Name the subtler faulty reasoning
Grade 11 Reading Worksheet
Circle the best answer.
Read this first
Make-Up Days After the Quillan Snowstorms (hearing transcript)
[1] DR. MIRIAM SOLBERG, superintendent: Quillan schools closed for seven days this winter because of snow, and the district's calendar policy requires us to make up five of them before the year ends. [2] The district office proposes adding three days to the end of June and converting two days of the February vacation into school days. [3] Families were informed in the fall that the calendar might change after a severe winter, and that notice appears on page two of the handbook.
[4] MR. CORBIN LASH, a parent: The last time the district shortened the February vacation, in 2019, spring reading scores declined, so shortening the vacation is what lowered the scores that year. [5] The superintendent wants to eliminate the one week of rest that families depend on all winter. [6] Either we preserve the entire February vacation, or students will be too exhausted to learn anything by spring.
[7] DR. SOLBERG: The proposal changes two days of the vacation, not the entire week, and the other three days remain as they are. [8] Adding all five days to June would extend the last day beyond June 20, after many summer programs and employment for older students have begun. [9] Last June, attendance on the final three days averaged 71 percent, compared with 94 percent for the entire year, according to the district's records. [10] Students learn very little on any day when some of their classmates are absent. [11] Therefore the board should take two days from February and add only three to June.
[12] MR. LASH: Taking days from the vacation is like skipping a car's oil change to finish a long trip sooner, since the trip will end with a ruined engine. [13] MS. ADA PRUITT, a history teacher: The February vacation has lasted nine days, including weekends, since 2012, and teachers organize their units around it. [14] If two of those days become school days, teachers will need several weeks' notice to revise their plans, and the board could provide that notice tonight. [15] DR. SOLBERG: The board will vote at the conclusion of this hearing, and the revised calendar will be posted online tomorrow.
Ari sorts sentence 4 in the flaw column. Which label fits sentence 4, and why?
- Post hoc: the scores fell after the shorter vacation, and that order alone is taken as the cause.
- Faulty analogy: it compares the shortened vacation of 2019 with the shortened one proposed now.
- Reasonable: scores did decline that spring, and a tired class could well explain the drop.
- Hasty generalization: it builds a rule about February vacations from the single year 2019.
Luz fills the flaw column for sentence 5. Why does the reasoning in sentence 5 fail?
- It offers two outcomes, a full vacation or exhausted students, as if no third were possible.
- It fails because the district must make up the five days whether families like it or not.
- It argues against removing the whole week, but sentence 2 proposes changing only two days.
- It speaks for families in general, though Mr. Lash is one parent at the hearing.
Tala lists the premise rows under the claim in sentence 11. Which row gets the weakest-link mark?
- Sentence 11, because it asks the board to act before the vote has been held.
- Sentence 9, because a drop from 94 to 71 percent is too small to count for much.
- Sentence 3, because some families may have missed the notice printed on page two of the handbook.
- Sentence 10, because nothing backs it, yet the claim needs it to make low attendance matter.
A New Website for Rushford (council minutes)
[1] At the Rushford council's April meeting, the town clerk, Ms. Opal Lindqvist, presented a proposal to rebuild the town website, which was last redesigned in 2012. [2] She reported that the site currently contains about 300 pages, many of them outdated, and that the most frequent call to her office comes from residents who cannot locate a form online. [3] A design company in the county has offered to rebuild the site for $38,000, transferring every current form and record and training the employees before the new site opens.
[4] Mr. Desmond Fairley said that the current site is reliable because the information on it can be trusted, and that the town should not pay to replace a reliable site. [5] He added that the clerk intends to discard every page the town has ever posted and start over with a site that nobody knows how to operate. [6] He then turned to the snowplow budget, arguing that the town had overspent on plow blades two winters ago and that the council should investigate that before anything else. [7] Ms. Lindqvist answered that the company would transfer the current forms and records, and that her employees would be trained before the new site went live.
[8] Ms. Hana Brightwater, a council member, said that the clerk's office spends about ten hours a week helping callers locate forms, according to the office's own telephone log. [9] She said that a new site would reduce those calls by at least half. [10] She added that the saved hours would allow the clerk's office to open on Saturday mornings, which residents have requested in two community surveys. [11] Therefore, she concluded, the council should approve the rebuilding this spring.
[12] Mr. Fairley said that he still preferred to wait, but that he would review the company's offer before the vote. [13] The council asked Ms. Lindqvist to report how many calls about forms her office records over the next month. [14] It also requested the names of two other towns whose websites the company has built, so that council members could examine them before the vote at the May meeting.
Jun sorts sentence 4 in the flaw column. Which label fits sentence 4, and why?
- Straw man: it twists the clerk's plan into a plan to replace a site that works.
- Non sequitur: whether the information on the site can be trusted has no link to whether the site is reliable.
- Circular reasoning: saying its information can be trusted only repeats the claim that the site is reliable.
- Reasonable: a site whose pages can be trusted does not need to be replaced.
Pia fills the flaw column for sentence 6. Why does the reasoning in sentence 6 fail?
- It moves the meeting to the plow blades, so the question about the website is dropped.
- It fails because the town website really does need to be rebuilt this spring.
- It refers to a purchase made two winters ago, long before this proposal.
- It restates the clerk's plan as discarding each page the town has posted and starting over from nothing.
Bo lists the premise rows under the claim in sentence 11. Which row gets the weakest-link mark?
- Sentence 14, because two towns' websites would be too few to judge the company by.
- Sentence 11, because it asks for approval before the members have seen other towns' sites.
- Sentence 8, because ten hours a week seems too many for one office to spend on forms.
- Sentence 9, because nothing backs halving the calls, and the saved hours depend on it.
Letters on Electric Vans for the Stellan Parks Crew (two letters)
Text A, a letter from Mr. Rafael Duquesne, the parks director: [1] The Stellan parks crew operates four gasoline vans that are each more than twelve years old, and the town will have to replace two of them next year. [2] Two dealers' written quotations indicate that an electric van costs about $9,000 more than a gasoline van of similar size. [3] I expect each electric van to save the town about $2,500 a year in fuel and repairs, since electric vans require no oil changes. [4] The crew's longest daily route is about forty miles, comfortably within the range the manufacturer advertises for the vans, even in winter. [5] The vans are parked every night at the municipal garage, so they could be charged there without any additional equipment. [6] Consequently, the electric vans would recover their extra cost in about four years, and every year after that would represent savings for the town.
Text B, a letter from Ms. Imogen Harrow: [7] Mr. Duquesne wants the town to purchase the newest gadget regardless of cost, as if the taxpayers of Stellan had unlimited money. [8] Stellan was founded as a farming community in 1854, so its parks crew should continue driving gasoline vans. [9] Buying a van is like buying a pair of sneakers, since you should always buy the cheapest pair when you will eventually wear it out. [10] Electric vans can lose a considerable part of their range in very cold weather, which matters in a town where winter lasts four months. [11] Mr. Duquesne says that the crew's longest route is short, and if that is accurate, the cold may matter less than I feared. [12] I still ask the council to wait one year and observe how electric vans have performed in neighboring towns with similar winters. [13] The parks crew does excellent work, and it deserves vans that start reliably on the coldest mornings. [14] Whichever vans the town buys, I hope the council will ask the crew which features matter most on the job.
Milo sorts sentence 8 in the flaw column. Which label fits sentence 8, and why?
- Non sequitur: the town's farming past gives no reason at all for keeping gasoline vans.
- Straw man: it twists the director's plan into a plan to abandon the town's past.
- Hasty generalization: it builds a rule for towns in general from a single founding date in 1854.
- Red herring: it pulls the debate away from the vans to the history of Stellan.
Zee fills the flaw column for sentence 5. Why does the reasoning in sentence 5 fail?
- It fails because an electric van costs about $9,000 more than a gasoline one.
- It assumes, without saying so, that the garage already has a way to charge electric vans.
- It comes from the parks director, who already wants the council to buy the vans and so is not neutral.
- It uses the claim that the vans can be charged as its own reason for saying so.
Kira lists the premise rows under the claim in sentence 6. Which row gets the weakest-link mark?
- Sentence 13, because praising the crew tells the council nothing about the cost.
- Sentence 6, because four years is a long time to wait before the town sees any savings.
- Sentence 3, because the $2,500 a year is only an expectation, and the four years rest on it.
- Sentence 2, because a difference of $9,000 seems too large to win back through savings on fuel and repairs.
The Fountain in Tolland Square (hearing transcript)
[1] MR. AUGUST PELL, chair of the Tolland Square committee: The fountain in the center of the square was constructed in 1962, and its pump and pipes have leaked for the last three summers. [2] The plumber's estimate places repairs to the old fountain at about $70,000, while a new, smaller fountain that recirculates its water would cost about $95,000. [3] The manufacturer's figures indicate that the new fountain would use approximately a tenth of the water that the old one consumes. [4] The new fountain would therefore recover its additional cost within a few years, through what it saves on water. [5] Either the town purchases the new fountain this year, or the square will remain dry and broken for another decade. [6] Fountains are like telephones, since a model from 1962 is simply too outdated to justify repairing.
[7] MS. CORDELIA NOLAN, a resident: The old fountain's bronze heron was created by a local sculptor in 1962, and many families take photographs beside it at graduations. [8] The heron could be preserved and placed in the new basin, but the committee's proposal does not specify whether it would be. [9] The town's records show that the old fountain's water cost about $1,200 a summer, so using a tenth of that amount would save about $1,080 a year. [10] At that rate, the additional $25,000 would take more than twenty years to recover, not a few. [11] Repairing the original fountain would preserve the heron where it stands and would cost the town less this year. [12] The repairs would also last for decades, because old fountains always outlast modern ones. [13] Therefore the council should repair the original fountain instead of replacing it.
[14] MR. PELL: The committee would gladly preserve the heron under either plan, and it will include that commitment in its written proposal. [15] The council will hear additional public comments at its regular meeting next Tuesday.
Esme fills the flaw column for sentence 5. Why does the reasoning in sentence 5 fail?
- It fails because repairing the old fountain would cost the town less than a new one.
- It offers only two outcomes and leaves out repairing the old fountain, which sentence 2 prices.
- It predicts a whole decade ahead, which is a long time to say anything about.
- It compares an old fountain to an old telephone, though they differ in the way that matters.