YangYichen wrote:
A birth is more like to be difficult when the mother is over the age of 40 than when she is younger. Regardless of the mother’s age, a person whose birth was difficult is more likely to be ambidextrous than is a person whose birth was not difficult. Since other causes of ambidexterity are not related to the mother’s age, there must be more ambidextrous people who were born to women over 40 than there are ambidextrous people who were born to younger women.
The argument is most vulnerable to which one of the following criticisms?
(A) It assumes what it sets out to establish.
(B) It overlooks the possibility that fewer children are born to women over 40 than to women under 40.
(C) It fails to specify what percentage of people in the population as a whole are ambidextrous.
(D) It does not state how old a child must be before its handedness can be determined.
(E) It neglects to explain how difficulties during birth can result in a child’s ambidexterity.
can someone explain the answer even the stimuli pls
Hi
The para means..
There are ambidextrous people, doesn't matter what it means. Now two statements are given
1) likelihood of a person being ambidextrous is more when the person's birth is difficult.
2) a lady above 40 is likely to have more difficulty while giving birth than ladies below 40.
Conclusion is that more ambidextrous are given birth by a lady above 40 than by lady below 40.
Even without getting into answers, we can see some problem in reasoning.
The problem is that the conclusion has converted ratio to number.
MEANS:- if both group of ladies give birth to say 100 persons. Then as per two statements we can say that maybe 20 ambidextrous are born to ladies above 40 and 10 are born to below 40.
But if there are only 10 births to ladies above 40 and 100 births to ladies below 40 In the same ratio, 4 aambidextrousare likely to be born to ladies above 40 while the number remains 10 for below 40.
This is the flaw in the reasoning above. And B points it out
So B is the answer.
_________________