therefore, the only thing that consumers care about is the taste" and then AC D comes in and says you are overlooking the fact that there may be other reasons why people will like Sparkling Cola.

D seems like it would be RIGHT if it said "Overlooks that many people may still prefer other cola brands to Sparkling Cola for reasons other than taste."

Sorry for the long post, but can an expert give me their thoughts on this?

[maryadkins]

You have identified a different flaw to this question, and I think it's a fair one. In addition to the math problem, we have the term shift"”although that isn't the issue the question ends up focusing on. But I think it's a great thought exercise you've done to rewrite (D) and agree that if it read as you re-wrote it, (D) would work.

[tangdanni422]

Bonus flaw question:

say if Sparkle Cola elicits a more favorable response within all of the 5 smaller groups than the other brand compared individually, and conclusion is Sparkle Cola elicits a more favorable response than other brands from volunteers in general. Is there a flaw?

I think there probably is a flaw. For example, within the smaller group Sparkle vs Cola A, even if the volunteers may prefer Sparkle than Cola A, they probably would prefer Cola B than Sparkle in another test, especially when giving a tasting test among Sparkle and 5 other Cola brands together.

[maryadkins]

As I read what you wrote, that is THE flaw as stated in (A).

[branjof94]

Don't fully understand why D is still wrong. I picked it cause I saw a mismatch between the Volunteers and the Consumers. Am I applying the concept of anticipating the flaw incorrectly?

[maryadkins]

That's a good prephrase. But (D) doesn't match it, anyway, so I'm not sure how it bears on (D)—if "people" in (D) refers to consumers, and they DO in fact prefer Sparkle because of its packaging or price, what would that do to the conclusion? Nothing. It could still be true—consumers could have a "favorable response to it." (D) is out of scope because it's impossible to tell how it bears on the argument, while (A) captures an actual problem with the study itself, albeit not the one you prephrased (that's okay; that happens, and it's still useful to prephrase!): since each volunteer only tasted Sparkle and ONE other soda, how can we say they prefer Sparkle to ALL the other sodas?

[contropositive]

I understand why A is right but when I initially read this argument I thought the problem with it was generalization flaw. The author concluded about consumers preference in general based on these volunteers preference so i anticipated an answer choice about unrepresentative or part-to-whole. Would that be the correct answer if it was listed? I kind of see how A points that out a bit...

[maryadkins]

I don't know if I'd consider that a flaw here since we're told it is a carefully controlled study. If it were a flaw to draw a general conclusion based on a carefully controlled study, all conclusions based on studies would be flawed. And maybe you think that's true (and maybe it IS true), but when the LSAT gives you the phrase "carefully controlled study," the flaw they are looking for is not likely to be that the conclusion is a generalization based on a small "part," or sample.

[huskybins]

I second this type of flaw as it is more convincing to me.

Bonus flaw question:

say if Sparkle Cola elicits a more favorable response within all of the 5 smaller groups than the other brand compared individually, and conclusion is Sparkle Cola elicits a more favorable response than other brands from volunteers in general. Is there a flaw?

I think there probably is a flaw. For example, within the smaller group Sparkle vs Cola A, even if the volunteers may prefer Sparkle than Cola A, they probably would prefer Cola B than Sparkle in another test, especially when giving a tasting test among Sparkle and 5 other Cola brands together.

[Ozymandias]

I'd consider this a "Weaken" question, not a "Flaw."

Why is this wrong?

[ohthatpatrick]

Do you think there IS such a thing as a "Flaw" question type?

If so, this is one of them.
"vulnerable to criticism" = "how is this argument flawed"

If you don't think that Flaw questions are their own type, you could make a semi-coherent case for combining Weaken and Flaw into only one question type, because there is some bleed over.

But the tasks are fundamentally pretty different.

WEAKEN:
Which of the new facts we're about to give you would alter your impression of the argument negatively?

FLAW:
Can you currently describe what is wrong with this argument?

[LolaC289]

UPDATE:

I get it now. Because it is assigned Sparkle and one other Cola in each group. And the "other cola" in each group is different. Therefore, in order to prove SC beats each one of the other five cola, it has to be the case within each group.

[BharathL67]

My brain is about to explode thinking about this, but I feel like the stimulus committed to flaws... can anyone comment on my below thoughts?

I understand the above "we don't know whether the people that equally liked Sparkle Cola were equally distributed throughout the 5 groups" flaw.

But lets just say that that the Sparkle Cola-likers were evenly distributed across the 5 groups... it still wouldn't be possible to conclude that Sparkle Cola is "the most liked", simply because the volunteers were only allowed to compare Sparkle Cola to one other Cola type at any given time. Hypothetically, if you were to "shuffle' the volunteers, its totally possible that they would have preferred the other Cola.

Is this fair?

This additional flaw was a huge distraction for me.

[ohthatpatrick]

I think you're right about that 2nd flaw, although for it to make sense you have to think that different volunteers would have different preferences.

Let's say that Zazzle Cola really would have gotten the most votes if the whole pool of volunteers were to have tried all six colas.

But, as dumb luck would have it, the people in the Sparkle vs. Zazzle group were an atypical sample of people who would surprisingly favor Sparkle over Zazzle.

Had we shuffled the participants, a more representative sample of the volunteers would have given Zazzle the win in a Sparkle vs. Zazzle showdown.

The only problem with that type of thinking is the intro phrase, "In a carefully controlled study ..."

I'm not sure whether that really disqualifies our storyline where the Sparkle vs. Zazzle group had an "atypical sample" of the volunteers, but it might.

Either way, we feel ya. But stay flexible when you're interpreting answers --- it's common on Flaw that we have a totally valid reaction to the argument, but the correct answer is testing a different problem.