Competition Mode Question
Interviewer: An alarming statistic reported in the Hobern Medical Journal is that 90 percent of the people in this country now report that they know someone who has heart disease.
Dr. Summer: But an expected level of heart disease is 5 percent, or in other words, 1 out of every 20 people. So at any given time if a person knows approximately 50 people, 1 or more will very likely suffer from heart disease.
Dr, Summer's argument relies on the assumption that
A. Normal levels of heart disease are rarely exceeded
B. Heart disease is not normally concentrated in geographically isolated segments of the population.
C. The number of people who each know someone who suffers from heart disease is always higher than 90 percent of the population
D. The interviewer is not consciously distorting the statistics he presents
E. Knowledge that a personal acquaintance has heart disease generates more fear of getting heart disease than does knowledge of heart disease statistics.
The best answer is B. Dr. Summer's argument assumes that people are generally similar in how likely they are to have among their acquaintances people who have heart disease. Since heavy concentrations of people with heart disease in geographically isolated segments of the population would produce great differences in that respect, Dr. Summer's argument assumes few, if any, such concentrations.