Q26 - Club recruits players

[masticore99]

I'm having some trouble understanding why E is correct.

When I read the questions, the flaws I saw were:

1. You can't conclude that we will have the best volleyball team by recruiting all the best volleyball players, and

2. You can't conclude that something "will certainly" occur on the basis of what is likely to occur.

Flaw #2 doesn't seem to match completely with E (the correct answer) to me. Although the first part of E, the "most likely of a set of possible events" match, saying that the event is "more likely to occur than not" seems too weak and doesn't match "almost certainly"

[timmydoeslsat]

I'm having some trouble understanding why E is correct.

When I read the questions, the flaws I saw were:

1. You can't conclude that we will have the best volleyball team by recruiting all the best volleyball players, and

2. You can't conclude that something "will certainly" occur on the basis of what is likely to occur.

Flaw #2 doesn't seem to match completely with E (the correct answer) to me. Although the first part of E, the "most likely of a set of possible events" match, saying that the event is "more likely to occur than not" seems too weak and doesn't match "almost certainly"

The stimulus commits two flaws but the test writers chose the second one for us to comment on in this case.

The second flaw is a situation like this:

Let's say we have 10 teams in a league one year. The % refers to the likelihood of that team winning the league.

Team A (20%)
Team B (15%)
Team C (15%)
Team D (15%)
Team E (15%)
Team F (10%)
Team G (10%)

Team A is the most likely to win the league. However, the overall probability that they will win is simply 20%. It is not a likely occurrence. While team A is the most likely to win, it is not the same thing to say that them winning is a likely thing to happen.

[tommywallach]

PT 65, S4, Q26 (Identify the Flaw)

(E) is correct.

Identify the Flaw questions are always assumption based, so you should start by outlining the core. In this case, we have a premise, an intermediate conclusion, another intermediate conclusion, and a final conclusion. Luckily, they’re laid out in a pretty clear order:

Club recruited best players -> best team in the city -> team most likely to win the championship -> team will almost certainly be champions.

At first glance, this might seem like a pretty solid argument. But because the question is assumption-based, we know there must be a problem. Is the best team in a city almost certainly going to win? It can help to consider some numbers. Let’s imagine a city with 4 teams in it, one of which is most likely to win:

Team Likelihood of Winning Championship

A 40%
B 20%
C 20%
D 20%

So far, this fits with what we’ve been told. The probability that Team A will win the championship is 40%, twice the likelihood that any of the other individual teams will win. But what’s the probability that Team A will lose the championship? 60%! Team A is still more likely to lose than to win, in spite of the fact that they have the best odds of the bunch! This is the flaw we’re looking for.

(A) The argument says that the club is the best because it has the best players, not because it will do well in competition (that comes later in the argument).

(B) The skill of the players seems eminently relevant to the team’s future success.

(C) This is a very tricky answer choice. The argument does compare the parties, and concludes that the club in question is the "best team in the city." However, it doesn’t then jump straight to the conclusion: "so they will win." Instead, it uses the fact that they are the best team to conclude that they there are the team "most likely to win the championship." This is only a kind of interim conclusion, and it is the only conclusion the argument draws from the direct comparison between the teams. From this interim conclusion, the argument goes on to predict the outcome of the competition. (Also, notice that this answer choice doesn’t actually sound like a mistake at all. Is it really a bad idea to try to predict who will win a competition by comparing the parties in the competition? We’re looking for a flaw!).

(D) The argument starts by stating as fact that the individual players are the best in the city. This is not a conclusion it tries to make, but a premise it uses to make its final conclusion.

(E) This bears directly on the statistical anomaly we discovered above. Just because a given outcome is the most likely outcome out of many different outcomes, that doesn’t actually mean the outcome is more likely to occur than not (i.e. over 50%). You’re more likely to find $1000 on the ground than to win the lottery, but neither outcome is particularly likely.

[wgutx08]

Is C also wrong for a "degree issue"?

It is not wrong to predict the outcome, but the argument didn't stop at predicting the winner by saying something like "our club will be the most likely winner" (which would have been OK). Rather, it stated a high probability by saying that the winner will "almost certainly" be the winner. It is the statement of certainty, not the prediction per se that is the flaw here.

so C is indeed something the argument did, but not the wrong part of it.

[lsatodyssey]

isn't the problem that D points out is that even if you have the best players making up a team, you don't necessarily have to have the best team?

For example, a team could be made up of All-Stars but if they don't have any team chemistry they probably won't win as opposed to a team made up of average players that play well together?

Kind of like the story of the movie Moneyball...

This was the flaw that I was on the hunt for because in past Qs we were shown that having the best parts does not necessarily make something the best whole....

Thanks for the feedback!!

[tommywallach]

Two issues here. I'll take them one by one.

Hey Wgut,

You seem to be pointing out a degree issue in the passage, not in answer choice (C) (i.e. why did the passage jump from "most likely to win' to "almost certainly win"). But that's not an issue with answer choice (C)! Answer choice (C) is wrong because the argument does more than just compare the parties (that's only the first sentence), it then goes on to make a conclusion based on...well, just read (E)! : )

Now, LSATOdyssey,

This is the danger of your method, which I want to point out. Do not "go looking" for the assumption you want to find, because then you'll end up picking which ever answer resembles that, and miss the right one. Try to read all the answer choices and consider them individually.

The problem with (D) is that it's backwards.

You want: presumes that because each individual part of an entity is the best, the total entity is the best.

But (D) says: presumes that if an entity is the best, each individual part is the best.

See the difference? Yours presumes that the total is best. This answer presumes that each individual part is the best. That isn't presumed: it's stated!

Hope that helps!

-t

[tuesdayninja]

I got this one wrong during timed but got it right during BR. However, I'm still iffy on ruling out C.

I think the flaw can be seen as C:
Predicts the outcome of a competition (our club will almost certainly be city champions this year) based merely on the basis of a comparison between the parties in the competition (the best team in the city will be the team most likely to win the city championship, the comparison between parties being a comparison of likelihoods that a team will win). The premise is saying that because the best team has a higher chance to win compared to other teams' chance to win, that the best team will almost certainly be the champion. It seems then that C and E are saying similar things.

Someone help?

[harris22]

Looking closely at the last sentence reveals why answer E is the correct choice. The argument reads : "...since the best team in the city will be the team most likely to win the city championship, our club will almost certainly be city champions this year." Its important to note this is not a basic conditional "if, then" logical statement. The error here is that the argument drives form the sufficient condition something that is "most likely" the case a necessary condition where something is "almost certain[ly]" the case. This is similar to the answer provided by answer E.

[michellemyxu]

I understand why (E) is superior to other choices, but I have a question about the latter part of (E): Do "almost certainly" (last sentence of the stimulus) and "more likely than not" (in E) mean the same thing?

For me, "almost certainly" means almost 100%, and "more likely than not" means >50%. So (E) doesn't look like a perfect match to me.

Is (E) correct because ">50%" include "almost 100%"?

Thanks!

[ohthatpatrick]

They do not mean the same thing, in the sense you specified.

"Almost all, nearly all, almost certainly", etc. don't have a specific quantifiable threshold, but they feel like 90% or better to me.

Meanwhile, "most, typically, generally, usually, probably, likely, tends to, more often than not" have a >50% threshold.

So, yes, (E) describes a more conservative version of the flaw. It's saying, "It's bad enough you're concluding that your chances are better than FIFTY percent."

You could have 5 teams, A, B, C, D, E, and perhaps their respective probabilities of winning the title are
A - 30%
B - 20%
C - 20%
D - 15%
E - 15%

Team A is the team that is "most likely to win the title", but Team A is not "likely" to win the title. (There's a 70% chance they don't win vs. a 30% chance they win)