Self-study
Many people joke about Friday the thirteenth being an unlucky day, but a study showed that Support in one year approximately 17 percent of people scheduled to fly canceled or did not show up for their flights on Friday the thirteenth—a rate higher than that on any other day and date in that year. ████ █████ ████ █ ███████████ ██████████ ██ ███ ██████████ █████ ██████ ███████ █████ ██████ █████ ████ ████ ██████ ██ █ ██████████ ███████ ████
Summarize Argument: Phenomenon-Hypothesis
The author hypothesizes that a significant proportion of the population are willing to disrupt their plans to avoid flying on an “unlucky” Friday the thirteenth. This hypothesis is based on the observation that during a particular year, more people cancelled or didn’t show up to their flights on Friday the thirteenth than on any other day that year.
Notable Assumptions
The author assumes that the reason people didn’t show up for their flights on Friday the thirteenth was the unlucky date, and not some other reason. There aren’t that many Fridays the thirteenth in a single year, so maybe some other significant factor just happened to arise on one or more Fridays the thirteenth that year.
10.
Which one of the following ███████████ ██ █████ ████ █████████ ███████ ███ █████████
a
People who fly ████ ██ ██ █████████████ ███ ██ █ █████ ███ ████ █████████████ ████ ███ ███████ ███████
Even if people who fly are less superstitious, that doesn’t mean they’re not superstitious—maybe an even higher percentage of the general public would have skipped their flights. This doesn’t provide an alternative explanation, or make the author’s explanation any less likely.
b
Surveys show that ████ ████ █ ███████ ██ ███ ██████████ ██████ ████ ████ ███████ ████ ██████ ███ ██████████ ██ ██ ███████ ████
This just doesn’t give us enough context to know how it relates to the 17 percent of people who missed their flights on Friday the thirteenth. Maybe only a very tiny percentage of people fly, and they’re unusually likely to be superstitious—we don’t know.
c
Weather conditions at ███████ █████ ████████ ████ ██████ ██ ███ ███████ ████ ████ ██ ███ ██████████ ██ ███ ████ ██ ███ ██████
This weakens by providing an alternative explanation for why more people missed their flights on Friday the thirteenth. If there happened to be severe weather those days, it makes sense that people would miss their flights even without superstition being involved.
Alternate explanation
Alternate explanation
Weaken: Introduce or support an alternate explanation for a phenomenon.
Strengthen: Helps to eliminate an alternate explanation for a phenomenon.
d
In the year ██ ███ ██████ ██████████ ███████ ███ ██ ███████ ██ ██████ ███ ██████████ ████ ██ █████ ████████
This does not weaken, because the domain of the argument is specific to flights. It would be perfectly reasonable for people to fear flying on an unlucky day but not fear driving, because driving is a much more routine activity.
e
The absentee rate █████ ███████ ███████ ███ ███ █████████████ ██████ ████ ██████ ██ ███ ███████ ████ ████ ██ ███ ██████████ ██ ███ ████ ██ ███ ██████
This does not weaken, because there are other factors that explain why airline workers might show up to work on an “unlucky” day. So this doesn’t really contradict the observed data about passengers, and still doesn’t explain the phenomenon.
Directionally wrong
Directionally wrong
Answers that, if they have any effect, do the opposite of what we want (weaken when we're trying to strengthen, or strengthen when we're trying to weaken).