#11 - University spokesperson: Most of the students surveyed

[Administrator]

Please post below with any questions!

[tayloramalkin]

Is C incorrect because the stimulus states "other things being equal, the preference of the majority of students should be adhered to"? The author acknowledges that there are other factors in the decision?

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hi tayloramalkin,

Right on! Excellent job figuring out what was going on with this one. The more you struggle with questions to figure out the rationale for the correct answer (and the incorrect answers!) on your own, the more you will get out of studying, so this is great to see.

[arr0418]

On my first pass, I correctly selected choice A. On a blind review, I changed my answer and selected E. My reasoning in reneging on A was that, according to the stimulus, students surveyed wanted the current vendor replaced with a different vendor, not necessarily a new vendor. Thus, it seems that hiring Hall Dining Services would not be a problem.

Can you give some clarity to this?

[jax]

I initially selected because I thought that the author made the assumption that students who are surveyed were actually majority of the entire population. If the student population at the university was 5000 people but only 1000 people surveyed ... couldn't it be possible that the rest of 4000 students are not represented in the survey results?

Or is the conclusion something completely different; does the conclusion have another added information that was not included in the premise (HDS being the only options) and so that is why [A] is the correct flaw?

[Jonathan Evans]

Hi, arr and jax,

Good questions! For this question, we need to find the grounds on which the argument is most vulnerable to criticism. In other words, you are correct: there may be multiple flaws in an argument. However, the task here is to find the most salient or serious flaw and the answer that most closely describes this flaw.

In this argument, it is correct that the premise that the university should follow the preferences of the majority of students might not be adequately supported by the results of a survey of a subset of these students. However, answer choice (D) does not adequately address this possibility. The statement in answer choice (D) suggests that the author overlooks the possibility that there is disagreement among students. The author actually does not overlook this possibility as he or she acknowledges that the survey results indicate a "majority" of students support replacing the food vendor. Presumably, some students may have disagreed and the possibility of this disagreement is implicit in the author's reasoning.

Answer choice (E) on the other hand suggests an appeal to popularity fallacy. While this argument may resemble such an appeal, the author actually makes explicit the principle that all things being equal, students wishes should be adhered to. Thus, rather than an implicit flaw, the author presents an explicit principle to which the argument adheres.

The biggest gap actually does concern the situation described in answer choice (A). Students were asked a question about changing vendors in the abstract but were not provided with the actual possible outcomes. Thus, the author does make an unwarranted assumption that based on the fact that the students would prefer a different vendor they would prefer this particular different vendor over the current one.

I hope this helps!

[mN2mmvf]

HI,

I got this question right but I didn't quite see why (E) was wrong. The usual flaw is that the conclusion is based on popularity but is not considering other, more substantive arguments; thus, considering something only because it is popular seems to be an error. You say this is not an error here, because all of the other things were considered, and they are all equal, so there are no other more substantive arguments to consider.

But is the popularity fallacy a fallacy only if there are other better argumentative reasons available to assess? There's no doubt that the university did, in fact, argue that the action ought to be taken merely on the grounds that it was popular...it had eliminated every other basis on which to argue except for popularity.

[tanushreebansal]

Hi Jonathan. I quoted Jax's response below because I went through the same exact thought process. In your explanation to Jax, you adressed answer choice D, however, myself and Jax are concerned with answer choice B. Could you explain why "relying on a sample that is unlikely to be representative" is not the flaw showing that the survey respondents are not reflective of what the majority of students think? What if only those who were displeased with dining services take the time out of their day to answer the survey? These students would certainly not be representative, no?

I left A as a contender along with B, but then I went with B because I thought that what if the current dining service was worse than the previous one, Hall Dining Services. Then it wouldn't really matter if students knew about Hall being their only available option because they would prefer anything over their current service provider. Could you help me see where I went wrong in this reasoning? Thanks!

I initially selected because I thought that the author made the assumption that students who are surveyed were actually majority of the entire population. If the student population at the university was 5000 people but only 1000 people surveyed ... couldn't it be possible that the rest of 4000 students are not represented in the survey results?

Or is the conclusion something completely different; does the conclusion have another added information that was not included in the premise (HDS being the only options) and so that is why [A] is the correct flaw?

[mN2mmvf]

Tanush - if I had to guess I bet the answer to your first question is, While it's possible that the survey was unrepresentative, the stimulus gives us no reason to think that it's "unlikely" that it's unrepresentative. Usually, when unrepresentativeness is the flaw, the stimulus flags it in some way by mentioning (however subtly) either the number surveyed, which is usually obviously too small, or the group surveyed, which is usually a subset (not in numbers necessary but in kind, as in, only freshmen students were surveyed) of the appropriate, larger group. Neither is indicated here.

I think the testmakers are looking for you to see that, while the students may have generically responded that they prefer a better food provider (who doesn't want better food?), they might respond differently if they knew what the choices actually were. Given that there's only one other choice, and we know that many of them will have direct experience with that choice because Hall was the provider last year, their response would be much more informed and the results might be different. Although it's possible, as you say, that all of the students would prefer Hall, it's also possible that students who said they'd prefer a change generically would nonetheless prefer no change if Hall was the known and only alternative.

[Eric Ockert]

Answer Choice (E)

I see a couple of questions in here, so let me address each one individually.

Answer choice (E) is certainly hinting at an Appeal to Popular Opinion flaw. But making a decision based on popularity is not always a flaw, as this argument shows. If your stated goal in adopting a certain strategy is to please the largest number of people in a certain group, then it is certainly valid to base your decision on what the majority of people prefer. That was explicitly stated as the goal near the end of this stimulus.

So, in reality, this argument is saying "Since X (pleasing the majority of students) is the goal of our strategy, then we should do Y (choosing Hall Dining Services) because it best helps us accomplish X." That's perfectly reasonable. The problem is, Y doesn't necessarily best help you accomplish that goal. Hill Dining Services might be atrocious, and the students might be revolted by the prospect of having them provide food again. So even though the majority want someone other than the current food provider, that doesn't mean the majority want Hill. Answer choice (A) is the one answer that really gets at that issue.