#17 - Educator: Some experimental educational programs

[Adam Tyson]

Your analysis of D is good, Albert! "Not precisely determined" is too weak and vague for it to do any damage, and so it does not, by itself, hurt the argument. The author could still respond with "fine, we need to figure that bit out, but we should still do this because it works." And changing answer D the way you suggested would make it a good weaken answer, because it would be a strong counter to the claim that we should expand the program.

[Albertlyu]

Your analysis of D is good, Albert! "Not precisely determined" is too weak and vague for it to do any damage, and so it does not, by itself, hurt the argument. The author could still respond with "fine, we need to figure that bit out, but we should still do this because it works." And changing answer D the way you suggested would make it a good weaken answer, because it would be a strong counter to the claim that we should expand the program.

thank you, Adam. Have a good day!

[Dancingbambarina]

Thanks for asking, lsatstudier. The causal nature of this stimulus is a bit more subtle than some others you've been studying. The key is in recognizing two things: 1) the author gives us a correlation (students in the programs correlates with above average performance); and 2) the author uses some language that is active - specifically, "successful", which can be interpreted as "it worked" or "it caused success". Nothing obvious here, no use of the most common causal indicators, but the correlation combined with the active language in the conclusion should still clue you in. The author believes that the programs caused the higher performance - that should be your paraphrase for the conclusion.

Key words are a great start to recognizing and understanding certain reasoning types like conditional and causal, but once you have those down you need to go a little further and look for more conceptual relationships and work on seeing the underlying assumptions and structures of the arguments. With time and practice, that will come! Keep up the good work.

Would this argument be flawed for causally concluding off this correlation? I estimate the correct answer takes advantage of an alternate cause being available.

Thanks very much