#25 - It is likely that most of the new television programs

[Adam Tyson]

Your approach to the double negative is what got you in trouble there, Sophia123! Be careful about preserving the original meaning of the claim when you try to translate it to make it less awkward. See Nikki's explanation of answer C earlier in this thread to see how it should really go. Or, for a different approach, try this:

Imagine the WW produced 10 new shows last year. Most of them - let's say 7 - were cancelled. That puts the shows in two groups - 7 in the cancelled group, 3 in the not-cancelled group.

Answer choice C is saying that none of the 3 shows in the not-cancelled group were police dramas. Put another way, all of the shows that survived were something other than police dramas.

What does that tell us about the other group, the 7 that were cancelled? Nothing! We only know that the 3 shows that made it were not police dramas. Perhaps none of the 10 were police dramas? That would still be consistent with answer C, but would not help the argument that they are likely to have a lot of police dramas cancelled this year.

Be sure when you take a mechanical approach, like translating a double negative into a positive, that you don't lose the intended meaning of the claim! Don't not be careful!

[Ryan Ashburn]

Hello,

When I was blind reviewing this question I eliminated answers B and C and picked D, but for different reasons than have been talked about in the above thread so I wanted to see if my reasoning was correct.

The stimuli specifically states "new" shows produced several times. I realized with answer choices B and C they do not specify that they are referring to new shows produced. B says most of the shows that ww produced last year....., and C says none of the shows that ww produced last year....

My reasoning was essentially that since B and C did not explicitly reference new PD's produced, they could have been referring to old PD's that were produced again so B and C did not strengthen the stimuli which was exclusively referring to new PD's produced.

Is this a correct way of viewing this question, or could being this picky about language potentially get me in trouble on other questions?

Thanks

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Ryan,

Your reasoning here is right on point. Unless we had some evidence from the stimulus (which we do not) that the collection of shows Wilke & Wilke produce on the whole are indicative of their new shows, you can't get much help (if anything) from facts about the shows they produce on the whole. That, as you say, makes answer choice D a much more attractive answer right off the bat than answer choices B and C. I'd still want to make sure that answer choice D was helpful to the conclusion (in this case, it is), but what you're noticing is a very good way of narrowing quickly to the likeliest correct answers.

I hope this helps!

[powerscoreQasker]

Wow, the point that Ryan caught about B and C not specifying new shows is something I wish I'd caught!

I also thought of a way to phrase what several others have said previously about answer choice D, which says:

• new show WW produced last year & canceled --> police drama

when combined with the fact that the majority of new shows WW produced last year were canceled, we can infer that most of the new police dramas WW produced last year were canceled. That seems like decent evidence that most of the new police dramas WW produce this year will be canceled.

[Adam Tyson]

Exactly, powerscoreQasker! Well done. This answer doesn't prove anything, but it sure makes me feel most confident that the author is on to something, and gives me some additional doubts about the possibility that W&W will have many (or any) successful new shows this year.