#26 - Because our club recruited the best volleyball players

[Albertlyu]

Complete Question Explanation

Answer choice (C): The argument predicted the outcome of the championship based on the premise
that the best team will be the team most likely to win the championship, and was not based solely on
a comparison between the parties in the competition.

please can I ask if anyone can further elaborate C?

My understanding is this: "Most likely to win" means more likely than all the other teams which is a comparison of the likelihood between different parties in the competition and predicated on this, the author reached the conclusion that they will almost win (the outcome of the championship). please, thanks.

[Robert Carroll]

Albert,

I agree; saying that the best team will be the team most likely to win is relating winning to the superlative nature of the team, which is implicitly a comparison - whatever is best is better than all the rest. So answer choice (C) is describing part of what the argument is doing. But it's not a Method question - it's a Flaw question. What answer choice (C) is describing is fine - predicting the outcome of a competition by comparing the parties seems entirely appropriate. I don't know how else you could validly predict the outcome of a competition. So that's not flawed.

As to your other post, if team A has a 35% chance of winning, by definition they have a 65% chance of not winning. That's not consistent with team A most likely being the winner - the more likely outcome is that team A is not the winner than that they are.

Robert Carroll

[Albertlyu]

Albert,

I agree; saying that the best team will be the team most likely to win is relating winning to the superlative nature of the team, which is implicitly a comparison - whatever is best is better than all the rest. So answer choice (C) is describing part of what the argument is doing. But it's not a Method question - it's a Flaw question. What answer choice (C) is describing is fine - predicting the outcome of a competition by comparing the parties seems entirely appropriate. I don't know how else you could validly predict the outcome of a competition. So that's not flawed.

As to your other post, if team A has a 35% chance of winning, by definition they have a 65% chance of not winning. That's not consistent with team A most likely being the winner - the more likely outcome is that team A is not the winner than that they are.

Robert Carroll

thanks, Robert for your clarification.

Yes, I now understand that answer C itself is not a flaw, thank you for elaborating on this.

However, with E, I guess the reason I am confused is that for Flaw questions, I always try to think of an express scenario or specific example in which the conclusion does not follow, but in this case, I can not visualize it.

For instance, 35% chance means on average A will win 35 times out of 100 matches, and let us assume there are 4 teams and the other 3 teams all have a 10% chance (10 out of 100 matches). But there is only one the final winer, it seems illogical to say that by engaging the other teams, A's chance of winning is somehow enhanced to 50%+(most likely), but I still could not rule it out.

thank you Roberts for all of your replies, I really appreciate it. I find it useful to revisit the wrong ones sometimes, I have marked this one and will revisit again later, maybe I will come around then.

thanks, have a good day.

Albert

[bonnie_a]

Hi, I am now able to see clearly why I got this question wrong and why E is the correct answer. But, when I was reviewing it once again, I noticed something which could possibly be another flaw to this argument. In the conclusion, it says it is the club that will be city champions, not the volleyball team that's been discussed in the preceding premises. I know the team belongs to the club but there might be many other teams that belong to the club (also, those teams might not be as successful) and thus it's not necessarily the club that's becoming a champion? With this in mind, I found other choices to be extremely attractive and could not eliminate them with much confidence. Am I overthinking too much here?

[Ryan Twomey]

Hey Bonnie,

It's really good that you caught the change in language, but that is not a flaw in this case. Club and team are interchangeable here. They are synonyms, so this was not a flaw in the argument. They call soccer teams in Europe clubs, and we call our sports teams, well teams.

There were two flaws in the argument:

1. Assuming best players equates to best team.

2. Assuming most likely team to win equates to winning with almost certainty.

None of the answer choices addressed flaw #1.

Answer choice E addressed flaw #2, making answer choice E the correct answer.

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

Best,
Ryan

[CharlesPasselius]

I have a question related to this problem that I hope can yield a general principle for future similar problems. The thing that made this problem hard for me was that there were two flaws in the stimulus. The intermediate conclusion committed a fallacy of composition (aka part to whole) -- "best players; therefore, best team." The conclusion committed a relatively flaw -- "most likely to win" (comparative); therefore, "almost certain to win" (absolute). In this case, the correct answer focused on the flaw in the conclusion.

Here is my general principal quesiton: in questions like this, is it always the case that the correct answer choice will focus on the flaw in the conclusion? Or could it also focus on the flaw in the intermediate conclusion? Or, if it is not "ALWAYS" the case, is it more likely that it will focus on the flaw in the conclusion? Thanks in advance.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Charles,

I think it's helpful to think of this like anything in the prove family. Your role in flaw questions is to find something that describes a flaw. You don't have to describe all the flaws present. Just like in a must be true question you don't have to find an answer that gives you everything that must be true, in a flaw question you don't have to find something that addresses all the flaws. For this one (and if you see something in the future with multiple flaws) your prephrase should be something that allows for either or both flaws to be addressed in the answer choice.

Hope that helps!