57.2.2 Taxi drivers

Accounts PlayableAccounts Playable Live Sage
I am just not seeing this one. I understand the gist of what answer B is saying, but I don't understand how the assumptions you need to make in the other answer choices are necessarily better than the assumption needed for B to be the correct answer.

The question is a must be false question, so 4 answer choices could be true.

Taxi drivers earn income based on the fares they get. The decide their working hours by setting an income target, and they stop working when they hit the target. Thus, they typically work fewer hours on busy days than on slow days.

What I am looking for: Essentially, the drivers at the start of the day say, "I will stop once I make $100." Once they hit that, they stop working. How does this suggest they stop working earlier on busy days? Couldn't they set their target higher on those days (assuming busy days are predictable)?

Answer A: Ya, I guess the argument supports this idea. The driver himself sets the target, so unless the driver isn't rational, he sets the target based on his needs. This could be true.

Answer B: I still really don't like this answer choice. It is true that if you set the target for $100 and you work 1 hour on busy days, the EHW is $100/hour. On slow days, say you work 10 hours, your EHW would be $10/hour. Thus, the passage seems to suggest that the opposite of this answer choice is true: you work less when your EHW is high (on busy days). But, what if they change their income targets on busy days to even out their EHW? You have to assume the drivers don't do this. Given that answer choices C-E also need assumptions, how do we value this assumption over the others? For this reason couldn't this answer choice also be true? I just don't see how we have enough information to say it must be false.

Answer C: It's true that the drivers get to set their own schedule, so I guess it could be true they accept a lower wage.

Answer D: Same as D. You have to assume that the drivers take into account their standard of living when they set their target. This could be true.

Answer E: We don't know anything about people with fixed hourly wages, so any comparison could be true.

Comments

  • deleted accountdeleted account Free Trial Member
    393 karma
    57.2.2 is a question that covers long-distance runners, not the taxi driver question. The taxi question is 57.2.23

    Here goes:

    A: Could be true, no reason to assume yes or no.
    C: We know nothing about whether they set their schedules. The argument doesn't mention that, nor does it mention balancing that against a lower hourly wage.
    D: The argument doesn't mention standard of living. In fact, the argument supports this because if they have a daily target, then it could easily be the case that they do work long hours in order to meet that daily target.
    E: We have nothing to compare this to.

    B) Anyway, you already describe why B is correct. I think the assumption that you are missing here is that the income goal is constant. So the taxi driver is going to want to make $100 every day, not $100 on a slow day and $150 on a busy day. Therefore, they will work fewer hours on a busy day, thereby providing evidence against answer choice B. Incidentally, this is not an MBF question, which is why this works. This is a weaken question more accurately, so we don't have to totally disprove the answer choice. We only have to be able to provide evidence against it.

    Also, regarding that B needs assumptions similar to C-E, the assumptions that you need for B are much weaker. In B you only have to assume that the driver doesn't do something that the question did not mention them doing. In fact, assuming that they did do it would require an assumption on its own. C-E don't require assumptions to be rendered irrelevant.
    C is irrelevant immediately.
    E is also irrelevant immediately.
    I can see how A and D require the assumption that they take into account their standard of living, but even if you didn't make that assumption, this passage still wouldn't provide evidence against that argument. It would be wholly irrelevant to the argument.

    I guess that's where your mistake was -- you might have somewhat misunderstood the nature of MBF question versus a Weaken/evidence against question.
  • nye8870nye8870 Alum
    1749 karma
    The pt57 S2 Q2 I found is about long distance runners.
  • Accounts PlayableAccounts Playable Live Sage
    edited November 2015 3107 karma
    @nye8870

    My bad; typo. It should be question 23
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