#9 - Office manager: Every vacation an office worker takes

[jonathan95129]

Hi LSATBoss,

Thanks for the question. I don't agree with the idea that the author overlooks the total amount of time taken as a factor. As James says above, "The reason (D) doesn't work is that we don't actually know from the stimulus know whether the worker would be taking more or less aggregate vacation time if they followed the stimulus's recommendation, although the way the last sentence is worded implies to me that they would be taking the same amount of vacation time over the course of a year, just dividing it into smaller chunks."

Looking at it again, all the author has talked about is the value of multiple short vacations versus fewer but longer breaks: "several short vacations" vs "one or two long vacations." This is completely consistent with the total amount of time between the two approaches being the same (and in fact would make the advice somewhat more understandable since the difference wouldn't be total time but how it was spent, a la one moving variable instead of two).

Thanks!

I still don't understand why E is more correct than D.

D is suggesting very directly that at best, many short vacations will equal the benefits of a few long vacations, thereby attacking the conclusion by showing how it is not better to have many short vacations. I actually don't understand how the aggregate amount of time could be interpreted as variable because both the long vacations and the short vacations are drawn from the same pool of "vacation time" that is mentioned in the last sentence. Furthermore, I think it would be very premature to assume that dividing up this set amount of vacation time would result in more actual vacation time if you were to use many small vacations than if you were to have one long vacation.

E is based on the wording that 1 long vacation is much more beneficial than 1 short vacation; however, this statement is compatible with the author's conclusion that many short vacations is better than a few long vacations. To illustrate this, consider that 1 long vacation provides 10 relaxation points whereas 1 short vacation provides on 1 relaxation point. In this case, the long vacation is indeed much more relaxing than 1 short vacation, 10x as relaxing in fact. However, if I can take 20 short vacations a year vs only 1 long vacation a year, then very clearly it is more effective to take many small vacations.

My problem with the answer choice isn't so much of E on its own, it's that D is clearly better because it conclusively shows the author's conclusion (that it is better to have many short vacations) to be false.

Can you please explain why E should still be better than D because the explanations that I've found so far do not seem to address how D decisively counters the argument and E is actually not necessarily incompatible with the argument.

[Ryan Twomey]

Hey Jonathan,

So I don't normally just restate prior instructor's comments, but Dave's point addresses exactly what I was thinking. Answer choice D is not as relevant as answer choice E because the author was recommending a specific course of action for how to use your vacation days.

The issue in the stimulus is the author was arguing for how to use those vacation days. The author was essentially arguing you should take as many vacations as possible with your vacation days. If you have 20 vacation days, take 20, 1 day vacations.

The author does not consider, that there may be varying degrees to the benefit of vacation depending on the length of that vacation. Answer choice E brings up the possibility that taking, one 20 day vacation may reduce psychological stress more than ten, 2-day vacations.

I agree that answer choice D is a tempting answer choice, but answer choice E better addresses the flaw in the argument, which is the author argued for using short vacations when we did not know the difference in benefit between short vacations and long vacations.

I hope this helps, and I wish you all of the luck in your studies.

Best,
Ryan

[Amrita22]

Hi Powerscore Team,

As an answer choice, E is the best one. However, I find myself overthinking D. The stimulus states, "to reduce exhaustion as much as possible [...]" I read D as suggesting a sort of alternate pathway that could reduce psychological exhaustion more than different ways of dividing vacation time, namely, the total amount of vacation time. Why is this line of thinking mistaken?

[atierney]

Hi Amirita,

This question is a flaw in the reasoning question, and so the answer choice must use the information from the stimulus and identify the flaw inherent therein. This is not a weaken question, so we're not using outside information, like alternative causes for a posited Cause-Effect relationship for example, as we would for those types questions, which are primarily aimed at hurting the argument, rather than picking it apart via its suspect internal consistency. As a general note, this is the essential difference between Weaken questions, which "hurt" the argument, by any means necessary (just land a punch), and Flaw in the Reasoning questions, which identify the flaw (go for the jugular).

Therefore, your line reasoning is wrong (not right), where you are selecting an answer choice based on an alternative pathway, which, to me, sounds a lot like "finding another way."

Now, let's pause here, because I know you're probably thinking that this is actually a false dilemma, and that what you are actually doing is identifying that fact by posing an alternative pathway. Here, I would in turn say that false dilemma questions are constructed fundamentally differently, mainly they explicitly identify a choice with only two options, i.e. present a situation and pose only two ways out of it or means by which to proceed. Here, it is not so much a choice between two options as much as it is an indication that one option is better than the other. The flaw of course, being that the two options have not been considered fully, and that there was a failure to consider how the option not chosen might actually more effectively deliver the desired outcome, i.e. the longer vacations might actually reduce stress more than the shorter ones purely due to their length.

Let me know if you have further questions on this.

[hope]

Hi Amirita,

This question is a flaw in the reasoning question, and so the answer choice must use the information from the stimulus and identify the flaw inherent therein. This is not a weaken question, so we're not using outside information, like alternative causes for a posited Cause-Effect relationship for example, as we would for those types questions, which are primarily aimed at hurting the argument, rather than picking it apart via its suspect internal consistency. As a general note, this is the essential difference between Weaken questions, which "hurt" the argument, by any means necessary (just land a punch), and Flaw in the Reasoning questions, which identify the flaw (go for the jugular).

Therefore, your line reasoning is wrong (not right), where you are selecting an answer choice based on an alternative pathway, which, to me, sounds a lot like "finding another way."

Now, let's pause here, because I know you're probably thinking that this is actually a false dilemma, and that what you are actually doing is identifying that fact by posing an alternative pathway. Here, I would in turn say that false dilemma questions are constructed fundamentally differently, mainly they explicitly identify a choice with only two options, i.e. present a situation and pose only two ways out of it or means by which to proceed. Here, it is not so much a choice between two options as much as it is an indication that one option is better than the other. The flaw of course, being that the two options have not been considered fully, and that there was a failure to consider how the option not chosen might actually more effectively deliver the desired outcome, i.e. the longer vacations might actually reduce stress more than the shorter ones purely due to their length.

Let me know if you have further questions on this.

Atierney you say that "This is not a weaken question so we're not using outside information like alternative causes for a posited Cause-Effect relationship." But the Powerscore LR Bible does list Alternate Cause or a Third Cause causing both cause and effect as viable answers for Flaw questions. They are listed under "Mistaken Cause and Effect" errors.

It was for this very reason that I chose B as the answer. I felt that the author had overlooked a possible alternate cause ("other methods") other than a vacation that could also alleviate exhaustion.

Could you respond at your earliest convenience? Thanks.

[atierney]

Hi Hope,

Yes, so flaw questions ask you to identify the flaw in the reasoning, which can be determined by looking at the stimulus itself. This is not a weaken question, and therefore the answer choice must be confined to demonstrating how the answer is flawed rather positing an alternative as in a weaken question. In other words, a weaken answer would read as, "fails to consider that C could have caused B," whereas an answer choice related to not identifying an alternative cause for the flaw in the reasoning type would read as "fails to consider an alternative cause." In other words, for a flaw in the reasoning question, the answer choice merely identifies that the argument is flawed, but doesn't incorporate any outside information, as opposed to the weaken question which would incorporate the actual alternative cause within the answer choice, and thereby necessarily rely upon outside information.

Now, in terms of this question however, the idea still holds. If you found that the primary error in this argument was the failure to identify an alternative cause, then you would mark that as the answer. Here, however, and pardon me if this was not clear to begin with, the flaw if the failure to consider that the length of vacation may play just as much a role as simply the number of vacations taken. Certainly, I'm not refreshed after just a weekend! Thus, the answer choice is E.

With respect to eliminating B however, the argument is confined to only considering the ways in which allocating vacation time throughout the year will allow one to reduce their psychological stress as much as possible. This means that B is automatically out of scope, since it consider a method other than taking vacation time. It posits not an alternative cause, but rather a parallel cause or means by which one might achieve the result of reducing stress. Because it is outside the bounds of the argument, B would not be a correct answer.

Let me know if you have further questions, and my sincere apologies for the confusion to begin with!