#2 - Mayor of Outerville, a suburb of Center City:

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Main Point. The correct answer choice is (B)

In this stimulus, the mayor states that the town has agreed to try to attract more residents, then makes the claim that the best strategy for doing so is to renovate the train station. The rest of the stimulus provides premises in support of the claim that renovating the train station is the best strategy. The conclusion to the argument should be the claim about which the Mayor is trying to convince the reader and which has been supported by the given premises.

Answer choice (A): While the Mayor makes this statement, it is not the conclusion that his argument leads to. This statement has already been agreed upon and is therefore not the claim that the Mayor is trying to advance with the argument.

Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice. Not only is this the Mayor's motivation for making the argument, but it is also the claim that the premises were designed to support.

Answer choice (C): While the Mayor states that the number of jobs in Center City is increasing, there is no claim made that Outerville residents should seek work there.

Answer choice (D): While the Mayor suggests that driving is becoming more expensive than train travel, he does not claim that it is a better option that should be used by all. This is not the Mayor's motivation for making the argument.

Answer choice (E): The Mayor is attempting to convince Outerville residents to renovate the train station. The argument is not meant to encourage people to move to Outerville, although that is the ultimate goal of the plan.

[rameday]

I am also concerned about question 3 on page 1-75. I saw the conclusion indicator world therefore so my pre phrase was precisely matched by answer choice E. I also also conflicted between B and E but I once again chose # because it matched my pre phrase. E is the wrong answer so I am curious as to why that is wrong. Is it because the question stem says leads to the conclusion that? so that means that the stimulus doesn't have a conclusion. So the therefore in the stimulus is a sub-automaticlly a sub conclusion and the actual main conclusion is exemplified by answer choice B?

A

[KelseyWoods]

Hi A,

This stimulus can be a little bit tricky! You actually have two conclusion indicator words in there (there's a "so" in the first sentence as well)....and neither of those conclusion indicator words is before the actual conclusion! The author does actually state the main conclusion in the stimulus, he just makes it a little tricky for us to find. But whenever you are thinking about the author's main conclusion, think about what the author is driving at. What does the author want you to take away from what he's saying? What is he trying to convince you of? Why is he telling you all this information?

In this case, the author starts by telling us that Outerville needs to grow to survive, SO they should try to attract more residents. That's the first conclusion the author makes: Outerville should try to attract more residents. Then, the author tells us that the best strategy for attracting more residents would be to renovate the train station. He goes on to explain that there are a lot of people working in the city who want to live in the suburbs and driving is more expensive than train travel, therefore people want to live in towns with good access to trains.

You're right that the last sentence starts with a "therefore." But is that really what the author wants us to take away from this? Does everything else in the stimulus support that statement? Why is the Mayor of Outerville telling us that people want to live in towns with train stations? Because he wants to convince us of what he already mentioned in the second sentence: that we should renovate the Outerville train station!

That leads us directly to answer choice (B). The Mayor is trying to convince us that we need to renovate the Outerville train station. He supports this argument by telling us that Outerville needs to attract more residents and that people want to live in towns with good train access.

Remember that when you are looking for conclusions, conclusion indicator words can be very helpful but what's more important is the relationships between all of the parts of the argument. Especially when you have a complicated argument like this one with multiple sub-conclusions, try to think about the argument more broadly and ask yourself: what does the author want me to believe after reading this? Also, remember that everything else in your stimulus should basically be supporting your main conclusion. So when you think you have the main conclusion, make sure that everything else in the argument leads you there.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[lexigibbs]

I have a question about the homework questions from Logical Reasoning. I am confused how the answer is correct.
L1 HW Main Point 1-86/3 The correct answer is B and I put E.

I hope you can clarify how the right answer to this came about!

Thanks!!

[Jonathan Evans]

Hi, Lexi!

First off, you should review the lesson to make sure that you are solid about what you're looking for in a credited response to a Must Be True question or a Main Point question and that you know the common traps and characteristics that make other answer choices incorrect. This takes a lot of practice, and you've got to have a firm grounding in the fundamentals.

Now for your question.

Question 3: Main Point Question

Ask yourself, "What is this dude getting at? What does he seem to think? What's his opinion?" On main point questions, watch out for traps. If the question is asking for the main conclusion, there is going to be at least one plausible other statement that test-takers might think is the main conclusion. The "therefore" in the last sentence could throw someone off. Make sure that when you have identified something as the conclusion, for it to be the main conclusion, there must be reasons (premises) backing it up and it must also not be a "subordinate" conclusion that leads to another main point.

Make sure you are relying on prephrasing. Know what you're looking for before you get to the answer choices. The final, main point of this argument is "the best strategy for attracting residents is to renovate the train station." That conclusion is (1) backed up by the rest of the premises in the argument, (2) does not lead to any further conclusion, and (3) expresses an opinion about something that should happen (a dead giveaway for a possible conclusion).

[AnnBar]

The description mentions Answer A is incorrect because This statement has already been agreed upon and is therefore not the claim that the Mayor is trying to advance with the argument.. I am guessing we know this statement has been agreed upon based on the so, as we have agreed in the first sentence. Is that correct?

Additionally, are there are other phrases or specific words/tricks we should be looking for in future problems to avoid making the same mistake?

[Robert Carroll]

Ann,

In order to untangle the odd presentation of the argument, think about completely paraphrasing the Mayor's statements. What's the argument about? It's an argument about how to achieve a goal. The goal is already agreed on - if there's an argument to be made about whether that's the best goal, or a good goal at all, that argument isn't here! The Mayor instead says "Look, we all agree that we need more residents. We don't know how to do that, though. Here's how I propose doing it..." The Mayor then explains the method for attracting more residents and why that method would work. "The means to achieve our goal is to renovate the train station" is the conclusion, then! And because this is a Main Point question, that is the statement that should constitute your prephrase.

Premise and conclusion indicator words are helpful because they are correlated with their respective argument parts, but a conclusion is a conclusion because it is what the author ultimately is trying to establish, not because it's preceded by certain words. In order to make it more clear what the parts are, ask:

• Why does the author think he/she is right? In other words, what evidence is there in here? The answer(s) to these questions will be premises.
• What is the author trying to achieve? What does the author want me to think is true if I bought into the entire argument? What is the author trying to establish? The answers to these questions will all be the same thing as each other (not as the answer(s) to the premise questions!), and that single thing will be the conclusion/main point.

So while "therefore" is usually a good conclusion indicator, don't rush to identify it so. Consider whether the statement preceded by "therefore" makes sense as the main point of the argument. If not, it's not the main point, although it may be an intermediate conclusion.

Robert Carroll

[landphil]

The only reason I did not select B (and instead I chose A) was because B says "the train station in Outerville" and the stimulus never mentions the train station is in Outerville, it just says we should "renovate the train station."

Am I just overthinking this? I thought the test makers put Outerville in the answer choice to make it wrong because technically they could be renovating the train station somewhere else in Center City so that it would be more usable, including for people in Outerville.

What do y'all think?

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

I think you might be overthinking this, landphil.

The context of the stimulus is a discussion from the Mayor of Outerville, who would not be able to choose to renovate a train station in a different city. The discussion also implies that the train station would be in Outerville by talking about it as a way to attract residents to their suburb. The train is a way to get from the suburbs, to the city, and it wouldn't make sense to renovate the city end of the train station to attract people to a specific suburb.

Hope that helps!

[landphil]

I think you might be overthinking this, landphil.

The context of the stimulus is a discussion from the Mayor of Outerville, who would not be able to choose to renovate a train station in a different city. The discussion also implies that the train station would be in Outerville by talking about it as a way to attract residents to their suburb. The train is a way to get from the suburbs, to the city, and it wouldn't make sense to renovate the city end of the train station to attract people to a specific suburb.

Hope that helps!

Thank you! that helps