According to government official involved in overseeing airplane safet

Question

According to government official involved in overseeing airplane safety during the last year, over 75 percent of the voice-recorder tapes taken from small airplanes involved in relatively minor accidents record the whistling of the pilot during the fifteen minutes immediately preceding the accident. Even such minor accidents pose some safety risk. Therefore, if passengers hear the pilot start to whistle they should take safety precautions, whether instructed by the pilot to do so or not.

The argument is most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that it

(A) accepts the reliability of the cited statistics on the authority of an unidentified government official

(B) ignores the fact that in nearly one quarter of these accidents following the recommendation would not have improved passenger' safety

(C) does not indicate the criteria by which an accident is classified as "relatively minor"

(D) provides no information about the percentage of all small airplane flights during which the pilot whistles at some time during that flight

(E) fails to specify the percentage of all small airplane flights that involve relatively minor accidents

anandnk · Answer

How do you justify your answer. It is impossible to findout when pilot wistles during the flight unless recording takesplace during the entire flight duration. I dont think it shows the flaw in the argument. The flaw apparent if it can be shown that accidents are caused by someother thing than wistling.
Are you thinking that if we one can show that pilots did wistle during some part of the flight journey and that didnt cause accidents then the flaw in the investigators reasoning becomes apparent?

asandeep · Answer

I did not consider the fact - how will one find out the percentage of time the pilots whistle. But, consider this - 
If the pilots whistle in almost 100% of time in all the flights, how will the passengers distinguish between a risk and no risk situation ? See what I am trying to say...

anandnk · Answer

D is correct. 

Unbelievable scenario. What would the passenegers do if pilots whistle on on average 30% of the time, or 60% of the time. It does not matter how often they whistle. Passengers will go for cover. I feel it is a stupid question. It is hard to judge for the passengers when to take cover no matter what the percentage is. So they will take the default action. It would good if the answer were rephrased as  "passengers cannot decide when to take the cover whether or not it is kown how often the pilots whistle" 
It is way far away from foraml logic question that talks about unbelievable scenario ( like life on mars for example ) and also way far away from reasonable plausible argument.

auradediligodo · Answer

Hi everyone,

We are given that 75% of the planes involved in small crashes involve the captain whistling.
The conclusion is a suggestion: whenever you hear the captain whistling, take safe precautions!

Pre-thinking

Falsification scenario: what if in the majority of flights captains whistle?
Assumption: An insignificant number of captains whistle in flights not involved in small crashes.

If you like numbers:

Let's assume 100 small crashes are reported ------>in 75 of such crashes the captain whistles
 Let's assume 1 million flights do not involve any crash. The majority of the captain of such flights whistle.
 
Such scenario falsifies the conclusion.

Option D    is the correct option because it spots the flaw presented above

aniket16c · Answer

Argument:
Officials studied a tapes from small airplanes involved in accidents.
75% of these tapes recorded whistling during the 15 minutes before the accident

Conclusion - If passengers hear their pilot whistling they should take safety precautions

Question - Weaken the conclusion = Passengers need not take safety precautions even if they hear their pilot whistling

(A) accepts the reliability of the cited statistics on the authority of an unidentified government official 
= the evidence is given by government official. - Wrong

(B) ignores the fact that in nearly one quarter of these accidents following the recommendation would not have improved passenger' safety 
= As long as the passenger's safety is improved in majority of the cases, considering the minority cases would not matter
-Wrong

(C) does not indicate the criteria by which an accident is classified as "relatively minor" 
- Classification is not important. Irrespective of the status of the accident, the accident does compromise the safety of the individual. - Wrong
 
(D) provides no information about the percentage of all small airplane flights during which the pilot whistles at some time during that flight 
May be the pilot whistles for some other reason when there is no reason to take safety precautions in addition to when the accident is occurring. Hence, the passengers may unnecessarily take the precautions even when there is no need.
-Correct

(E) fails to specify the percentage of all small airplane flights that involve relatively minor accidents
- We need to prevent accidents irrespective of how small the percentage may be
-Wrong

tkorzhan1995 · Answer

GMATNinja ,  Bunuel , can you please explain why E is not correct? What is the flaw in this argument?

Whistling preceded the accident. However, argument does not specify how many accidents resulted after whistling.

How D would explain flaw in this argument?

GMATNinja · Answer

The author concludes that "if passengers hear the pilot start to whistle they should take safety precautions."

He/she reaches this conclusion because right before 75% of relatively minor accidents, pilots can be heard whistling. It seems like there's a link -- right after a pilot starts whistling, an accident occurs!

Unfortunately, there's a gap in the reasoning above:  we have no idea how often pilots whistle.  What if pilots whistle all the time? Then the link above is destroyed. Pilots could whistle just as much on perfectly safe flights as they do on flights that involve minor accidents. If that's the case, then passengers shouldn't worry if a pilot starts whistling during the flight.

(D) captures this flaw:
 
In order to say that the statistic in the passage is cause for alarm, we need to know how often pilots whistle and an accident DOESN'T occur. If pilots  only  whistle right before accidents, then the author's argument is strong. However, if pilots whistle  all the time , then the author's argument is weakened. We can criticize the argument for failing to provide information on how often pilots whistle.

Take another look at (E):
 
The author's argument is based on the link between whistling and accidents. How worried should passengers be when the pilot starts whistling? They should be  very  worried, according to the author.

The percentage of flights that involve accidents is irrelevant to this chain of logic. If a  large  percentage of flights involve an accident, then passengers should be worried about a whistling pilot. If only a  small  percentage of flights involve accidents, then passengers should be equally worried! In either case, if whistling is a good indication of an impending crash, then the author's argument holds.

(E) is out, and (D) is the correct answer.

I hope that helps!

VerbalBot · Answer

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According to government official involved in overseeing airplane safet

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