#17 - Xavier: The new fast-food place on 10th Street is out

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[KSL]

Hi,

I cannot figure out why E is the correct answer and to my dismay on the online test grader 100% of people got this question right. Good for them I just want that point too! I can’t figure it out why the answer is not A. Both agree that it is ridiculous that there is no out door seating. I felt them both agreeing it was risky was a reach based on the stimulus. Any help on what I am missing here would be very appreciated.

R,

[Jon Denning]

Hey KSL - thanks for posting! This Point of Agreement question is trickier than those stats suggest, so don't fret if you feel like you're the only one struggling...I can assure you you aren't! Let's see if we can make sense of it though

The beauty of (A)—I know "beauty" is a strong word, but I think you'll agree with me shortly—is that you can eliminate it based solely on what Xavier says! He tells us that "few people want to sit outside and breathe exhaust fumes while they eat." In other words, there's a reason in this particular case why most people would rather eat indoors: sitting outside at this fast food restaurant leaves them in close proximity to traffic and its exhaust fumes.

But is that enough for us to know that Xavier believes the far more broad/extreme "few people want to sit outside while they eat"? No! Eating outside could be everyone's general preference, provided they don't have to breathe auto exhaust when they do so. People might LOVE to eat outside, but this one individual scenario is the exception.

It'd be like if I told you few people like drinking orange juice right after brushing their teeth, and someone then assumed I think few people like orange juice. I gave a circumstance where people hold an opinion, but that doesn't mean that opinion still exists in the absence of that circumstance.

So based on Xavier's statements there's no way to know that, in general (at all times), few people want to eat outside, because Xavier qualifies it with a very specific reason. We simply cannot take his analysis of this singular situation and expand it to include (the implied) ALL situations that answer choice (A) suggests.

As for (E), that's more strongly supported as a shared belief because of these statements:

Xavier: I'm not surprised the new fast-food place is already out of business.

Miranda: The new fast-food place was likely to fail.

If both believe the restaurant was unlikely to succeed, then it's entirely reasonable to conclude both felt it was a risky venture (anything likely to end in failure is, by definition, a risky move).

I hope that helps!

[LawyerBae24]

I was stuck between C and E on this question. Both statements mention that indoor seating was relative to the failure of the business so I thought that infers that it would probably be successful with indoor seating. I understand why E is correct, but it seems as though it was mostly a risky venture because it did not offer indoor seating. Please help to clarify what is wrong about C.

[Frank Peter]

Hi LawyerBae,

The problem with (C) is that we cannot infer based on their dialogue what might have made the business successful. We know that they both view the lack of indoor seating as a problem, but we can't say for sure that they would both agree that having indoor seating would have made the business successful (it could have had other problems in addition to the seating problem - for example, maybe the food wasn't very good). But we can say with relative certainty that they are both of the viewpoint that the business was a risky venture.

Frank

[mallie]

Hi there,

I was hoping someone could go over answer choice D for me.

I have read previous posts and understand why A is wrong (it was done to A and D for me). My guess, after reading some the explanation for A, is that D is too broad. For all we know, a fast food place on 10th could be wildly successful if there is indoor and outdoor seating. Maybe everyone chooses to eat inside.

E makes sense considering everything mentioned above. I thought it was a bit of a jump initially and wasn't clear on what was wrong with A/D, but it makes sense now.

Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

You've found your answer here, mallie - the issue isn't whether it would succeed with outdoor seating, but whether it would fail without indoor seating. Maybe they would be fine with some outdoor seating as long as they had some indoor seating, too? We don't know what either of our speakers would say if the restaurant had indoor seating, so maybe having outdoor seating isn't fatal. And since we don't know what either of our speakers would say about answer D, it cannot be either a point of agreement or a point at issue in the stimulus. We need to know what they would both say!

[AspenHerman]

Besides D being too broad, could it also be wrong because it is present/near future tense, and the two speakers are discussing events in the past tense? Would that matter here?

[ashpine17]

Would A have been correct if it had said few people like eating outside at fast food restaurants on 10th street? Was that the problem with A? it was talking about people in general when the stimuli was talking about a particular fast food restaurant on 10th street?

[SubtleHyperbole]

After getting this one wrong and learning why from one of the earliest replies to this thread, I was surprised to see almost every single answer being brought up at some point as being potentially correct. Based on that, I think the OP's interface response saying that 100% of test-takers got this question right is likely incorrect.

SO! I will take the liberty to cap this question off, and attempt to summarize why each wrong answer is wrong. Yaknow, for posterity and other future forum lurkers.

Answer A (this is the one I erroneously picked): This answer is wrong because Xavier states that people don't like eating outside when they have to breath exhaust fumes. This is a very different thing than stating that people don't like eating outside period. The very fact that Xavier states it conditionally could even mean that he feels that people otherwise love eating outdoors -- but the situation on that particular street corner and its traffic means people won't.

Answer B: Two reasons this is incorrect immediately jump to mind. First off, Xavier doesn't say anything about banks and whether they should lend money to people. It would be an assumption to make that because Xavier finds it unsurprising that a particular restaurant went out of business means that he thinks that banks shouldn't lend money to all restaurants that lack indoor seating. Heck, it might even have been too much of an assumption were the answer to have been "the bank shouldn't have lent money to this particular restaurant because it lacked indoor seating", because of the tenuous assumption that likely to go out of business == banks should not lend money, but that's just my opinion).

And another huge problem with B is that we again run into the issue we had with A: the lack of indoor seating itself isn't a bad thing. It's the conditional lack of indoor seating when the alternative outdoor seating requires inhaling traffic fumes.

Answer C: This one is wrong because we aren't dealing with a binary successful/unsuccessful situation. A restaurant could manage to just scrape by, without being successful, for example. The two speakers only talk about why the restaurant was unsuccessful. Neither touch on the conditions needed for the restaurant to have an outcome on the opposite end of the spectrum, just the reason for its failure.

Answer D: This is wrong because the problem is the lack of indoor seating, not the mere presence of outdoor seating. Outdoor seating is problematic on that street if and only if there is no indoor seating option. An otherwise successful restaurant with indoor seating wouldn't suddenly fail if it's owner decides to set up a few tables outside that only get used by fume-loving weirdos. This answer could have been correct if it said "A fast food place on 10th street is likely to fail if it has outdoor seating but no indoor seating"

Answer E, which i wish i had chose, ends up being the correct one.