#21 - In a small town, every complaint filed about a plumber

[curiosity]

I actually got this question correct but I debated between B and C. C seems to me that it could potentially be correct, since the premise does say that Moore has a "relatively small business" and therefore, perhaps the sample size is too small/unrepresentative and thus could not "warrant the kind of generalization drawn."

Can you please explain why B is preferable over C?

Thank you,
curiosity

[David Boyle]

I actually got this question correct but I debated between B and C. C seems to me that it could potentially be correct, since the premise does say that Moore has a "relatively small business" and therefore, perhaps the sample size is too small/unrepresentative and thus could not "warrant the kind of generalization drawn."

Can you please explain why B is preferable over C?

Thank you,
curiosity

Hello curiosity,

C may be not all bad, but B is a lot better. After all, the complaint is that he is a poor plumber, not about his business per se. Answer B focuses on the fact that he may be the only plumber in town, so that of course, in that case, any complaint about a plumber would be about him.
Also, in answer C, it may not be a "generalization" that Moore is a bad plumber, since he is just one person.

Hope that helps,
David

[mN2mmvf]

I also struggled between B and C. I ultimately opted for (C). I thought (B) seemed weaker because, if there were no other plumbers in Moore's town, the fact that every complaint filed about plumbers was against Moore wouldn't be that meaningful. Of course every complaint was filed about him, since he's the only one! That doesn't mean he's a bad plumber, but nor does it mean he's not a bad plumber. It could be that only one of his customers ever filed a complaint against him; it could also be that every single one of his customers filed a complaint against him. So, considering that there are few other plumbers doesn't do much either way.

But (C) at least acknowledges the ambiguity involved in the number of complaints filed relative to the overall work the plumber performed. If the generalization can't be drawn at all because the business is too small to permit a conclusion to be made, then that definitely weakens the argument by taking away the only piece of evidence stated for it.

[AthenaDalton]

Hi mN2,

I read answer choice (C) a little differently. Let's assume that Moore has a really tiny plumbing business that consists of just one employee: Moore. Let's further assume that in the last year, Moore made 20 house calls. Of those calls, 10 resulted in complaints. Even though this is a small business with a small number of calls, the fact that half of his customers complained could be enough to indicate that he's not a good plumber! Therefore, I don't think that the size of Moore's business would be relevant in determining whether Moore is a good plumber or not.

By contrast, answer choice (B) gives us a little more to work with. The argument in the stimulus is that every complaint filed about poor plumbing in a small town was filed against Moore, therefore he must be a bad plumber since he is single-handedly generating all the complaints. This might be a good argument if Moore worked in a large city with 1,000 plumbers -- if he is that much of a stand-out in such a large field to generate all the complaints while his 999 competitors generate no complaints, we could safely conclude that he's doing something wrong! By contrast, if Moore is the only plumber in town it doesn't mean much that he's generated all of the complaints. In this second scenario, we have nothing to compare Moore to. If there were just one complaint against him in a year, he would still have generated all the complaints. That's not enough, by itself, to conclude that Moore is bad at his job.

I hope this helps clarify things. Good luck studying!

Athena Dalton

[desiboy96]

Hey Powerscore, so I picked A and I'm confused as to why B is correct.

I picked A thinking if there are people who did not file complaints, then there is the possibility there could be at least some people who were satisfied with Moore's work.

As for B, I thought it was wrong because even if he was the only plumber in town, I thought, "so what? That doesn't have any bearing on his reliability to preform a good job".

In my head I was thinking that maybe the people that filed complaints about him did so because they had a reason to where as if there were people who didn't, maybe he did a good job for them.

[Poonam Agrawal]

Hi desiboy!

In flaw questions, we know that there is some sort of hole in the argument that someone could use to disprove the overall conclusion, and our task is to identify this hole. The problem with answer choice (A) is that it doesn't identify this main flaw.

The conclusion of the argument is: there is good evidence to suggest Moore is a bad/unreliable plumber. The biggest hole in this conclusion is that we simply don't know how many plumbers there are in this town - if Moore is the only plumber in the town, then of course every plumbing complaint would be about him, regardless of whether or not he is an overall excellent plumber. If there are 500 plumbers in this town and Moore is the only one receiving complaints, then maybe he really is a bad plumber.

The main issue here is that if Moore is really the only plumber in town, then the argument breaks down. It is not enough for someone to then use the fact that Moore is the only plumber receiving complaints to prove that he is a bad plumber (there just isn't any other plumber around to receive complaints). Answer choice (B) captures this idea, which is why it is the correct answer.

The problem with answer choice (A) is that it is kind of irrelevant to the numerical flaw in the argument. We don't really care if there are any number of people who did not file complaints about Moore. Maybe they all had bad experiences with him and just didn't take the time to file complaints. Therefore, answer choice (A) doesn't really point out a huge flaw in the argument.

Hope this is helpful! Let us know if you have any other questions.

[desiboy96]

Hello, thank you so much for the clarification.

Just as a follow up question to make sure I understand why B is correct, A is incorrect because we don't know whether the people who did not file complaints had good or bad experiences with Moore and based on this uncertainty, B is the better choice because it points that Moore is bound to get all of the negative criticism because he is the only plumber in town. Right?

[Poonam Agrawal]

Hello, thank you so much for the clarification.

Just as a follow up question to make sure I understand why B is correct, A is incorrect because we don't know whether the people who did not file complaints had good or bad experiences with Moore and based on this uncertainty, B is the better choice because it points that Moore is bound to get all of the negative criticism because he is the only plumber in town. Right?

That's exactly right, desiboy. The only thing I would amend in your interpretation is saying that answer choice (B) points out that Moore may be the only plumber in town (we just don't know). Good work!

[sadjasmine]

My interpretation of the flaw was that: the argument fails to consider that the total number of complaints filed against Moore is small. What if 'every complaint filed about a plumbers work' only encompasses around 2 complaints? therefore, the author is assuming that there are many complaints since they were all against Moore?
Is that an incorrect interpretation of the flaw? Because I thought the flaw was in regards to the assumption made about the total amount of complaints, I chose D but was not confident in it being correct.

I can't seem to deduce how from the premises we can infer that the argument is overlooking that Moore may be the only plumber and that's what the flaw is... I feel like my interpretation is almost there but my approach to the questions or my prephrase may have been wrong?
Any feedback would be very helpful

[Robert Carroll]

sadjasmine,

The number of complaints against Moore could be relevant, but no answer says that. Answer choice (D) certainly doesn't - complaints aren't a finite resource, so that more complaints against other tradespeople must mean fewer complaints against Moore. Answer choice (D) is perfectly compatible with Moore's having lots of complaints filed against him. Since no answer choice talks about the number of complaints, we have to look elsewhere for a flaw.

The author of the stimulus is relying on the fact that all complaints filed about a plumber's work are filed against Moore to show that Moore is a bad plumber. So all complaints are against Moore. How many plumbers are there? If Moore is the only plumber, of course all of them will be against Moore. This is a standard numbers and percentages issue. Relatively speaking, the average competent plumber should get his "share" of complaints. If there are 20 plumbers in the town, each plumber should get 1/20 of all complaints. So Moore is getting 100% of complaints. That's probably bad if there are 20 plumbers. It's not as bad if there are only 5 plumbers. It's literally meaningless if there is only 1 plumber. So whether 100% is in excess of Moore's "share" of complaints, tending to show that Moore is a bad plumber, depends on how many plumbers there are in the town.

Robert Carroll