#3 - Restaurant manager: In response to requests from our

[Dave Killoran]

Complete Question Explanation

Flaw in the Reasoning. The correct answer choice is (E)

The argument contains reasoning that is clearly flawed. The restaurant manager concludes that the reason the potato and cheese dish is infrequently ordered is that the patrons prefer not to eat potatoes. But there could be other reasons, such as the patrons prefer not to eat cheese. In concluding that the patrons do not choose the dish due to the potatoes, the restaurant manager makes a causal conclusion that is flawed.

The question stem asks you to identify, in abstract terms, the reasoning error committed by the author. The correct answer choice must describe a mistake made by the author in the stimulus. If an answer choice describes an occurrence that is not in the stimulus, that answer choice is incorrect.

Answer Choice (A): Incorrect. Although the argument contains a causal reasoning error, the error not that two things have a common cause.

Answer Choice (B): Incorrect. In logical terms, "inconsistent" means "disagrees with" or "contradicts." In the argument, the conclusion does not disagree with or otherwise contradict one of the premises.

Answer Choice (C): Incorrect. The argument is based on what people actually choose; there is no claim based upon what people say they want.

Answer Choice (D): Incorrect. Again, the argument is based on what people actually choose; there is no claim based upon the number of people holding that claim to be true.

Answer Choice (E): This is the correct answer choice. As noted above, the restaurant manager mistakenly assumes that potatoes are the cause of the dish not being ordered when in fact there could be other causes. This answer choice says just that.

[Jenn1]

Can you help me understand the difference between (d) and (e )? For (e ) I don't see "several plausible explanations" documented in the stimulus. For (d) I was thinking "a number of people hold that claim to be true" refers to the patrons who ordered (or in this case, did not order) the potatoes.

Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

Hey there Jenn, happy to help. Answer D is describing a flaw that we refer to as an "appeal" flaw - a bad or unwarranted appeal to popular opinion or numbers. Just because a lot of people say something is true does not prove that it is true. That is absolutely a logical flaw, but it's not the flaw in this case. We didn't get anything quite like "a lot of people don't like the potatoes, so the potatoes must not be good." Instead we got "nobody ordered it, so they must not like one particular ingredient in it".

Your concern about answer E referencing "several plausible explanations" when the stimulus does not mention them is actually why E is the best answer! The author came up with one possible explanation for the lack of interest in the potato dish, that people don't like potatoes. This means he has summarily dismissed every other possible explanation. Maybe vegetarians don't want to eat cheese, because it is an animal product? Maybe they don't order it because it's cheaper, and they therefore perceive it to be of low quality (the snobby explanation)? Maybe the Yelp reviews of the potato dish universally say that it tastes like dirty feet and should be avoided by anyone with taste buds? There could be a lot of reasons why people don't order it, other than not liking potatoes, and our author hasn't even taken a moment to consider any of them. That's the problem, and that's what answer E describes here.

Many wrong answers to Flaw questions talk about the author failing to consider something. Those answers usually bring up something irrelevant, and failing to consider irrelevant information is never a flaw. An answer like that to this question might be "failing to consider that some non-vegetarians may also like to order vegetarian dishes on occasion". That wouldn't be a flaw here, because so what? It tells us nothing about a mistake being made in concluding that the patrons don't like potatoes. However, "fails to consider" can be a right answer when the thing not considered matters! Here, answer E could have just as easily been written to say "Failing to consider other explanations for the phenomenon being evaluated." The author should have at least considered other possibilities before landing on potato hatred as the explanation.

Hmm, now I'm hungry for potatoes au gratin. See ya!