PT152.S2.Q11 > Question

SECTION 1 · lr

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7 Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13 Question 14 Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19 Question 20 Question 21 Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25

SECTION 2 · lr

SECTION 3 · rc

PASSAGE 1

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6

PASSAGE 2

Question 7 Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13

PASSAGE 3

Question 14 Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19

PASSAGE 4

Question 20 Question 21 Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25 Question 26

SECTION 4 · lr

The author hypothesizes that the efforts to clean the Lalolah River are working. He supports this by saying that the river was ranked the third most polluted this year, while it was ranked the most polluted last year.

This is the flaw of confusing relative and absolute change. The author shows that the Lalolah River is less polluted this year than the top two most polluted rivers, and then assumes that it’s cleaner than it was last year. But just because the Lalolah River is less polluted than other rivers doesn’t mean that it’s actually gotten less polluted.

The other rivers might have just gotten much dirtier, while the Lalolah River stayed the same. If so, the author can’t conclude that the cleanup efforts are working.

This is the cookie-cutter flaw of assuming that an opponent’s conclusion is false, simply because their argument lacks evidence. The author doesn’t make this mistake; he isn’t countering someone else’s position or supporting an opposing claim at all.

This is the cookie-cutter flaw of equivocation, where the argument uses the same term in different ways. The author doesn’t make this mistake. He may not explain the exact meaning of “most polluted,” but he does use the term clearly and consistently throughout his argument.

The author doesn’t need to explain how the pollution rankings are determined. Even if he did, his argument would still be flawed because he confuses the river being cleaner than other rivers with it being cleaner overall.

The author never makes any claims about the state of the water district as a whole. Instead, he confuses the state of the Lalolah River compared to other rivers with the state of the Lalolah River this year compared to last year.

Just because the Lalolah River is less polluted than two other rivers does not mean that it’s less polluted than it was last year. Maybe the other rivers just got dirtier.

PrepTest 152 - Section 2 - Question 11

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