- Tue Jun 03, 2014 5:11 pm
#14914
jk,
Answer choice (E) contains the correlation/causation language, so I assume that's the one you meant. In this particular case, though, the stimulus does not claim that there is a causal relationship between the wind and unsafe smog. If it had, that would be a flaw, but the author did not make such a (flawed) connection, so we have to look elsewhere for the issue.
The stimulus is saying "on some hot days, there is unsafe smog, and on some hot days, there is wind from the east." The author concludes by saying that there are some days with both wind and unsafe smog. But we don't know that that is the case. We know that some hot days have smog and some have wind. To claim that there is any overlap between those days would involve flawed reasoning. So look for the answer choice that refers to such overlap.
Answer choice (B) is the one that does this: "fails to recognize that one set might have some members in common with each of two others even though those two other sets have no members in common with each other." Some hot days have unsafe smog, so there is some overlap between hot days and unsafe smog, and some hot days have wind from the east, so there is some overlap between hot days and wind from the east. The (flawed) conclusion is thinking that this proves there are some unsafe-smog days with wind from the east - we cannot infer an overlap between those sets from the information in the stimulus.
Robert Carroll
