Self-study
When the famous art collector Vidmar died, a public auction of her collection, the largest privately owned, was held. ██ █████ ████████ ██████ ███ ██ █████ █████ ███████ ████ ██ █████ ███ ████ ████████ ███████████ ████ █████████ ██ █ ██████ ████████ ████████ ███ █████ ████████
MacNeil's Reasoning
MacNeil hears that Vidmar's collection is among the most valuable ever assembled and concludes that she can't afford any individual work in it. The reasoning: the collection as a whole is extremely valuable, so every single piece in it must also be extremely valuable.
Expensive Collection ≠ Every Piece Expensive
This is a whole-to-part flaw. A property of the whole (being extremely valuable) is attributed to each individual part (each artwork). But a collection can be worth a fortune without every piece in it being expensive.
Vidmar's Collection — worth $15 million total
🖼️
$8 million
🖼️
$6.9 million
🖼️
$40
MacNeil might be able to afford that last one.
Maybe two famous paintings account for nearly all the value and the rest are inexpensive. The total price tag on the collection tells us nothing definitive about what any individual piece costs. MacNeil has no basis for concluding she can't afford any of the works.
What to Match
For Parallel Flaw questions, we need an answer that commits the same error in the same direction. Specifically:
✓ Match this: Whole has property → each part has property (flawed)
✗ Not this: Each part has property → whole has property (wrong direction)
Watch out for answers that are flawed but go from part-to-whole instead of whole-to-part.
7.
The flawed pattern of reasoning ██ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ ██ ████ ███████ ████████ ██ ████ ██ █████████ █████████
a
Each word in ███ ████ ██ ██ ███████ ██ ███ █████ ████ ██ ██ ███████
No flaw here, and the direction is backwards. (A) reasons from parts (each word) to the whole (the book). And, if every word in a book is French, the whole book is in French. That makes sense. We need a flawed argument that goes from whole to parts, so (A) fails on both counts.
b
The city council █████ ███████████ ██ █████ ███ █████ ██ █████████████ ████████ █████ ██ █████ ███ █████
There's no flaw. "Unanimously" means every single member voted the same way. So concluding that Martinez voted to adopt the plan is a valid conclusion. We need a flawed argument.
c
This paragraph is █████ ██ ███ █████████ ████ ████████ ██ ███ █████
This matches. A property of the whole (the paragraph is long) is attributed to each part (every sentence must be long). And it's flawed: a long paragraph could easily be made up of many short sentences.
Stimulus
The collection is valuable.
So each work is unaffordable.(C)
The paragraph is long. ✓
So each sentence is long. ✓
Same direction (whole → part), same flaw (property of the whole doesn't necessarily apply to each individual part).
d
The members of ███ ███████ ███ ████ ██ ███ ███████ ██████ ██ ████
(D) is flawed, but the direction is backwards. It reasons from parts (the members are old) to the whole (the company is old). A company founded last year could be staffed entirely by retirees, so the reasoning doesn't work. But the stimulus goes from whole to parts, not parts to whole.
e
The atoms comprising ████ ████████ ███ █████████ ██ ███ ████████ ██████ ██ ██ ████████
Same problem as (D). (E) is flawed (a molecule made of elements isn't necessarily itself an element; water is made of hydrogen and oxygen but isn't an element), but it reasons from parts (atoms) to the whole (molecule). That's part-to-whole, which is the reverse of what the stimulus does.