Had a hard time with this once it provided the Absolute example.

Absolute means universally objective, true or a fact; Vs a relative claim which introduces conditions and things that can change based on the reader.

I think the attempt was to make absolute statements into comparatives. But there is nothing to compare. Ex:

Tom's recipe takes X steps and Y time. (This is absolute)(Premise)

Tom's recipe is easy (Argument)(Conclusion) for most people to follow.

The difficulty I was having is that if you take off the first sentence (the absolute claim) the rest is all subject or relative. Tom's recipe is easy to follow? Compared to what/who?

Maybe in the context of comparatives, absolute is the wrong term? Or maybe "easy" is the wrong word?

After writing this and looking at "Let's review", I see the lesson is "Don't confuse comparatives with absolute claims". the misunderstanding may come from forgetting that, and getting stuck on a subjective word like easy.

TLDR; IMO the easiest way to clarify is to change:

"Conversely, you don't want to confuse an absolute claim for a relative one.

Absolute Claim Example:"

TO

Conversely, you don't want to confuse an absolute claim for a relative one that is implying absolute qualities.

("Absolute Claim") Relative Claim implying absolute qualities Example:

I liked this question especially because I was looking for it to have contextual information since the previous lessons were about that. So i answered thinking maybe context could be used as premise, which was not taught in any lesson. I ended up getting it right but for the wrong reasons.

After the explanation I realized I should have went went my first instinct and treated the first sentence as a premise which it was.

Just like the test itself, these practice tests (lessons) won't give you hint's of their format or contents so we can only rely on what we are reading in that question; And not think previous questions or lessons are providing guidance (like me expecting to find contextual info).

These comments helped, notedly the one which point out seeing a comparison is key even if it doesn't align exactly as the lesson shows. The instructor pointed out the john and kate example which I translated as such:

Some cultivars of corn relationship to sorghum.

Some cultivars of corn relationship with most other cultivars of corn.

So it'd be sorghum vs. most other cultivars of corn because Some Cultivars is the constant here when comparing the two. They are NOT being compared against each other, but are being compared on how they each relate to Some Cultivars.

Even with my explaining its still hard to see it that way, I want to resort back to Some cultivars vs. Most other cultivars and which is closer to sorghum. But I can force myself to think that logically it all i can answer for sure with the information given is that Some Cultivars are closer. There's no info stated about the closeness to anything else.