Q22 - some people believe that saying that an organization i

[mitrakhanom1]

I'm confused as to why the answer is D. i originally picked C.
I diagrammed it, but felt my diagram wasn't helpful in picking an answer.

OH-s->HOO
BC--> OH
PW--> -BC

OH= organization is hierarchical
HOO=how that organization is organized
BC=bureaucratically controlled
PW=public works department

Please let me know how to fix my diagram if its incorrect. please elaborate on each of the answer choices why they are wrong and include the diagram in each answer choice as part of the explanation if applicable. thanks

[christine.defenbaugh]

Great question mitrakhanom1! First, I think it's great that you noticed that there was a lot of conditional language here that seemed like it might be worth diagramming. Two things led you astray though. First, not every sentence in the stimulus lends itself to a perfect conditional diagram. Second, your diagram looks like the way we might diagram an argument, with premises above the line and the conclusion below it. But this is an inference question!

Since it's an inference question, we know that we're going to be given a list of facts. We just need to keep track of what each fact is really saying, and determine which answer gives us something that's a sure thing.

We've got a few different types of facts here: what some people *think*, a rule, then some info about the Public Works Dept.

SOME PEOPLE think: OH --> know everything
BC --> OH
PWD is BC
PWD operates differently than other BCs.

Okay, so what do we know from that? Since PWD is BC, it also has to be OH. And we know PWD operates differently from some other organizations that are BC (and also therefore OH). So those people in the first fact, they're wrong! You can't tell everything about how an organization operates just because it's OH! If that were true, then the PWD would not operate any differently than other OH places.

This matches up perfectly with (D). Just because something is hierarchical doesn't mean you know everything.

Notice how similar (C) is - but it goes way too far. We can't conclude anything at all from hierarchy? The stimulus doesn't support such a bold claim. Maybe hierarchy tells you a lot about how an organization operates, it just doesn't tell you absolutely everything.

Remember that our task on an inference question is to find out what must be true, or what is fully supportable. It's a lot easier to prove something small and weak must be true, than it is to prove strong, broad, bold claims.

We Don't Know That!
(A) Comparison trap! We don't know that the PWD is 'more' anything than anything!
(B) This is the illegal reversal of the second statement (the rule).
(C) As discussed above, this is way too strong to support.
(E) Like (C), this is entirely too strong to support. The fact that the PWD is different from other BCs supports that we don't know everything, but it doesn't support that it being BC has *nothing whatsoever* to do with how it operates.


Be careful not to force statements into strict conditionals when they aren't, and remember that for an inference question, the stimulus is simply a list of facts. The right answer must be extremely well supported by the given information alone, so strong language in answer choices can be a red flag.

Please let me know if this helps clear things up a bit!