#15 - Sanchez: The sixteen new computers that the school

[Administrator]

Please post below with any questions!

[jlam061695]

While I see how Sanchez disagrees with C, I don't see how Merriweather agrees with C?

[Kristina Moen]

Hi jl,

Merriweather says "The computer that were purchased were much more elaborate than they needed to be." So Merriweather is saying it's not that the school overpaid for the computers it purchased, but the school still paid too much because they purchased elaborate computers.

Imagine this analogous argument between a mother and a daughter.

Daughter: But Mom! My dress was on sale! It's not as expensive as you think it was! I didn't pay too much!
Mom: Honey, it's not that you paid more for the dress than it was worth, but you bought a Gucci dress when you could have bought a dress at Old Navy.

Mom thinks daughter spent more than she should have, and daughter disagrees with that.

Hope that analogy helps.

[brownac123]

Can you explain why D is incorrect? I went back and forth between answer choices C and D.

[Luke Haqq]

Hi brownac123!

To test out answer choices on a question like this, you can put an initial for each of the speakers in the stimulus next to the answer choice. Then ask whether the speaker would agree/disagree with the answer choice, or you can put a question mark to denote if we don't know one way or another. With this particular question stem, we're looking for a point of disagreement, so you want an answer choice where one speaker would agree and the other would disagree.

Answer choice (D) states that they disagree over whether the school "paid more for each computer than it was worth." When I ask myself whether Sanchez would agree or disagree with this, I end up concluding that we don't know one way or another. It's possible that Sanchez could conclude that the school paid more for each computer than it was worth while still concluding that it didn't spend too much on computers. Since we don't know one way or another, this can't be a point of disagreement between them.

By contrast, answer choice (C) states that they disagree over whether the school "spent more in purchasing the sixteen computers than it should have." Sanchez would disagree with the statement that the school spent more than it should have, while Merriweather would agree with that statement. Since one would agree with it and the other disagrees, that confirms that (C) is the correct answer.