Q3 - All students at Pitcombe College

[tara_amber1]

By simple calculations of what was implied in the stimulus, I was able to eliminate (B), (C), and (E). My thought process went something like:

If 77% of students endorsed a liberal position on a set of issue, then it must be true that all liberal students (51%) and students in the middle (24%) have voted liberal toward this issue. Of course that leaves a small percentage leftover if you do the math. (24 + 51= 76). From this, I concluded that there must be some students that are conservative who voted toward a liberal position.

By this reasoning I anticipated what to look for in the answer choices and found my way to (D): "Some students who labeled themselves conservative endorsed what is generally regarded as a liberal position on that set of issues"

Of course, some means at least 1 (no matter if in percentage or amount, in this case it's percentage) so this makes this true according to the stimulus.

Wrong Answer Choices:

(A): This is tempting, since that is what we can assume from the numbers. However, it can also be true that some of the liberal students and some of the conservative students both voted toward the 77 percent along with the middle students. "All" makes this too strong of an answer choice to know for sure.

(B): This is saying that were more middle students than liberal that did not vote. This can not be true because it isn't in line with the stimulus.

(C): If the most of the middle students did not vote then we cannot make up the 77 percent of students that voted liberal with the remaining two political categories. Out.

(E): This is tricky because it's saying the opposite of what we're trying to assume. If some liberal students did not vote, then we still don't know the likelihood of conservative students voting for the issue.

I just kind of gave this breakdown a go since I haven't done one yet! Let me know what you guys think and if it clears it up for you.

[mjacob0511]

(B) is in like with the stimulus, it just doesn't HAVE to be true.

The students labeled themselves:

25% - conservative.
24% - liberal.
51% - middle-of-the-road.

When it came to a particular set of issues, 77% endorsed what is considered the liberal position.

(B) is saying that of the students who opposed what's considered the liberal position (100%-77% =23%), more of them labeled themselves middle-of-the-road than liberal.

This is a could be true.

Let's say the numbers for the "liberal" position were:
25% coming from all the conservatives.
24% from of the liberals.
The remaining 28% come from the "middle-of-the-road'ers"

This would mean that 23% of "middle-of-the-roaders' opposed the "liberal" position, while 0% of liberals opposed it.


The reason why (B) isn't the answer is because the numbers don't have to work out like this. It could be that the 77% is made up of:
25% from all of the conservatives.
1% from the liberals.
51% from all of the middle-of-the-road.

The remaining 23% who opposed the "liberal" position, are made up of only liberals and so more of the opposers were obviously not "middle-of-the-roaders".