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Politician: Members of the national legislature have received

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tagmag
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Politician: Members of the national legislature have received [#permalink] New post   02 Jun 2016, 13:33
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Politician: Members of the national legislature have received a very large number of phone calls and e-mails from people wanting to express their opinions about the new bill before the legislature, which would increase the current tax on cigarettes by ten cent per pack to pay for new anti-smoking advertisements. Since a great majority of these people expressed opposition to the bill, it is clear that the public overwhelmingly opposes this tax increase.

Which one of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?

(A) People who do not smoke cigarettes but work in tobacco-related industries are just as likely as smokers to oppose a cigarette tax.

(B) Increasing the tax on cigarettes by ten cent per pack would reduce cigarette consumption so that total revenue from such taxes would not increase.

(C) People who feel strongly about a particular bill are more likely to express their opinions to a legislator by phone than by e-mail.

(D) Most anti-smoking advertisements are currently paid for by private organizations rather than being funded by taxes paid to the government.

(E) People who oppose a tax bill are far more likely to contact a legislator to express their opinions than are those who do not oppose the bill.
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mikemcgarry
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Re: Politician: Members of the national legislature have received [#permalink] New post   02 Jun 2016, 14:00
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tagmag wrote:
Politician: Members of the national legislature have received a very large number of phone calls and e-mails from people wanting to express their opinions about the new bill before the legislature, which would increase the current tax on cigarettes by ten cent per pack to pay for new anti-smoking advertisements. Since a great majority of these people expressed opposition to the bill, it is clear that the public overwhelmingly opposes this tax increase.

Which one of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?

(A) People who do not smoke cigarettes but work in tobacco-related industries are just as likely as smokers to oppose a cigarette tax.

(B) Increasing the tax on cigarettes by ten cent per pack would reduce cigarette consumption so that total revenue from such taxes would not increase.

(C) People who feel strongly about a particular bill are more likely to express their opinions to a legislator by phone than by e-mail.

(D) Most anti-smoking advertisements are currently paid for by private organizations rather than being funded by taxes paid to the government.

(E) People who oppose a tax bill are far more likely to contact a legislator to express their opinions than are those who do not oppose the bill.

Dear tagmag,

This is a great question. There is a subset of GMAT CR questions that are rendered considerably easier if one has taken a Statistics course. Statistics is such an important topic that I think everyone who wants to get an MBA should take it. This question is about the concepts of voluntary response bias and non-response bias.

The obvious weakener in this situation is that the folks who oppose the legislation, mostly the smokers who are addicted to a drug four times as addictive as heroin, are much more motivated to call in and oppose the bill. People who don't smoke are less likely to be aware of the bill and less likely to care particularly strongly about it, even if they support it. When one group has some kind of vested interest in the outcome, as nicotine addicts would, then such folks would be much more likely to offer their response voluntarily.

Choice (E) addresses this issue of voluntary response bias. The addicts who have a vested interest in opposing the bill are much more likely to take action to express this view. The loudest voices are not necessarily the most representative voice---a lesson the electronic culture seems to have to learn over and over.

Does all this make sense?
Mike :-)
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Re: Politician: Members of the national legislature have received [#permalink] New post   03 Jun 2016, 02:17
tagmag wrote:
Politician: Members of the national legislature have received a very large number of phone calls and e-mails from people wanting to express their opinions about the new bill before the legislature, which would increase the current tax on cigarettes by ten cent per pack to pay for new anti-smoking advertisements. Since a great majority of these people expressed opposition to the bill, it is clear that the public overwhelmingly opposes this tax increase.

Which one of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?

(A) People who do not smoke cigarettes but work in tobacco-related industries are just as likely as smokers to oppose a cigarette tax.

(B) Increasing the tax on cigarettes by ten cent per pack would reduce cigarette consumption so that total revenue from such taxes would not increase.

(C) People who feel strongly about a particular bill are more likely to express their opinions to a legislator by phone than by e-mail.

(D) Most anti-smoking advertisements are currently paid for by private organizations rather than being funded by taxes paid to the government.

(E) People who oppose a tax bill are far more likely to contact a legislator to express their opinions than are those who do not oppose the bill.



(A) These aspects are unconnected to the idea in passage. Out.
(B) Issue is not related to revenue increase or decrease. Out
(C) This strengthens the argument. Out
(D) So What? Unrelated to argument at issue.
(E) By elimination this is the answer. Let us check.

Argument says that because more people opposed to the bill, contacted legislators, hence even the majority public also opposes the bill. But what of many people who support the bill, did not contact legislators? This aspect highlight a major (and flawed) assumption of the argument.
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Re: Politician: Members of the national legislature have received [#permalink] New post   03 Jun 2016, 16:43
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adiagr wrote:
(A) These aspects are unconnected to the idea in passage. Out.
(B) Issue is not related to revenue increase or decrease. Out
(C) This strengthens the argument. Out
(D) So What? Unrelated to argument at issue.
(E) By elimination this is the answer. Let us check.

Argument says that because more people opposed to the bill, contacted legislators, hence even the majority public also opposes the bill. But what of many people who support the bill, did not contact legislators? This aspect highlight a major (and flawed) assumption of the argument.

Dear adiagr,

With all due respect, I don't think you appreciate the way that some dynamics play out in the real world. This question presents a classic voluntary response bias situation, as it often plays out. You see, there is a vast asymmetry between the folks who support this bill and the folks who oppose it.

The folks who support it, when asked about it, will say, "Yes, I support it." If it were a referendum, these people would vote for it. Nevertheless, the bill doesn't have any tangible impact on their everyday life, so most of these people will not think about the bill much at all after hearing about it.

The folks who oppose it are quite different. Many of these will be smokers, that is, folks with a chemical addition to nicotine. Many real world smokers already feel beleaguered because there are all kinds of restrictions about where one can smoke. This bill would be one more instance of this, one more thing that could deprive them of the very thing that they crave several times each day. Hearing about this bill is likely to sound a note of anxiety in these people, and that's a major motivating force. Unlike the supporters of the bill, these folks will have a deeply emotional motivation to call in and voice their opposition.

If you are not familiar with the smoker's rights debates in various countries and with the behaviors associated with addictions, then what I am saying may sound like my assumptions. Nevertheless, this is based very much on real world observations. The nature of the OA was actually quite predictable from the prompt, because this is such a familiar scenario in the real world.

This is an extremely subtle aspect of GMAT CR that many students overlook. Students do not need specific outside knowledge about a particular situation in order to answer a question. Nevertheless, students need to have excellent intuition for the general patterns of behaviors in the political and economic sphere. See this blog article:
GMAT Critical Reasoning and Outside Knowledge

Does all this make sense?
Mike :-)
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Re: Politician: Members of the national legislature have received [#permalink] New post   19 Apr 2024, 00:08
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