The question stem says the answer to which of the following questions would

be most useful to know in order to evaluate the reasoning of the argument.

So here we have an evaluate question.

This is basically just like a strengthened or weakened question.

We want to start by identifying why this argument is vulnerable.

And the correct answer is going to be an issue or a question where,

depending on how we resolve that question, that would strengthen or

weaken the argument.

So let's go ahead and break down this business person's argument.

the building was closed for maintenance today, I was late to my meeting.

If the maintenance had been done on a different day,

I would have gotten to the meeting on time.

So it seems like the business person is trying to say,

here is the cause of my lateness.

It's because the parking area directly

in front of the building was closed for maintenance.

So let's say there's this building here and

there's this parking area that's directly in front.

Apparently on this day, this area was closed.

So this was off limits.

What the business person is saying is that is the reason that

I was late to the meeting.

Now let's see, what reason do we have to believe that?

Well, the author continues and says,

after finding out that I could not park in that area,

it took me 15 minutes to

find an available parking space, making me a few minutes late.

So this right here, I'm interpreting as a premise.

This is something that's true.

After the business person found this was closed,

they had to like go somewhere else.

And then maybe they ended up parking here.

But this took 15 minutes.

And then because they had to look for another parking spot,

they ended up being a few minutes late.

And I'll just write the word late next to this parking spot.

Because that's what happened, because they had to look for 15 minutes,

ended up a few minutes late.

That is why the author believes it's the closure or

rather the maintenance of this parking area that caused this lateness.

Now, for the conclusion of this argument, I think it's a little bit ambiguous.

I'm actually interpreting both sentences as the conclusion.

Arguably, you could say maybe one of them is a conclusion and

maybe another one's like an intermediate conclusion.

But I'm not going to get that detailed here.

The idea here is both of those first two sentences are trying to say that

the maintenance of the parking lot is the cause of the lateness.

So that's the idea that I want to push back on, that I want to criticize.

Does this premise here actually guarantee or prove the conclusion?

We know the person had to look for parking.

We know that it took 15 minutes.

We know that that did make the person a few minutes late to the meeting.

But does that guarantee that

the maintenance of that parking lot is the cause of the lateness?

Now, I'm not sure that I can come up with any specific criticism of that.

Maybe you can, but right now I can't

and that's okay.

I'm still going to go into the answers knowing that

the correct answer should relate

to why even though this person was late to the meeting and even though they did

have to look for parking and it took 15 minutes, even though that part's true,

is there some reason why the maintenance of the parking

lot might not be to blame?

Now, for the purpose of this explanation,

I'll start with B, D, and E. Let's start with

that the business person not be late to this meeting?

Now, I don't see how

importance of the meeting sheds light on the cause of lateness.

For example, if I say, well, yes, it was important that

the person not be late, that doesn't provide any

reason to think that the business person would or would not

have been late in the absence of the maintenance.

What I'm interested in is whether this maintenance here

is really the cause of the lateness.

But the meeting's importance, whether it's high importance or

low importance, doesn't influence whether or not

this business person would have had something else that

came along that could have made them late.

So that's why I'm moving on from answer choice E.

I just don't see how importance connects to whether

he would have been late if the maintenance had been done on a different day.

does the business person have a tendency to be late to meetings?

Now, I think this is tempting for a lot of people because

they think, oh, well, if the business

person does have a tendency to be late, then maybe this argument's

bad because this person's like usually late.

But the problem with this answer is that the argument is very specific.

The argument is about whether the closure or rather

the maintenance on this day is the cause of the lateness.

Or in other words, if the maintenance had been done on a different day,

would the business person still have been late?

Now let's say it's true that

this business person does have a tendency to be late.

That doesn't tell us anything about whether

he would have been late on this particular day though.

We know as a premise that after finding out that he couldn't park in the area,

it took 15 minutes to find an available parking space.

So this delay here we know did happen because

he had to look for another parking space.

What matters is whether he would have still

had to take this time if this area had not been closed.

On other days, he might have been late for other reasons,

such as maybe getting up too late, sleeping past the alarm.

But this argument is about the specific circumstances on this day,

and the business person

is giving us specific premise here to support the idea that

the maintenance area caused lateness.

What we need to do is engage with this premise and

say, okay, look, even though you did

have to take more time to find a parking spot, you

can't blame the parking spot for your lateness.

You still would not have gotten to the meeting on time.

The general tendency of being late doesn't engage with a specific reason that

this author

is providing us to think that this person wouldn't have been late in

a different situation.

So that's why I'm moving on from answer choice D. The

simple version of this is that it's not engaging with the premise.

We don't care about general tendencies of this person.

What we care about is whether this person would have taken 50 minutes to find a

parking spot, would have needed to

do that if the maintenance were on a different day.

late to the meeting because they had difficulty finding parking?

But this is not a relevant issue here

because we already know that this person was

late and they were late because of the

15 minutes it took to find a parking space.

This last sentence is a premise.

This person was indeed late.

I think if you're tempted by B, you're thinking, well, if no one else

was late, then maybe this person is like exaggerating or not telling the truth.

But that's not a line of attack we can make here

because the last sentence is just true.

This person was late because they had to look for parking.

So whether other people had to do the same thing or

not doesn't affect whether this person was in fact late.

Finally, let's consider A and C. Answer choice A says, what were the reasons for

the building on that particular day?

So for example, maybe

one reason was they needed to repaint the parking lot lines.

Or maybe another reason was they needed to, I don't know, maybe

put in fresh tar or whatever it is that you put in the street.

Now, I'm not immediately seeing how

that relates to whether this person still would have

had to take 15 minutes for parking, because even if the maintenance was done for

repainting certain things, refurbishing the street,

that doesn't suggest anything about if the maintenance had

not been done on that day, the person would or would not have been late.

What matters is the time that it would have

taken to find parking in the absence of maintenance.

But the specific reason for the maintenance,

it's not clear how that would tell me

whether there still would have been some

kind of delay in the absence of the maintenance.

Now, I can see one reason that people have for liking A, which is, well, what if

one of the reasons for performing maintenance is that the parking lot

was like unusable without the maintenance?

And there is something compelling about that because

if the parking lot would have been unusable without

the maintenance, then this business person still would

not have been able to use a parking lot.

But I think that's a stretch right now because answer choice A is just

asking the question, what were the reasons for performing maintenance?

There's a leap here

to go from what were the reasons for performing maintenance to were

the reasons for performing maintenance something that would

have made the parking lot usable from not usable?

And I didn't word that in the best way, but the idea is the usability

of the parking lot is a separate issue from

just the reasons for performing maintenance.

I think another reason to shy away

from that reading of Answer Choice A, that there was like, oh, some

possibility that the parking lot was unusable, comes from the

word maintenance here, which doesn't really suggest some significant repair.

Maintenance is like ongoing maintenance,

something that happens from time to time,

not some dramatic repair that

occurs because of some destructive thing that happened.

So that's why I'm shying away from answer choice

A right now.

But let's take a look at what C says.

the parking area in front of the building is open?

Now, what this is getting at is the idea that, well,

what if this parking area that had been closed, what if on days when it

was open and when it's open, it's still difficult to find parking at

the time the business person wanted to find parking remember

the author is trying

to say look I had I could not park in that area and

it took me 15 minutes to find available parking space that's the cause of

the lateness the business person is saying this 15 minutes that

I took I would not have had to take that if this parking area were open.

But that's an assumption.

What if on days when this is open, this is like a very

popular parking lot because it's right in front of the building?

In that case, we don't know for sure that

this business person would have been able to park here.

Maybe they still would have had to look for an available parking space.

That's why answer choice C is a relevant question.

It is getting at the author's assumption that the reason they took

15 minutes to find a parking spot is because of this closure.

If on days when this area is open, they still would have needed to look for

a parking spot because maybe this part is

filled up, then this argument wouldn't work anymore.

So that's why answer choice C is correct.

Now, if you're tempted by other answers here,

I think the fundamental issue is that answer choice C is the one that's getting

at this core assumption that the reason they

took 15 minutes to look for a parking spot is because this area was closed.

Other answers, many other answers are just trying to get at the

general idea of lateness, like, well, is this person late normally or not?

But that's not engaging with the specific reason they gave you for their

lateness on this day, which is having to look for a parking spot.

I think there is a world in which you could read this as potentially relevant

if you think A is getting at, well, maybe the

parking area would have been closed even if maintenance wasn't done.

But it's just not presenting that issue as directly as C. Notice that C

is directly commenting on the building's vicinity on days when the area is open.

It's directly asking about parking patterns,

which is getting at the parking area in front of the

building, we don't have to stretch

as far to interpret C in a way that makes it relevant.

Whereas with A, you have to interpret it in this one very specific way, which

is that the reason we're talking about is something that could render

the whole area unusable.

So that's why C is a more compelling answer choice here than answer choice A.