#19 - On a certain day, nine scheduled flights on Swift

[powerguy]

Conclusion uses "due to" - is this causal? Thanks

[Nikki Siclunov]

Indeed, "due to" is a causal reasoning indicator. The conclusion of the argument rejects the causal relationship where:

Cause: Mechanical Problems
Effect: Flight cancellations

Obviously, there is a glaring flaw with this argument. The author made a conclusion about the possible cause for 9 flight cancellations using evidence involving the probability of mechanical problems with planes. However, if the same plane were scheduled for each of the nine flights that were cancelled, then it is within reason to suppose that some mechanical problems with that plane could have been the cause for all 9 flight cancellation. This weakness is rejected in answer choice (A), which serves as a Defender Assumption for the conclusion.

[GLMDYP]

Hi Powerscore!
I am confused at this question because of the phrase "one or two". I cannot understand why (A) is right. Can you please explain this to me?
Thanks!

[David Boyle]

Hi Powerscore!
I am confused at this question because of the phrase "one or two". I cannot understand why (A) is right. Can you please explain this to me?
Thanks!

Hello,

The "one or two" in A correlates nicely with the "unlikely that Swift would have mechanical problems with more than one or two airplanes on a single day" in the stimulus.

David

[cboles]

I am very confused by the phrasing of the stimulus and answer choice A. Originally, I chose E because I thought that if the airplanes were all at one airport you can attributed all of the flights being cancelled to bad weather or something like that. Now, I see that that is wrong because flights and airplanes are different things. However, I do not understand why A is correct and I think that is mainly because of the phrasing. Could someone rephrase this answer choice?

[Claire Horan]

Hi Cboles,

We are looking for an assumption, so an unstated part of the stimulus argument. The stimulus begins with nine flights, then switches tracks to "more than one or two airplanes." You have correctly noticed that there is a gap in the logic there. Flights and airplanes are not the same thing, as you say. You just need to go a step further in your logic. Is it escapable logic that one or two airplanes' mechanical problems cannot lead to nine canceled flights? The author assumes that there must have been more planes involved.

Choice (A) reads, "More than one or two airplanes were scheduled for the nine canceled flights." Because this is a contender, we can test it with the assumption negation technique. We negate the sentence and see if it attacks the conclusion. The negated sentence would read that "Two or fewer airplanes were scheduled for the nine canceled flights." Would this, if true, attack the conclusion that the canceled flights were unlikely to be due to mechanical problems? Yes. The assumption negation technique shows that this is the correct answer.

[Hazel03]

Just to be sure, did the author mean -

AN airplane is cancelled due to mechanical problems.

9 flights were scheduled on a particular day.

Unlikely that more than 1-2 airplanes had mechanical problems. Some of the 9 would have been due to some other reason.


Assumption - The same 1 or 2 airplanes were not scheduled as 9 flights that day. Had to be a couple of more airplanes out which a few had mechanical problems.

[Adam Tyson]

Correct, Hazel03! The author must have assumed that more than a couple planes were involved in those 9 flights being cancelled, instead of, say, one plane making 9 flights, all of which had to be cancelled due to a single broken plane, or one plane being used for four flights and a second plane for the other 5 flights, with both planes being broken.

Good job!