#23 - Editorial: Teenagers tend to wake up around 8:00 A.M.

[jayzbrisk]

Don't we also have to make an assumption that there was no shift in the area people were driving in? I thought that answer choice E was a weakener because it suggested that the reason for the decrease in accidents was because more people started driving in the area surrounding Granville instead of Granville which wouldn't actually suggest a decrease in accidents by ratio to driversjust a shift in drivers themselves. I'm assuming I added to many assumptions?

[Robert Carroll]

jay,

Answer choice (E) is strengthening the argument by ruling out a particular alternative that would have weakened the argument. If there was a general drop in accidents involving teen drivers, then the specific decline in Granville would just have been following the trend, so might have been due to the same factors operating generally. If so, the specific change in the start time of school would not have been as likely to be the reason for the decline in Granville - it was declining everywhere. If, instead, accidents were increasing in other places, the trend seems to be one of increasing accidents, yet Granville bucked the trend. How? Something specific about the area must account for the difference - perhaps starting school later! It's no proof, but this is, after all, a Strengthen question - proof is not needed, just a stronger case than before. Answer choice (E) definitely strengthens the case.

There's no particular reason to think people shifted where they were driving, so on its own, answer choice (E) does not make it more likely that drivers shifted location. That they might have shifted location indicates that answer choice (E) may not justify the conclusion, but, after all, this isn't a Justify question, so that objection has no force.

Robert Carroll

[lsacgals101]

this question uses the sufficient conditional indicator "if"... how can i better distinguish between a casual argument that has a sufficient/conditional indicator and an actual conditional argument?????

[Brook Miscoski]

lsacgals,

The argument contains both conditional and causal reasoning. The first sentence expresses a conditional statement. After that, the argument uses causal concepts--sleepiness impairs driving; changing the school start time could reduce accidents.

[WarnerHuntingtonIII]

Referring to Answer E:

But all the schools surrounding Granville could start at 9 AM. Was there a detail I missed that removes this possibility?

[Robert Carroll]

WarnerHuntingtonIII,

The schools could have, but there's no mention of that at all. We should not make extraneous assumptions on the test, and realize that this is a Strengthen question - the answer needs to help, not make the argument perfect.

Robert Carroll

[roesttezz]

Can you please clarify the needed mindset when countering strengthening/weakening questions? For example, RC's answers should be directly stated or inferred from the passage. I struggled with the mindset a lot and believe that this is the main reason I can't grasp this section despite practice.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

No wonder these are hard for you, roesttezz, if you are treating them like prove family questions! Strengthen/weaken questions ask you to take another potential fact that, if true, would either strengthen or weaken the argument. So your mindset for these should be first, to identify the argument in the stimulus. You need to identify the conclusion and find any holes in the argument. Where is the conclusion weak? That will give you an idea of where you should focus your weaken/strengthen prephrase. Generally, for strengthen questions, you are looking for the answer choice that makes the conclusion more likely to be true. It doesn't need to prove the conclusion. It doesn't need to be stated in the stimulus. You are adding information that would help the conclusion follow from the premises.

Hope that helps!

[riabobiia]

I was between D and E for this question, but I ultimately went with D.

My reasoning was that the argument is trying to demonstrate a relationship between teenage sleepiness and car accidents. If "many" accidents also included teenage drivers driving in the evening, this could also prove that accidents are caused by sleepiness (being tired in the evening).

I can see why E could be correct, but I feel like it has just as many holes for the same reason that D isn't correct. We don't why the teenage car accidents increased around Granville, it could have been due to other factors that we don't know and can't assume.

Also, the wording of "time" in the answer threw me off. "During the time" read to me as though it was a period of time rather than a specific time in the day.

I'm having so much trouble with LR questions because sometimes I can understand why certain answer choices are correct, but I can't see why my answer choices aren't correct based on the way they're interpreted.

I thought that would be a good skill for a lawyer, but I was very wrong LOL

[srusty]

I was between D and E for this question, but I ultimately went with D.

My reasoning was that the argument is trying to demonstrate a relationship between teenage sleepiness and car accidents. If "many" accidents also included teenage drivers driving in the evening, this could also prove that accidents are caused by sleepiness (being tired in the evening).

I can see why E could be correct, but I feel like it has just as many holes for the same reason that D isn't correct. We don't why the teenage car accidents increased around Granville, it could have been due to other factors that we don't know and can't assume.

Also, the wording of "time" in the answer threw me off. "During the time" read to me as though it was a period of time rather than a specific time in the day.

I'm having so much trouble with LR questions because sometimes I can understand why certain answer choices are correct, but I can't see why my answer choices aren't correct based on the way they're interpreted.

I thought that would be a good skill for a lawyer, but I was very wrong LOL

Hi R,

No sweat! Let me break it down a different way, and let me know if that's helpful. Answer choice (D) can be interpreted as netural to the argument. Answer choice (D) does not tell us about anything related to car accidents in the morning, which is what we are trying make a point about. The word "many" is a vague term and is akin to "several." It could mean 15 accidents involving teenage drivers happen in the evening, or 20, or 10, or any number. We can't confuse it with "most" which actually would affect our conclusion about teen car accidents.

Answer choice (E) is correct because it rules out the possibility that maybe teenage driver accident rates were declining everywhere. What if the school time change happened as soon as the weather in the Granville area went from wintery to bright and clear? Answer choice (E) provides support for our argument of a link between sleepiness and morning teenage accidents because it indicates that the decline in accident rates was not a general phenomenon.

I hope that helps!