ramanujanu wrote:
I do not quiet get this . If 70% of doctrates do not have doctorate parents ... we are to be bothered about the 30% which have doctorate parents . now the question is as to what percentage of the doctorate parents have doctorate kids(what %age i.e). The data in the question does not address this point at all . I found the information irrelevent.
Where did i go wrong ?
arvindsekar wrote:
plumber250 wrote:
Hi Ramanujanu,
I think you've sort of answered your own question. You say it's 'irrelevant' - but you could also say that it's consistent - you've said no where that it contradicts the info given by Choi - so both can be true - so it's consistent. (n.b we're not looking for 'supports' or 'strengthen' we just have to be able to hold both arguments together)
Then go through the other choices and you'll soon see the others are all impossible (reasons given by pqhai).
Tough one.
James
Sorry for posting so late.
I din't quite understand. Though the 2 statements are consistent to a certain degree, I feel that Hart's claim is more exaggerated than consistent i.e., Hart says it is MORE LIKELY, which I assume 50% - 70% cases. But as per Choi's statement, Hart's reasoning is only 30% true !! .. What am I missing / misunderstood here.
Regards,
Arvind
It seems that pqhai has the right idea, but this is not how I came to the correct answer.
Lets try looking at it this way:
"Choi: All other factors being equal, children whose parents earned doctorates are more likely to earn a doctorate than children whose parents did not earn doctorates.
Hart: But consider this: Over 70 percent of all doctorate holders do not have a parent that also holds a doctorate."
Example: Out of 125 parents, 25 hold PhD's and 100 do not
Lets say each parent has one child, and of those 125 children, 85 earn PhD's. If 70% of those 85 PhD holders are children of parents that do not have PhD's, this means that only 60/100 children whose parents do not have PhD's obtain a PhD. Thus, although 70% of PhD holders as Hart claims do not have parents with PhD's, 70% only constitutes 60% of the total population of children who have parents without PhD's. Thus, children of parents that do not have PhD's have a 60% chance of earning a PhD.
It then becomes clear that although the children of PhD holders constitute only 30% of the total number of PhD holders, it is clear that 30% of the 85 children who do earn a PhD from the pool of 125 is equal to 25, which means that 100% of the children of PhD holders earn a PhD in this particular case.
Thus, Hart's claim s consistent with Choi's because even if 70% of children that earn PhD's come from a non-PhD holding household, it is still only 60% of those children that earn a PhD in contrast to 100% of children who's parents have PhD's and constitute only 30% of the total PhD holding population. Thus, C is clearly the best answer.
It seems that the argument is based on the fact that there are far many more parents without PhD's than those with PhD's, thus the use of " All other factors being equal" by Choi seems to be a clue into this fact. "All things being equal" is an idiom that means"if things stay the way they are," a reference to the actual numbers on which the percentages are based and which to an American English speaker may seem more clear. So part of the difficulty of this question seems to derive from understanding this idiom as a clue into the fact that there are far fewer PhD's than people without PhD's because it is only in that context that the play of percentages makes sense. Therefore, Hart's claim is consistent with Choi's.
I hope this clarifies,
Albert
Please visit w w w . g m a t q u e s t i o n s . o r g for help with this and other types of questions with 200+ FREE practice questions with step-by-step expert video tutorials (launching Monday, 7/29/13!)