Q16 - Voter: Our prime minister is evidently seeking

[mshinners]

Question Type:
Match the Flaw

Stimulus Breakdown:
Seeking job → Time abroad
Time abroad
Therefore, seeking job

Answer Anticipation:
This is a hallmark example of an illegal reversal.

Correct Answer:
(D)

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Wrong flaw. This is a quantifier error (going from "most" to "all").

(B) Wrong flaw (unwarranted assumption). This argument doesn't establish a conditional relationship, so it can't commit an illegal reversal. Instead, this argument assumes that the candidate with better ideas and more experience will win.

(C) Wrong flaw (correlation/causation). Correlation: As A happened, B happened. Causation: "able to control"

(D) Bingo.
Negotiating loan → Go to bank
Went to bank
Therefore, negotiating loan

(E) Wrong flaw (absence of evidence). It uses a failure to prove a claim (he never committed a crime) as evidence that the opposite is true (he has).

Takeaway/Pattern: Clearly finding the type of flaw committed by the stimulus, as well as having familiarity with the other flaws to eliminate answers that commit a different one, helps again! Download those flaw flashcards and get to work.

#officialexplanation

[andrewgong01]

A slight flaw in "D" I found was that the conditional is "People who want a loan go to a bank to meet with a loan agent"

But choice D only tells us the person went to a bank and not the person went to the bank to meet a loan agent (maybe the loan agent was the person's personal friend). "D" would have been better if it had said "People who want a person loan go to a bank" then "D" would match with the original stimulus...


Hence, at first I was reluctant to see this as a match but all the other choices were not even close.

[JinZ551]

one thing I notice here is that, there is a term shift between principle condition and the applied condition in the original argument:

principle condition: "spend a lot of time traveling abroad"
applied condition: "spent more days abroad THAN at home so far this year"

spending more days abroad than at home does not necessarily mean spending "A LOT OF" time abroad.

so in the similar reasoning we see in answer choice D, there should be no surprise to see a similar term shift:

principle condition: "go to the bank to meet with a loan agent"
applied condition: "at the bank yesterday."

Being at the bank does not necessarily mean meeting with a loan agent.
Thus it is a perfect match structure with the original argument in the stimulus!!