Can you explain question #24 in Practice Test #8 Section 4?
The key to this one is to eliminate every choice that makes an unjustified (i.e., not directly supported by the question) assumption.
You can eliminate choice A because we don’t know anything about the preferences of the viewers who didn’t vote. Generally speaking, don’t draw conclusions about what could have happened, draw conclusions about what DID happen.
You can eliminate choice B because the question mentions nothing about the ages of voters. Don’t let your own assumptions about who texts and who uses social media cloud your judgment!
You can eliminate choice C because it’s mathematically false (more on this below) but you should also lean towards eliminating it just because it’s using something that didn’t happen as a basis for its conclusion. As before, resist the urge to make conclusions about what could have happened when you only know what DID happen.
Choice D is totally supported by the data: 70% of social media voters preferred Contestant 2, and only 40% of text message voters preferred Contestant 2. Therefore, social media voters were more likely to prefer Contestant 2 than text message voters.
Now, as for why C isn’t mathematically true…let’s plug in! Say there were 100 voters. We know 30% of the votes came in via social media, so that’s 30 votes. The other 70 votes must have come in via text message.
Of the 30 social media votes, Contestant 2 got 70% of them, or 21 votes. Of the 70 text message votes, Contestant 2 got 40% of them, or 28 votes.
So of the 100 votes, Contestant 2 only got 21 + 28 = 49 votes! That’s not enough to win the contest.
Comments (2)
For choice a, the answer is, “If all viewers had voted, Contestant 2 would have won.” This is not true but it has nothing to do with preferences. Answer choice C is “If all viewers who voted had voted by social media instead of by text message, Contestant 2 would have won. This is why I think this is true ,Because if there were 100 voters and instead of 30 coming from social media and 70 coming from text message there were 100 from social media, like the answer says, then since Contestant 2 gets 70% percent of them he would get 70 votes. Thats more than 50%. Let me know if this works.
But you’re assuming here that HOW people voted (social media vs. text message) impacted how they voted? I don’t know how that could be supported based on info in the question.