PT2.S4.Q11 - Every week, the programming office

michaelpstarr

help can someone explain why this is B? It seems clear that the director did in fact infer that some others did like the movie, and its seems like he did fail to take into consideration the number of positive (i.e., 0) and negative (i.e., 10) responses received re: the movie reviews

Lucas Carter

Hey,

B is correct because the programming director makes a pretty crazy and unwarranted assumption. He takes the fact that some people disliked the new movie segment as evidence that others must have liked it and uses this conclusion to justify keeping the segment. This is a crazy argument.

Here is a parallel:

10 people at my gym disliked the fact that I had not showered in 2 weeks and had unbearable body odor. So since some people disliked this smell, some other people must have actually liked it. Therefore I should continue to not bathe indefinitely.

C states that he failed to take into account the discrepancy between positive and negative letters sent in. It is important to note that this answer choice is not referring to the movie segment preferences but the overall charge of all letters sent in. We know that this discrepancy is 50 positive to 10 negative. The discrepancy between positive and negative letters sent in does not have anything to do with the programming director taking the fact that some people dislike something as evidence that some people must like it.

wannabesocrates

The wording of this answer is tricky. I interpreted the correct answer in two ways:

1. When the director "could not properly infer", the idea did not occur to him, and thus he did not make the inference. This reminds me of like a logic game: oh, i got this wrong because I "could not properly infer" that A and B have to be next to each other. Contrast with somebody who "could properly infer"; they would have made the inference.

2. When the director "could not properly infer", it was not proper of him to make the inference, even though he did. There's no situation here where someone "could properly infer" because the inference itself is improper.

I think people are more likely to speak in the way described in my first interpretation, though this question requires us to adopt the second interpretation. Honestly, I think this question kind of stinks because it's uses an expression in a way that we normally wouldn't.