Debater: The average amount of overtime per month worked by an employee in the manufacturing division of the Haglut Corporation is 14 hours. Most employees of the Haglut Corporation work in the manufacturing division. Furthermore, the average amount of overtime per month worked by any employee in the company generally does not fluctuate much from month to month. Therefore, each month, most employees of the Haglut Corporation almost certainly work at least some overtime.

The debater's argument is most vulnerable to criticism on which of these grounds?

Simplifying the Argument: Average overtime for employee in manufacturing is 14 hours. Most employees work in manufacturing. Therefore most employees work at least some overtime.

Attacking the Argument: Here we are dealing with the average number of hours. In general, average equals total divided by number of elements, in this case workers. If you had 5 workers each working 14 hours overtime a month, you end up with the same number of overtime hours as four lazy workers and one uber-industrious worker who clocks 70 hours of overtime a month. However, the scenario is very different: all workers working overtime vs. one out of five working overtime. In much the same way, this logic can be extrapolated to Halgut Corporation. The debater's conclusion that MOST employees work at least some over time is not valid if a few workers work an inordinate amount of overtime while the rest of the company works no over time.


(A) It takes for granted that the manufacturing division is a typical division of the corporation with regard to the average amount of overtime its employees work each month.

This does not quite get at the scenario I illustrated above.


(B) It takes for granted that if a certain average of amount of overtime is worked each month by each employee of the Haglut Corporation, then approximately the same amount of overtime must be worked each month by each employee of the manufacturing division.

This answer does not touch on the idea of a few working overtime, accounting for the 14 hour average.


(C) It confuses a claim from which the argument's conclusion about the Haglut Corporation would necessarily follow with a claim that would follow from the argument's conclusion only with a high degree of probability.

I think there is just a lot of confusing verbiage going on here. In such cases, move on to another answer choice to find a more clearly stated that answer vs. getting tangled up in all the words.


(D) It overlooks the possibility that even if, on average, a certain amount of overtime is worked by the members of some group, many members of that group may work no overtime at all.

This answer choice directly speaks to the fact that if many work no overtime at all, the average can still be 14 hours, as long as a few members are working much more than 14 hours of a overtime a month.


(E) It overlooks the possibility that even if most employees of the corporation work some overtime each month, any one corporate employee may, in some months, work no overtime.

This answer is close but not quite. We want an answer that is more direct and speaks to many, not just one, workers working no overtime, thus rendering the conclusion that most work overtime invalid.


A tough question indeed . Hope that helps!
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Manufacturing division of HC (say has 100 people)- Avg overtime per month = 14 hrs

Manufacturing division has most employees (so say total number of HC employees is 110)
Avg overtime per month for all employees stays steady month to month (say it stays between 13.5 to 15 hrs per month)

Conclusion: Each month, most employees of HC almost certainly work at least some overtime.

What is the flaw here? It talks about average overtime and then concludes the average holds for each member. It is certainly possible that of the 100 people in manufacturing division, 20 people work 70 hrs overtime per month while 80 people work no overtime. Can I say that most employees work at least some overtime? No! Of the total 110 people, 80 work no overtime at all!

This is exactly what (D) says:
(D) It overlooks the possibility that even if, on average, a certain amount of overtime is worked by the members of some group, many members of that group may work no overtime at all.

Answer (D)

(A) It takes for granted that the manufacturing division is a typical division of the corporation with regard to the average amount of overtime its employees work each month.

It doesn't. It is concluding about each employee.

(B) It takes for granted that if a certain average of amount of overtime is worked each month by each employee of the Haglut Corporation, then approximately the same amount of overtime must be worked each month by each employee of the manufacturing division.

Again, it doesn't. Avg of HC and avg of Manufacturing division in HC could be a bit different.

(C) It confuses a claim from which the argument's conclusion about the Haglut Corporation would necessarily follow with a claim that would follow from the argument's conclusion only with a high degree of probability.

This is just given to confuse the heck out of you! My first thought was "there is neither a claim given from which the conclusion can follow, nor is there a claim which follows from the conclusion". The argument gives verifiable data, but claims nothing other than the conclusion from the data. The only claim is the conclusion. Hence I moved on to the next option.
A cursory glance might make you think that what they are concluding has a high degree of possibility but the conclusion gives is as almost a certainty and well, that is the problem. But note that even then, you should know that what the conclusion concludes does not have a high degree of probability. We have no grounds to believe that every employee would probably work some overtime at least. It is very much possible that very few people put in a lot of overtime while other don't. We don't know the requirements of the industry.

(E) It overlooks the possibility that even if most employees of the corporation work some overtime each month, anyone corporate employee may, in some months, work no overtime.

The conclusion is about most employees, not all employees so this is not the flaw.
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Sorry for beating a dead horse, but this is a very important concept. The concept of majority versus average.

Most employees working in the Manufacturing division means that at least 51% of the employees of the company work in the Manufacturing department.

The only way to conclude that "most employees in the company work some overtime, is to conclude that "everyone in the division" would have to work overtime.

Yet, the evidence merely says average, so hypothetically, employees who work over time could work 28 hours of overtime a month, meaning one employee for every 2.

The answer, D, paints that well by indicating potentially maybe many members of the group don't work overtime.

Takeaway: Understand the average versus majority concept, and how to break down "wholes"

D because we care about a group that is the major part of the company employees that work overtime.

Though question for me
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How can we consider Option D as correct if its only talking about "some group" but not the whole organization? Would be great if somebody can explain.

Above statement is a generic statement not specific to that organization. This statement is applicable for manufacturing group where if on average there is overtime of 14 hrs/ month doesnt mean that everyone in the manufacturing group is doing the overtime.

Thanks,
Sankalp

Give Kudos if you like the reply

Debater: The average amount of overtime per month worked by an employee in the manufacturing division of the Haglut Corporation is 14 hours. Most employees of the Haglut Corporation work in the manufacturing division. Furthermore, the average amount of overtime per month worked by any employee in the company generally does not fluctuate much from month to month. Therefore, each month, most employees of the Haglut Corporation almost certainly work at least some overtime.

The debater's argument is most vulnerable to criticism on which of these grounds?

Average No Overtime for per months =14 hrs/month = (Total sum of hrs of only those employees who actually put extra overtime hours in a year )/12 * Total no of employees in the Org , this include the sleeping one also

Also from question , there is no fluctuation in per month , so the variable parameters in above equation are , employee who actually work overtime and and rest others

suppose total 10 employees , 7 belongs to manufacturing division (As most belongs to it ) whose overtime is 14 hrs and now from the second gp we can have 1 person putting 42 hrs overtime and rest two sleeping but still giving the avg of 14hrs /month (42/3)

The same is justified by the option D ,
My Funda Making CR more mathematical and Logical

A real tough one! I felt the answer choices were tougher to comprehend than the argument. I felt nice while going through the argument and i was through to the answer choices in ~30 secs. But soon was entangled in the choices and lost all the confidence gained from the argument

I lost about >1 min on choice C alone (had to revisit the passage once and reread the choice multiple times).
I felt choice C was strategically placed before the correct answer. Does GMAT play here too?

How do we deal with this kinda situation? Is there a way to know if the choice that seems the toughest to comprehend is not the correct answer?

Btw, i still have little clue about what choice C meant

It confuses a claim from which the argument's conclusion about the Haglut Corporation would necessarily follow with a claim that would follow from the argument's conclusion only with a high degree of probability.

It confuses a
claim ------100%------> argument's conclusion
with a
claim <------high probability------ argument's conclusion

To put it another way, the third option is trying to say that the argument is vulnerable to the criticism that it (the argument) fails to differentiate between
a claim that would definitely lead to the argument's conclusion
and
a claim that the argument's conclusion would lead to (with a high degree of probability).
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Super easy D

Manufacturing works requires 14 hours of overtime in jan, feb mar, april, may june...etc etc (their average overtime stays constant=14 hr per employee per month. But in january and feb engine specialist work overtime because more engines are produced, In march and april, glass cutters and painters work overtime, in june and july, body makers do overtime) and then we can also have that tyre fitters in the same manufacturing division that never work over time , there overtime is also constant 0 hour per employee per month)

Option D acounts for all such cases
D) even if, on average, a certain amount of overtime is worked by the members of some group, many members of that group may work no overtime at all.
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Debater: The average amount of overtime per month worked by an employee in the manufacturing division of the Haglut Corporation is 14 hours. Most employees of the Haglut Corporation work in the manufacturing division. Furthermore, the average amount of overtime per month worked by any employee in the company generally does not fluctuate much from month to month. Therefore, each month, most employees of the Haglut Corporation almost certainly work at least some overtime.

100 employees
month -Jan

1 employee of Manufacturing division = 14*12

Furthermore, the average amount of overtime per month worked by any employee in the company generally does not fluctuate much from month to month. :- so let say if a employee work 1 hour overtime in a month most of the time it is 1 or nearby.

From this : each month, most employees of the Haglut Corporation almost certainly work at least some overtime.

There is a huge leap from one employee to every other employee.

The debater's argument is most vulnerable to criticism on which of these grounds?



(B) It takes for granted that if a certain average of amount of overtime is worked each month by each employee of the Haglut Corporation, then approximately the same amount of overtime must be worked each month by each employee of the manufacturing division.

why not B????

(C) It confuses a claim from which the argument's conclusion about the Haglut Corporation would necessarily follow with a claim that would follow from the argument's conclusion only with a high degree of probability.

(D) It overlooks the possibility that even if, on average, a certain amount of overtime is worked by the members of some group, many members of that group may work no overtime at all.

(E) It overlooks the possibility that even if most employees of the corporation work some overtime each month, anyone corporate employee may, in some months, work no overtime. :- it actually restate the conclusion

Debater: The average amount of overtime per month worked by an employee in the manufacturing division of the Haglut Corporation is 14 hours. Most employees of the Haglut Corporation work in the manufacturing division. Furthermore, the average amount of overtime per month worked by any employee in the company generally does not fluctuate much from month to month. Therefore, each month, most employees of the Haglut Corporation almost certainly work at least some overtime.

Type- Weaken
Boil it down -Average overtime per month in manufacturing is 14 hours . Most of employees work in Manufacturing division .
Therefore , each month, most employees of the Haglut Corporation almost certainly work at least some overtime.
Standard deviation in such situations provide a better picture .

Pre- Thinking - Average do not give proper picture of the distribution of the overtime hours among employees .
Hence , our conclusion is vulnerable to criticism that very few employees may be doing the bulk of overtime work


(D) It overlooks the possibility that even if, on average, a certain amount of overtime is worked by the members of some group, many members of that group may work no overtime at all.
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GMATNinja VeritasKarishma AjiteshArun egmat

Does this line play anyb role in the question. I am not getting it. Please help.


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You can safely ignore it.

It helps slightly to reinforce the each month part of the conclusion (Therefore, each month, most employees of the Haglut Corporation almost certainly work at least some overtime). The correct option however, doesn't need this statement. It attacks something more fundamental: if many employees work no overtime, it becomes much harder for us to say that most employees almost certainly work some overtime each month. But if the individual figures are just relatively stable (that is, they don't fluctuate), we don't know whether most are non-zero or not.
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Dear AjiteshArun,

I have one follow-up question on this very very confusing answer choice:

Is my understanding correct?

a claim from which the argument's conclusion about the Haglut Corporation would necessarily follow
= the claim is a premise on which the conclusion depends

a claim that would follow from the argument's conclusion only with a high degree of probability
= the claim is an inference from the conclusion

Thank you for your great explanation as always

Hi varotkorn,

You're on the right track. One quick change we could make here is to the depends. "Necessarily follow" is closer to sufficient than it is to necessary. For example:

Bad news day → Twitter meltdown

Let's say that a BND always leads to a TM. That is, a TM necessarily follows a BND. This, in itself, does not mean that a BND is necessary for a TM to happen. A TM could happen in the complete absence of a BND as well.
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Debater: The average amount of overtime per month worked by an employee in the manufacturing division of the Haglut Corporation is 14 hours. Most employees of the Haglut Corporation work in the manufacturing division. Furthermore, the average amount of overtime per month worked by any employee in the company generally does not fluctuate much from month to month. Therefore, each month, most employees of the Haglut Corporation almost certainly work at least some overtime.

The debater's argument is most vulnerable to criticism on which of these grounds?

Although I arrived at D, I wanted to write an explanation to make sure my reasoning was on point

All right, let's get to it then:

Conclusion: Most employees of HC 'almost certainly' work at least some overtime.

Reasoning: The average amount of overtime per month per employee in manufacturing is 14 hours and most employees of HC work in manufacturing

The fact that average amount of overtime 'generally' does not fluctuate per month per employee in the 'company' is not super useful for the argument. All that it tells me is that I can maybe assume that 28 +/- some hours is the norm for average overtime per employee per month

Okay, how do I weaken this reasoning? Since find the flaw question is essentially a higher version of weaken (flaw would have an assumption instead of a maybe scenario), thinking of weakeners would help.
If the average amount of overtime per month per employee is 14 hours, it could be that A LOT of employees don't do any overtime, while a few employees work their bums off and hence contribute to this average . If that is true, most employees work at least some overtime could be weakened.

Another straightforward weakener could be that employees report false numbers in order to get say, some overtime compensation. If that were true, again our conclusion would be weakened.




(A) It takes for granted that the manufacturing division is a typical division of the corporation with regard to the average amount of overtime its employees work each month.
Does the argument say that the manufacturing division is a typical division of the corporation? Does it say that if manufacturing folks work 28 hours OT, that's how much other divisions work too? No. Reject.

(B) It takes for granted that if a certain average of amount of overtime is worked each month by each employee of the Haglut Corporation, then approximately the same amount of overtime must be worked each month by each employee of the manufacturing division.
The argument does not assume (takes for granted) that if each HC employees work 4 hours OT, each manufacturing employee must have worked exactly the same amount.

(C) It confuses a claim from which the argument's conclusion about the Haglut Corporation would necessarily follow with a claim that would follow from the argument's conclusion only with a high degree of probability.
This is a tough one, let's break it down into two pieces:
It confuses a claim from which the argument's conclusion about the Haglut Corporation would necessarily follow
A claim from which conclusion would necessarily follow should be an airtight premise. In this case, we don't actually have one, our conclusion would not necessarily follow from the given claims

with a claim that would follow from the argument's conclusion only with a high degree of probability.
What claim would follow from the argument's conclusion? We don't even know what that means. 'With a high degree of probability' just tells me that this claim from the conclusion will most likely be true


Does not confuse any airtight premise with some claim that follows from the conclusion? No. Reject.

(D) It overlooks the possibility that even if, on average, a certain amount of overtime is worked by the members of some group, many members of that group may work no overtime at all.
Bingo! This choice simply says that if a team of 5 basketball players scores 100 points, we could very well have a condition in which 3 players score 0 points (overtime work) because they are defenders. Does the argument overlook this possibility? Yes it does.


(E) It overlooks the possibility that even if most employees of the corporation work some overtime each month, anyone corporate employee may, in some months, work no overtime.
The argument has nothing to do with this possibility, because even if any 'corporate' employee works no overtime in many months (not even some), the conclusion will still hold because it is based on the overtime habits of manufacturing employees, who constitute the majority. Reject

Debater: The average amount of overtime per month worked by an employee in the manufacturing division of the Haglut Corporation is 14 hours. Most employees of the Haglut Corporation work in the manufacturing division. Furthermore, the average amount of overtime per month worked by any employee in the company generally does not fluctuate much from month to month. Therefore, each month, most employees of the Haglut Corporation almost certainly work at least some overtime.

P : Overtime per month 14 hours in manufacturing division & does not fluctuate
P : Most -> manufacturing division
C : Most employees of Haglut Corp. work overtime.

Assumption : It is not the case that a little portion of employees works excessive overtime and makes the average higher.

The debater's argument is most vulnerable to criticism on which of these grounds?

(A) It takes for granted that the manufacturing division is a typical division of the corporation with regard to the average amount of overtime its employees work each month.
-> The argument states manufacturing division as most worked division but still opens some areas for other divisions by saying "most." For other divisions in the corporation, no information is given and not mentioned at all.

(B) It takes for granted that if a certain average of amount of overtime is worked each month by each employee of the Haglut Corporation, then approximately the same amount of overtime must be worked each month by each employee of the manufacturing division.
-> The argument does not approximate the same amount to be worked by each employee but only concludes that at least some amount of time employees are likely to overwork.

(C) It confuses a claim from which the argument's conclusion about the Haglut Corporation would necessarily follow with a claim that would follow from the argument's conclusion only with a high degree of probability.
-> claim that conclusion would follow vs claim that would follow conclusion ??...

(D) It overlooks the possibility that even if, on average, a certain amount of overtime is worked by the members of some group, many members of that group may work no overtime at all.
-> Correct. The argument is linking average with most. However, average could be tilted even with small portion of members and does not necessarily means most would follow the average.

(E) It overlooks the possibility that even if most employees of the corporation work some overtime each month, anyone corporate employee may, in some months, work no overtime.
-> Incorrect. In the argument saying "most" will overwork, it implies that some might not overwork.

ChrisLele Please note word: ANY: Furthermore, the average amount of overtime per month worked by any employee in the company generally does not fluctuate much from month to month.....
Does this word not signify that the Average age of EVERY or ANY employee does not fluctuate much? So like if the deviation is not much, it should not affect the overall average. Request your comments on this query.