#17 - Traditionally, students at Kelly University have

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Assumption. The correct answer choice is (E)

This is a difficult Assumption question that requires you to pay particular attention to the wording of the conclusion. The argument here is that the computerized evaluations will “accurately reflect the distribution of student opinion.” For this statement to be true, it is necessary that the students who do fill out the evaluations are representative of all other students (so that an accurate reflection of all students gets presented). That is, if none of the very disappointed or very pleased students respond, then the evaluations will not accurately reflect everyone. So all types of students need to respond, and they need to respond honestly.

Answer choice (A): The conclusion is about the computerized evaluations, not the paper evaluations, so this answer choice cannot be correct.

Answer choice (B): This is a tempting wrong answer choice, but keep in mind that the conclusion is not about whether the evaluations will be correct in their assessment, but merely that they will accurately reflect how all of the students truly feel.

Answer choice (C): Whether or not the paper evaluation system should ever be used is not necessary to the argument about the representativeness of the new computerized system.

Answer choice (D): The motivation of professors who do not distribute the paper evaluations is unrelated to the argument about computerized evaluation representativeness.

Answer choice (E): This is the correct answer choice. As mentioned above, this shows that there is no a tendency for a certain type of student to submit evaluations more frequently than other students. Negated, this answer choice would strongly attack the conclusion by showing that dissatisfied students will submit evaluations more often, and thus the overall reflection of student opinion will seem more negative than it actually is (and therefore not accurately reflect student opinion).

[lathlee]

This question I got wrong 3 times and i stil don't get it.

conclusion : evaluations under the new system will accurately reflect the distribution of student opinion about teaching performance.

correct answer choice is E)

but my choice's negated version c) the traditional system for evaluation teaching performance should be used at any univeristy.

hurts the conclusion more strongly

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hi lathlee,

I've noticed over a few questions you've posted that you might have a tendency to hold a bit too tightly to the assumption negation technique. It is a very powerful tool, but one that you want to use in the context of all of the other critical thinking and analysis skills you've been building on logical reasoning generally. Just because the negated answer choice "feels" like it hurts the argument doesn't mean it is actually relevant, so you always want to go back and compare it to the conclusion and make sure it makes sense. Here, the negation of C is actually irrelevant to the conclusion; the conclusion isn't saying that it is better or worse to use the new system, just that the new system will accurately reflect student opinion. You don't want to lose sight of the big picture as you use the technique. Does that help?

[lathlee]

Hi. Emily,

actually, sorry for the late response but I got the correct answer this occasion cuz all four answers a-d are not dealing about the conclusion or shell game answers. E is the only one that cannot be decisively ruled about whether this option is still talking or dealing about the conclusion of the stem. I still somewhat don't get why E is the correct answer.

[Adam Tyson]

The argument concludes that under the new computer system we will get responses that "accurately reflect the distribution of student opinion." In order to conclude that we will get an accurate representation of opinions, we have to assume that we will get responses from a representative sample of the student population within each class. Answer E is deals with that idea - the author must assume that we won't have dissatisfied students being disproportionately represented in the poll results! We don't want ANY group to have disproportionate representation, because that would wreck the argument (and the negation of E, suggesting that one group might be disproportionately represented, does just that). Everyone should be represented proportional to their overall numbers.

Watch out for the classic flaws in surveys, lathlee - problems with who we asked, with what we asked, and with what answer we got! If we rely on a survey, the author must assume that we had no such problems in the survey.

[lathlee]

Actually, emily, after i got this question wrong 5th time, i now can see; the correct answer would be whether new system allows the entite student body's assement will able to accurately reflected , thx

[jessamynlockard]

Hi,
Is this a defender type assumption question?

[Jennifer Janowsky]

jessamynlockard,

This would be more of a Supporter type Assumption because it contains some foreseeable weaknesses. Defender Assumptions tend to be more airtight and reasonable, while Supporter types generally contain some weaknesses in reasoning. There are a few objections you could think to make of this argument right off the bat--what if students answer after a bad test, or before the semester is even over? This makes the question a Supporter rather than a Defender, but don't worry too much--there are no questions that test directly on this distinction in the LSAT, it is only for the sake of your understanding.

I hope that helps!

[FK00144]

is there another reason why you wouldn't look for answers that include the "paper eval forms" because the on demand lesson mentions one but I don't understand it.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi FK,

Assumption questions are always extremely focused on the conclusion. We have to make sure that the assumption we pick is absolutely required for the argument. In this case, our conclusion is about the new evaluation forms. The new evaluations will be able to be completed on the computer, so we don't really care about the paper evaluation forms at all. It would be different if our conclusion was comparing the new method to the old paper evaluation system. But our conclusion here is absolute--the evaluations under the new will reflect the distribution of student opinions. This doesn't require us to know anything at all about the old paper system, or how that system functioned.

Hope that helped!
Rachael