#17- Only a very small percentage of people from the service

[MikeJones]

Hi. I'm having a hard time pinpointing the flaw on this question exactly. From my perspective, it appears that this is an inappropriate comparison of a percentage (people in the service professions becoming board members) to a whole number (underrepresented in most important...).

The answer choice seems to bear that out pretty explicitly (reveals little about percentage of...). I'm just wondering if there is something I missed in regard to the actual numbers and percentages themselves, aside from the irrational shift from a percentage to a whole number. I've just seen people giving some very complex explanations on other boards that don't necessarily make much sense when compared to the actual text in answer choice B.

If someone can confirm or clarify, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

[nicholaspavic]

Hi Mike,

Good question. As you note, this is a flaw question with a numbers and percentages' problem. Off the bat, the stimulus is a pretty bad argument. The author says that not enough service professionals are on boards in North America, but that number of boardpersons is an extremely small number in relation to the nearly 500 million people who live in North America. So a small number of service professionals, in relation to their placements on a board is always going to be small.

But let's do an analogy to try to clarify it a little. There are more than a million lawyers in the United States today, but only 25 lawyers have ever been President of the United States. But if I argued that lawyers were not represented enough in the Presidency because there have been millions of us, someone would likely argue in the United States has only had a 45 Presidents ever. So lawyers have undeniably had a disproportionate amount of representation as POTUS.

The same kind of argument that I made about POTUS and lawyers is being made in this stimulus. That a small number automatically equals a small percentage. Yes the number is always going to be small no matter what, because it's a small number to begin with. However, maybe if we saw the actual data, it would turn out that the small number of service professionals made up 99% of all board positions and therefore, service professionals were well represented. Thanks for the great question and let us know if this helps.

[MikeJones]

Hi Mike,

Good question. As you note, this is a flaw question with a numbers and percentages' problem. Off the bat, the stimulus is a pretty bad argument. The author says that not enough service professionals are on boards in North America, but that number of boardpersons is an extremely small number in relation to the nearly 500 million people who live in North America. So a small number of service professionals, in relation to their placements on a board is always going to be small.

But let's do an analogy to try to clarify it a little. There are more than a million lawyers in the United States today, but only 25 lawyers have ever been President of the United States. But if I argued that lawyers were not represented enough in the Presidency because there have been millions of us, someone would likely argue in the United States has only had a 45 Presidents ever. So lawyers have undeniably had a disproportionate amount of representation as POTUS.

The same kind of argument that I made about POTUS and lawyers is being made in this stimulus. That a small number automatically equals a small percentage. Yes the number is always going to be small no matter what, because it's a small number to begin with. However, maybe if we saw the actual data, it would turn out that the small number of service professionals made up 99% of all board positions and therefore, service professionals were well represented. Thanks for the great question and let us know if this helps.

Wonderful explanation. The analogy cleared that up quite a bit. Thank you, Nicolas!

[LSAT2018]

To clarify, what is the difference between the percentage of people from the service professions of the 600 corporations and the members of the boards who are from the service professions? Why is it treated as two different groups?

I thought the flaw in the reasoning was that it was more of a generalization of the 600 corporations to reach a conclusion on the most important corporate boardrooms. Would this be wrong?


Thanks in advance!

[Malila Robinson]

Hi LSAT2018,
The groups are treated differently because one is talking about the percentage of people from the service professions who serve on the largest boards. And the other is talking about the percentage of board members who are from the service professions. Neither of these groups tell us how many people we are dealing with, nor what the exact percentage is.

Let's throw some numbers in here to see how it could play out. So for example you may be talking about 1 million people who are in the service professions, and a small percentage could be something like 10% which would be 100 million people from the service professions serving on the 600 largest boards. And we also don't know how many people serve on the boards so lets say there are 300 people on each of the 600 largest which would be a total of 180 million board members total. But if 100 million of the 180 million people are from the service professions that would mean that about 56% of the board members were from the service professions which would not be a small percentage.

This example shows that knowing only that a small percentage of the people from service professions are on the largest boards is not enough to tell you anything about the percentage of the board members that are from the service professions.
Hope that helps,
Malila