The television show Henry was not widely watched until it was scheduled for Tuesday evenings immediately after That’s Life, the most popular show on television. During the year after the move, Henry was consistently one of the ten most-watched shows on television. Since Henry’s recent move to Wednesday evenings, however, it has been watched by far fewer people. We must conclude that Henry was widely watched before the move to Wednesday evenings because it followed That’s Life and not because people especially liked it.

Summarize Argument: Phenomenon-Hypothesis
The author hypothesizes that Henry was popular because it followed That’s Life and not because people actually liked it. This is evident in the fact Henry was relatively unpopular before it was scheduled to follow That’s Life, and unpopular again once it was moved to a different time spot.

Notable Assumptions
The author assumes that Henry itself didn’t change in a way that attracted a larger audience (i.e. better writing, better acting, more compelling storylines) after it was moved to follow That’s Life. The author also assumes that Tuesdays aren’t a particularly strong day for TV shows in general. If this were the case, then Henry’s popularity could be explained by the day of the week it was scheduled on, rather than by the show that preceded it.

A
Henry has been on the air for three years, but That’s Life has been on the air for only two years.
We don’t care how long That’s Life had been on air for. We care about Henry’s popularity over the years.
B
The show that replaced Henry on Tuesdays has persistently had a low number of viewers in the Tuesday time slot.
This weakens the claim that Henry was popular because of its Tuesday time slot. We’re looking to do the opposite.
C
The show that now follows That’s Life on Tuesdays has double the number of viewers it had before being moved.
Tuesday after That’s Life is a great time slot for shows. Henry improved its numbers, as did this other show. This strengthens the claim that the time slot, rather than the show, is what matters ratings-wise.
D
After its recent move to Wednesday, Henry was aired at the same time as the second most popular show on television.
This might explain why Henry did poorly on Wednesday. But we have no idea if a similar phenomenon was happening when Henry was aired on Tuesday, so we can’t draw any conclusions from this.
E
That’s Life was not widely watched during the first year it was aired.
We don’t care about That’s Life. We know it ended up being popular.

1 comment

The stimulus has the economists proposing an argument that buying lotteries tickets is dumb. Why? Because on average, you pay in way more than you take out.

The author argues that the economists are wrong. What's his argument?

He says that buying lottery tickets are analogous to buying insurance (tickets, if you will). How are they similar? Because on average, you pay in way more than you take out.

Okay, that's all well and good. Let's remember that this is an argument by analogy so we need to show where insurance isn't like the lottery.

What are you buying with insurance? You're paying more on average than you take out of it. So what are you buying? You're buying *insurance*. You're buying protection from risk, that if by some terrible stroke of misfortune, you should get hit by a car, you'll be financially covered.

What are you buying with lotteries? You're buying a chance to win some large amount of money.

Since we know that this is an argument by analogy, you have to point out where this argument isn't analogous. That's what (E) does. (E) tells that people value protection from risk way more than they value the chance to win a lot of cash. Well, if that's true, then the author's analogy doesn't work so well anymore.

(D) is the attractive answer choice. But it's wrong because (1) we don't care about the "grand" prize and (2) simply knowing odds doesn't matter much - we also have to know the amount to be weighed against those odds.


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