#18 - Lindsey: Several people claim that our company was

[kristinajohnson@berkeley.edu]

Does “confuses the size of a quantity with the amount by which that quantity has increased” translate to increasing or decreasing percentages automatically leading to increasing or decreasing numerical ideas?

Thank you!

[Jeff Wren]

Hi kristina,

Although Answer D may look similar to a numbers/percentage flaw such as you describe, it's slightly different. It's actually just discussing numbers, not percentages. (Notice the use of the word "quantity" in both parts of the answer, which indicates a raw number rather than a percentage.)

What Answer D is describing is confusing the total quantity with the amount of increase that occurred in that new total. For example, if the total profits of a company increased from $1 million last year to $1.5 million this year, this flaw would be confusing the $1.5 million total amount (this year) with the $500k (increase this year over last year).

Of course, since the actual flaw in this argument is unrelated to numbers and/or percentages, this answer would be wrong either way.