#16 - Last year, a software company held a contest to

[Administrator]

Please post below with any questions!

[mjb514]

Can you please explain why A is wrong, thank you.

[MikeJones]

Can you please explain why A is wrong, thank you.

Sure, I can sympathize since I sometimes have trouble identifying correlation/causation. The reason why A is wrong in this instance is that there are no two elements with a correlation relationship (A tends to increase with B, etc.) in the stimulus, and there is certainly no causal language (A influences B, A causes B, etc.).

The only support for the conclusion is the conditional statement indicated by the "everyone who," which is a sufficient indicator. Every, everyone, everything, all, any and each are sufficient indicators. The conclusion mistakenly takes the T-shirt as the sufficient indicator. This is called a mistaken reversal.

I'd recommend searching various forums for correlation/causation indicators. It makes it a heck of a lot easier to identify those relationships when they appear.

[nicholaspavic]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for catching this. And I agree with you! Well done and best of luck tomorrow.

[BostonLawGuy]

I correctly recognized the mistaken reversal in this argument and chose the right answer. But, had one of the answer choices stated that the author mistook a NECESSARY condition for a sufficient condition, I would have had a hard time. I have a hard time with language detailing what's being mistaken for what.

Enter contest get T-shirt

Juan has t-shirt must have entered contest.

Seems he is mistaken a necessary condition for a sufficient?

[Adam Tyson]

It's both, Boston! Whether the answer describes a mistaken reversal, or a mistaken negation, they are logically equivalent answers. This author got the sufficient and necessary conditions swapped in his mind, so he mistook the sufficient for the necessary AND he mistook the necessary for the sufficient!

When faced with a conditional flaw in the stimulus, and the stem asks you to describe that flaw, a description of EITHER a mistaken negation of a mistaken reversal will do the job. Just look for the answer that describes ANY conditional flaw, and you have it! They can't give you one answer that describes a mistaken negation, and another that describes a mistaken reversal, and expect you to select one over the other, because they are saying the same thing as each other. They are, in fact, the contrapositive of each other!

I hope that helps!

[tetsuya0129]

Hi, Powerscore,

I had a hard time seeing why (B) could be a mistaken reversal.
I spot several prizes as the necessary condition and several means more than one (?).
So the saying Juan has one of the prizes is not really saying Juan has several prizes, the necessary condition. So I very struggled between B and E.

Any thoughts, please?

[Paul Marsh]

Hi tetsuya!

I can see why the "several prizes" portion could be a bit tricky. The "several prizes" is a bit of a distraction; the t-shirt is the specific prize that is mentioned must be included. So we can draw a sufficient/necessary relationship between:

Enter contest T-shirt

The conclusion then precisely reverses that conditional, so we do have a Mistaken Reversal here.

Answer Choice E on the other hand describes an over-generalization. An over-generalization is where an argument makes a broad, sweeping, general claim on the basis of just one instance. Here, we don't have such a broad claim. So E is out.

Hope that helps!