I recently did a spot the flaw question where it said something along the lines of "We did a survey and 50% of people surveyed believed if A then B and 25% of people surveyed believed if B then C. Therefore more people believe if A then B compared to if C then B"

I saw two flaws here:

1) They draw a conclusion about the population in general based on only a sample of the population (we do not know who many were surveyed)

2) They have a mistaken conditional where they switched if B then C to if C then B

The problem was that EACH were mentioned in the answer choices with #2 being correct.

The explanation why 1) was wrong is "there is nothing inherently flawed about drawing a conclusion from a sample. What would be flawed is relying on a unrepresentative sample, but thats not what 1) says"

This explanation threw me for a loop. I understand unrepresentative as in "We asked 10,000 kids so it applies to the whole population" because these are different groups

BUT does this mean if it said "We asked 10 people, 50% said yes and 25% said no so more people believe yes" it wouldn't be a flaw?

OR

Because the question did not mention anything about the sample, there is no way for the sample to be unrepresentative for the argument even if we draw a conclusion about people in general for the sample like if the argument said "We conducted a survey and 60% said they believe in Santa and 40% said they do not, so more people than not believe in Santa" is not a flawed argument

If you want to find the exact question it starts with "A recent survey showed that 50 percent of people polled believe that elected officials"