Worked examples
Two examples
Example 1
A letter from a tenant, written for this example (its sentences are numbered)
What is wrong with this reasoning?A. The boiler did not really break down twice.(1) My building’s boiler broke down twice this winter. (2) Both times, it was in the same week as a hard freeze. (3) Both times, it was also within a month after our new super started work. (4) The old super had kept the boiler running for ten years. (5) So the new super is the reason the boiler keeps breaking.
B. The breakdowns came after the new super started, but they also came in hard freezes; after is not because.
C. Nothing is wrong: whatever changes just before a problem is its cause.
D. The letter should say how old the boiler is.
- Find the claim first. It is in sentence 5: the new super is the reason the boiler keeps breaking.
- Now find the evidence. Sentence 3: both breakdowns came within a month after the new super started. That is evidence about timing.
- Skills Quiz 9’s third check: could the same receipt pay for a different claim? Sentence 2 says both breakdowns also came in a hard freeze. Boilers work hardest in the cold, so the freeze fits the evidence just as well. So might an old boiler wearing out.
- That is Skills Quiz 7’s rule: after is not because. One thing coming after another does not show that the first caused the second. That is B.
- A denies the evidence instead of examining the step. Nothing in the letter gives a reason to doubt the breakdowns.
- C is the faulty step stated as a rule. D asks for one more fact, but the boiler’s age would not by itself show who or what is to blame.
Answer: B
Example 2
A paragraph from a student’s report, written for this example (its sentences are numbered)
Which problem does this reasoning have?A. A famous name, a crowd, or a confident voice is offered as proof.(1) A student is writing about a clothing factory that stood on Broadway in the 1890s. (2) She read every issue of one city newspaper from 1890 to 1899. (3) She found no story that mentions women working in the factory. (4) So no women worked in that factory in the 1890s.
B. Finding no record of something is taken to mean it never happened.
C. Things that happen together or in order are taken as cause and effect.
D. Evidence about the present is used as proof about what happened in the past.
- The claim is in sentence 4: no women worked in the factory. The evidence is in sentences 2 and 3: one newspaper, read carefully for ten years, never mentions them.
- Skills Quiz 9’s fourth check: do the steps hold? The step that fails most often is the one from silence to absence: no record, so nothing happened.
- A newspaper’s silence is a fact about the newspaper. Newspapers did not report on most workers, and many women’s work went unwritten. The silence tells us what the paper left out, not who worked in the factory.
- Better evidence would be records of the factory itself: payrolls, a census taker’s list of the people living nearby and their jobs, or an inspector’s report.
- The other choices name problems that are not in this paragraph. No famous person or crowd is offered as proof (A). Nothing is said to cause anything (C). And all the evidence is from the 1890s, not from today (D).
Answer: B
Where this is taught: Skills Quiz 9, Weighing evidence: First, the idea · Skills Quiz 9: the worked example · Skills Diagnostic, Part 9
In your Kaplan book: Unit 3, Chapter 1, Lesson 4: Evaluate Author's Reasoning and Evidence · Map of the Terrain, topic 9: Weighing evidence and reasoning
The drill
Ten questions
How many:
Read what is in the box first. Then tap your answer; a few questions ask you to choose words from a drop-down instead, the way the GED test does. Press Check my answers at the bottom.Read what is in the box first. Circle your answer; where there are brackets, circle the choice that fits. The answer key, with the reasoning, is on the last page.