#16 - Most pet owners who take allergy medication are

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[mattnj]

Is diagramming the best way to attempt this question? If so, how would you diagram it?

[Jennifer Janowsky]

Hi,

This is a great question for diagramming, as it can help you see the simplicity through all the wordy detail in the stimulus. Although it looks complicated, diagramming reveals that the stimulus can be shown like this:

Rule for most pet owners: allergy meds ——> allergic
Likely application for Chuck (pet owner): allergic ——> allergy meds

Meanwhile, the correct answer choice (B) can be diagrammed like this:

Rule for most cars: taken to AAE ——> has electrical problems
Likely application for Anastasia’s car: has electrical problems ——> taken to AAE

In both the stimulus and answer choice (B), the flaw is Mistaken Reversal. Hope this is helpful!

[heartofsunshine]

Hi there,

What is the difference between B and E? Is it the slight distinction between "if" and "when" Since the stimulus only referred to Chuck as "if he develops an allergy"? Thank you!

[Adam Tyson]

While "if" and "whenever" are both sufficient indicators, heartofsunshine, you're right to note that they have an important difference. "If" is uncertain, while "whenever" has a degree of certainty (and a straightforward "when" is even more certain.)

But I think the bigger difference here, the one that really kills answer E completely, is the difference between HAVING electrical problems and "THINKING that your car has such a problem. Yesterday I thought my carbon monoxide detector was going off, but it wasn't. It turned out that noise was coming from the smoke detector.

What we are looking for in these answers is something parallel to the stimulus. What we had was a flaw of Formal Logic - "most As are Bs" doesn't prove that most Bs are As. In the stimulus, the A in my statement was "pet owner who takes allergy medicine" and the B was "allergic to pets." In the correct answer, A will stand for "car taken to Acme Auto" and the B will stand for "car with electrical problems." Answer E changes one of the terms from "electrical problems" to "think it might be electrical problems," and that change is fatal to the answer.

[g_lawyered]

Hi P.S.
I know that in Parallel Flaw questions the flaw in the argument has to match the flaw in the correct answer choice. But can we eliminate answer choices that don't parallel the conclusion type also (like we do in Parallel Reasoning Questions)? I ask this because when solving this question, I was between contender answer choices B and C. I wanted to quickly pick B over C because of the parallel conclusion type of: conditional positive likelihood ("it's likely that WILL"). As opposed to C that has conditional negative likelihood ("it's likely that WON'T").

Because I wasn't sure if that was enough to eliminate the answer choice, I diagrammed each answer choice to see which one paralleled the argument.
I diagrammed B as:

(Conclusion): If Electrical problems A to Acme Auto
(Premise): Most cars in Acme Auto have electrical problems
Flaw: Mistaken Negation

I diagrammed C as:
(Conclusion): If Electrical problems A NOT TO Acme Auto
(Premise): Most cars in Acme Auto DON'T have electrical problems
Flaw: The conclusion is contrapositive of premise. So the argument isn't flawed.
This is the reason why I chose B over C. Is my reasoning correct?

Also, how is it that statements with "Most" can be written as conditional statements? Even thought Most isn't a sufficient condition word indicator? I saw this written in the explanations:

Likely application for Chuck (pet owner): allergic ——> allergy meds

Meanwhile, the correct answer choice (B) can be diagrammed like this:

Rule for most cars: taken to AAE ——> has electrical problems

Thanks in advance!

[Adam Tyson]

Parallel Flaw answers should meet all the same criteria as regular Parallel Reasoning answers, including matching the conclusion. But you do not have to match the positive/negative aspect of that conclusion. If the argument concludes that X MUST occur, that could be parallel to an answer that says X will NOT occur, because they have the same degree of certainty. Here are two parallel arguments:

1. If I have COVID, I must quarantine. I am quarantined, so I must have COVID.
2. If I promised to keep it secret, I must not share the news. I did not share the news, so I must have promised to keep it secret.

These are both Mistaken Reversals and are therefore parallel, despite the first one having a positive conclusion and the second having a negative one. The conclusions match in their strength of language, in their certainty.

Usually, correct parallel answers will have the same positive/negative aspect as the argument, but they don't have to, and that should not be used as a test (or at least not as your ONLY test) for determining whether an answer is a loser or a contender.

[SGD2021]

Following up on some of the advice posted above, on a parallel reasoning question, if our stimulus argues that “we should not do something” but an answer choice outlines something we SHOULD do, would that answer choice still be in the running as a contender? In other words, we shouldn’t immediately eliminate an answer like that that differs in that way from our stimulus?

[Robert Carroll]

SGD2021,

That difference alone doesn't necessarily make an answer wrong.

Robert Carroll

[arvinm123]

Where I had trouble with this question was in the convolution of last sentence. I am unable to figure out how to diagram the last sentence upon reading because it uses the "conclusion/premise indicator form" to depict a conditional relationship that seems to me to have three pieces:

1) since chuck owns a pet dog (sufficient condition)
2) if he develops an allergy to pets (sufficient condition)
3) it is likely that he will take allergy medication (necessary condition)

The two sufficient conditions intertwined in the same sentence along with the necessary are making it difficult for me understand which sufficient statement goes where. Can someone break down how to order/diagram these, as well as indicate whether the use of the conclusion/premise indicator form adds any implications to the conditional relationship?

Thanks in advance