PT14.S4.Q18 - According to a government official involved in

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• 2 Likes

  NotMyName Alum Member Sage ⭐

  August 2018 5320 karma

  Argument summary:

  Premise 1: Tapes show that pilots of small aircraft involved in a minor accident were whistling immediately preceding that accident 80% of the time.

  Premise 2: Even minor accidents are dangerous.

  Conclusion: If passengers hear the pilot whistling (they should assume a minor accident is imminent) and take safety precautions.

  Analysis:

  The argument has 2 glaring weak points. First, we don't know if this coincidence between whistling and minor accidents in small aircraft is helpful. I don't believe the argument establishes a correlation since we don't know what percent of small aircraft pilots whistle without any accidents. So I'd call this a coincidence to causation flaw. Second, even if the coincidence is useful, the conclusion seems to deal with all aircraft.

  D directly points out the first weak point. Lots of things likely coincide with small aircraft accidents. For instance, maybe in 90% of the accidents the plane is in the air or the pilot is awake but those aren't necessarily useful indicators of an imminent accident. What would we need to to know in order for whistling to be a useful indicator? We would have to know how often pilots of small aircraft whistle in general. If, in some strange world, 90% of small aircraft pilots whistle at some point during each flight, then the presence of whistling becomes much less suspicious.

  E is wrong because it doesn't matter whether this figure is 1% or 99%. We are speaking about this set of things (minor accidents) and it's size doesn't factor into the reasoning. Maybe this AC is attractive because folks think that it addresses weak point #2, the leap from small aircraft to all aircraft. If E said something along the lines of "fails to specify the percentage of all airline accidents that minor accidents in small aircraft account for" it would actually address this point.

  Does that help?
• 1 Like

  NotMyName Alum Member Sage ⭐

  August 2018 edited August 2018 5320 karma

  Clarifying the coincidence vs correlation...

  If a correlation was established, then a conclusion "take precautions if you hear the pilot of a small aircraft whistling during the flight" would be more strongly supported. We don't need whistling to cause the accident. We don't actually care what is causing the accident, we only need to know that these events are connected (correlated). D points this out by showing that we do not have a correlation.

  *Edit. I said "E" by accident

  **Edit. Further clarification... this isn't coincidence to causation either as I said above. It's really coincidence/correlation flaw.
• samirakhafa Alum Member

  August 2018 64 karma

  Thank you so much! That was super helpful
• samirakhafa Alum Member

  August 2018 64 karma

  hi @NotMyName can you elaborate a bit on coincidence/correlation flaw. what do we need to know to establish a correlation from a coincidence?