PT73.S2.Q15: Why is A incorrect?

Comments

• saracrich Core Member

  December 2021 81 karma

  Hey I just did this question so hopefully this explanation can help somewhat. First of all don't pick answer choices you don't understand unless you can absolutely rule out the rest. I didn't fully understand A but I knew B was what I was looking for so I picked it and moved on. Secondly, "takes for granted" just means assumes. If you want to get technical then yes they're assuming necessarily that this is true in order to draw their conclusion. So A says the author is assuming that LRG's sales would not have been lower still in the absence of the competitor's advertising campaign, and therefore they drew their conclusion. A is wrong for two reasons: one - the author isn't assuming this in order to make their conclusion, and two - that's not the reason this argument is invalid. A might make more sense if you think about the conclusion: the author is saying the the advertising campaign was ill conceived. He's not saying the campaign didn't produce any sales whatsoever, which is what A says. Think about it this way: if you take the "not" out of answer choice A then you can read it like this "sales would have been lower in the absence of the campaign" which means that the campaign actually helped. Now add it back in, "sales would not have been lower in the absence of the campaign" which means the campaign did absolutely nothing. Basically it comes down to sorting through that word salad. But overall you can see that's not the issue here. The issue is a correlation/causation flaw where the author assumes the advertising campaign being ill conceived is the reason for poor sales when it reality it can be anything causing the poor sales right now. Which is why B is the right answer. Hope that helps!
• Ashley2018-1 Alum Member

  December 2021 edited December 2021 2249 karma

  @saracrich said:
  Hey I just did this question so hopefully this explanation can help somewhat. First of all don't pick answer choices you don't understand unless you can absolutely rule out the rest. I didn't fully understand A but I knew B was what I was looking for so I picked it and moved on. Secondly, "takes for granted" just means assumes. If you want to get technical then yes they're assuming necessarily that this is true in order to draw their conclusion. So A says the author is assuming that LRG's sales would not have been lower still in the absence of the competitor's advertising campaign, and therefore they drew their conclusion. A is wrong for two reasons: one - the author isn't assuming this in order to make their conclusion, and two - that's not the reason this argument is invalid. A might make more sense if you think about the conclusion: the author is saying the the advertising campaign was ill conceived. He's not saying the campaign didn't produce any sales whatsoever, which is what A says. Think about it this way: if you take the "not" out of answer choice A then you can read it like this "sales would have been lower in the absence of the campaign" which means that the campaign actually helped. Now add it back in, "sales would not have been lower in the absence of the campaign" which means the campaign did absolutely nothing. Basically it comes down to sorting through that word salad. But overall you can see that's not the issue here. The issue is a correlation/causation flaw where the author assumes the advertising campaign being ill conceived is the reason for poor sales when it reality it can be anything causing the poor sales right now. Which is why B is the right answer. Hope that helps!

  What do you mean by no sales? I never thought the marketing consultant was saying that there could have been no sales; I meant that sales could have been better. That's why the ad campaign LRG decided to go with (competitor's) was ill-conceived (not a good idea).
• u______u Alum Member

  December 2021 233 karma

  (A) actually says that the sales would have been lower without the competitor's campaign. That doesn't do anything for the argument. The argument goes like this:
  P: ignored my predictions and took the advice of a competing consultant
  P: the sales were low
  C: the campaign was ill-conceived (because the sales were low)
  But how do we know that it was the campaign's fault that the sales were low? There could've been any number of other factors contributing to the lack of sales. It's a causation-correlation issue here, which is why (B) is the right answer.
• Ashley2018-1 Alum Member

  December 2021 2249 karma

  @u______u said:
  (A) actually says that the sales would have been lower without the competitor's campaign. That doesn't do anything for the argument. The argument goes like this:
  P: ignored my predictions and took the advice of a competing consultant
  P: the sales were low
  C: the campaign was ill-conceived (because the sales were low)
  But how do we know that it was the campaign's fault that the sales were low? There could've been any number of other factors contributing to the lack of sales. It's a causation-correlation issue here, which is why (B) is the right answer.

  I'm not sure if that's correct because I watched the video from JY multiple times and he said due to the nature of the negation, answer choice A actually states that the author is assuming sales would have been the same or higher. I don't know where either of you is getting the "sales are lower" from.
• u______u Alum Member

  December 2021 233 karma

  @Ashley2018 said:

  @u______u said:
  (A) actually says that the sales would have been lower without the competitor's campaign. That doesn't do anything for the argument. The argument goes like this:
  P: ignored my predictions and took the advice of a competing consultant
  P: the sales were low
  C: the campaign was ill-conceived (because the sales were low)
  But how do we know that it was the campaign's fault that the sales were low? There could've been any number of other factors contributing to the lack of sales. It's a causation-correlation issue here, which is why (B) is the right answer.

  I'm not sure if that's correct because I watched the video from JY multiple times and he said due to the nature of the negation, answer choice A actually states that the author is assuming sales would have been the same or higher. I don't know where either of you is getting the "sales are lower" from.

  Oh, you're right. I didn't read the "not" in the answer choice there. Anyways, I just watched the video. As saracrich said, if you want to get technical and do the negation for the necessary assumption, then not including the "not" doesn't really matter anyways. The point is that whether you choose to read it as "lower" or "unchanged" or "higher," all it provides you with is a string of hypotheticals. At best, all A does is say "yeah it could've been better" or "yeah it was harmful." B, isn't a great weakener, but it's clearer than A.