Q19 - Of all the houses in

[iridium77]

This question has me confused.
Is the flaw the fact that the stimulus attempts to make an evaluation based on a subjective estimate of 'famousness', like the correct answer (e) which uses 'beautiful'?

[timmydoeslsat]

It is an error of determining the degree of something that can be validly inferred.

In this stimulus, we are told that the most famous district in the city is the historic district.

We are told that the old Tyler house is the most famous house in the district.

We cannot infer that the old Tyler house is the most famous house in the city.

An easy way to see the flaw is to analogize it to this:

Team A is the best team in the league. Timmy is the best player on team A.

Therefore, Timmy is the best player on Team A.

Now, although we all know in our hearts that this is true, we can see the flaw in this thinking. Just because Team A is the best team does not mean it has the best players. If Team A did have the best players, and Timmy was the best player on Team A, then yes - Timmy is the best player in the league. But we do not know that Team A has the best players in the league, we know only that they are the best team in the league.

The same holds true for this stimulus. We know that the most famous district is the city. That does not have to mean this district has all of the most famous houses in the city residing in this district.

[sujin91]

Could you explain why D is wrong ?

[sumukh09]

Stimulus says:

There are houses in the a district (think of this as the houses being "parts" and the district being the "whole") and one of the houses is the most famous. Historic district is the most famous in the city (now the district is a part of the whole ie) the district is the part and the city is the whole) therefore the house that is the most famous is the city's most famous house.

Alright, so to break this down: we have something that has a quality (most famous house) that's a part of something larger (the district) and that something larger (which also has the same quality) is also a part of something larger (the city); the argument concludes that house must be the city's most famous house.


D is wrong because of the second sentence and where it says "many more".. we don't care about a relative comparison of the number of fish stores in the harbor area. There is no relative statement in the stimulus ie) saying there's more of something than something else.

[WaltGrace1983]

^ In addition, I think there is a different (though very hard to articulate) flaw going on in (D) that doesn't happen in the original argument. I agree, the problem is exclusively with the "Since there are many more fish stores in the harbor area than anywhere else in the city." It seems to be assuming that the harbor area, because of its concentration of fish stores, has the most exotic. Hmmm I'm really having a hard time explaining why this is flawed.

Can anyone help?

Could you correct (D) by stating, "Of all the fish in the harbor area, Miller's has the most exotic selection of fish. Since the harbor area has the most exotic selection of fish in the city, Miller's must have the most exotic selection of fish."

it seems that this might be a valid argument and I think what is giving me problems is the adjective "exotic." I feel like it would depend on if we were talking about most exotic selection in terms of number or some very-hard-to-define measurement of "exotic."

Hmmm....

[ohthatpatrick]

Yeah, it's hard to dig in mathematically to the idea of 'most exotic'.

If we say that there are 100 total varieties of fish out there, with 20 of them being in the 'exotic' category, you could say that
- Harbor area has most exotic fish (let's say 14 of the 20 can be found there)
- Miller's is the store with the most (let's say 9 of the 20 can be found there)

That still wouldn't mean that Miller's has more exotic fish than any other store in the city.

Some store outside the harbor area might have 11 of the 20 exotic fish. That wouldn't contradict either of our first two stipulations.

The 'hard to articulate' flaw that you're describing for (D) seems to me to be, "Just because there are MORE fish stores in this area doesn't mean that there are MORE varieties of fish in this area."

Hope this helps.