PT106.S2.Q14 > Question

SECTION 1 · lr

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SECTION 2 · lr

SECTION 3 · lr

SECTION 4 · rc

PASSAGE 1

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5

PASSAGE 2

Question 6 Question 7 Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13

PASSAGE 3

Question 14 Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19 Question 20 Question 21

PASSAGE 4

Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25 Question 26

The author hypothesizes that owning a laptop leads to a higher-paying job. As evidence, he cites an economist who found that, among people who used computers at work last year, those who owned laptops earned 25% more on average than those who didn’t.

This is a cookie-cutter “correlation does not imply causation” flaw, where the author sees a positive correlation and jumps to the conclusion that one thing causes the other, without ruling out alternative hypotheses. Specifically, he overlooks two key alternatives:

(1) The causal relationship could be reversed—maybe having a higher-paying job allows people to own laptops, not the other way around.

(2) Some other, underlying factor could be causing the correlation—maybe there’s something that causes people to both have higher-paying jobs and own laptops.

The conclusion is a fairly broad generalization. However, we have no idea how big the economist’s sample was and we can’t assume that he only studied “a small number of individuals.”

This is the cookie-cutter flaw of circular reasoning, where one’s conclusion simply restates a premise. But the author doesn't make this mistake; instead, he confuses correlation for causation.

This is a cookie-cutter “correlation does not imply causation” flaw. The author concludes that owning a laptop causes people to have a higher-paying job, even though it’s more likely that having a higher-paying job causes people to be able to own a laptop.

The author’s argument simply doesn’t contradict itself in this way. His evidence may not show that his conclusion is true, but it also doesn’t show that his conclusion is false.

The author makes a causal conclusion about something that happened last year. He doesn’t make a predictive conclusion about what will happen indefinitely into the future.

PrepTest 106 - Section 2 - Question 14

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