When people show signs of having a heart attack an electrocardiograph

Hi experts VeritasKarishma GMATNinja , can you please help me here.

The conclusion for the above argument is computers are better off than cardiologists to interpret EKG data and the reasoning it provides is that "computers diagnosed higher no. of cases that were later confirmed to be heart attacks". Now I was divided b/w C and E.

Option C says "cardiologist correctly diagnosed a significantly higher proportion of the cases in which no heart attack occurred than did the computer program" but still the cardiologist fail to diagnose the cases which were later confirmed to be a heart attack

Option E says the cardiologist in the study had a skill level less than the general/average, cardiologist undermines the study itself questioning in the validity of the claim, thus damaging the argument. So isn't E the better option in this case?

Thanks for the prompt response Karishma, I missed the highly skilled/experienced part in the argument. It makes so much more sense now. Appreciate the help!

I will admit, I am not the biggest fan of this question...there are several interesting contenders and C doesn't fully satisfy me.

When people show signs of having a heart attack an electrocardiograph (EKG) is often used to diagnose their condition. In a study, a computer program for EKG diagnosis of heart attacks was pitted against a very experienced, highly skilled cardiologist. The program correctly diagnosed a significantly higher proportion of the cases that were later confirmed to be heart attacks than did the cardiologist. Interpreting EKG data, therefore, should be left to computer programs.

Which one of the following, if true, most weakens the argument?

(A) Experts agreed that the cardiologist made few obvious mistakes in reading and interpreting the EKG data. X
-eliminated this one b/c we're not allowed to counter premises on the GMAT
(B) The practice of medicine is as much an art as a science, and computer programs are not easily adapted to making subjective judgments. X
-also true, and a compelling reason why we might opt against EKGs...but I eliminated b/c this is in some senses vague.
(C) The cardiologist correctly diagnosed a significantly higher proportion of the cases in which no heart attack occurred than did the computer program. (Possibly correct)
-this choice makes the assumption that the deficits in skill with respect to identifying actual heart attacks is less important than identifying true false negatives...there's nothing to suggest that we should lean one way or the other really (either for or against EKGs) since these are both important aspects of medicine
(D) In a considerable percentage of cases, EKG data alone are insufficient to enable either computer programs or cardiologists to make accurate diagnoses. X
(E) The cardiologist in the study was unrepresentative of cardiologists in general with respect to skill and experience. (Possibly correct)
-a sample size of one is certainly not representative...in fact it's not even a sample size at all ...and in statistics, 1 more often than not, means 0 (of course there are exceptionally rare diseases for example which count as substantive cases).

As always, LSAT CR questions bring something entirely different from GMAT.

Either the patient has Heart attack, or not. So if computer recognizes more cases of heart attack, how come doctor recognizes more cases where heart attack is absent.

I find LSAT more and more useless as time passes

Posted from my mobile device

Hello AndrewN

Hope you had a good weekend!

For the first time, I think the OA is pretty questionable. Option C states that “The cardiologist correctly diagnosed a significantly higher proportion of the cases in which no heart attack occurred than did the computer program”

I argued against this option as it states nothing about the diagnosis of the ‘EKG report’, around which the conclusion is based. And unfortunately, I eliminated it. Am I being too pedantic? I went for E, which, I reckoned, attacks the underlying assumption.

Would love to hear your views on this. Thank you in advance!

Posted from my mobile device

Hello, Shikhar22. Thank you for the well wishes. I hope the same for you. In the question at hand, I am afraid I agree with the OA. The exact argument given is that interpreting EKG data should be left to computer programs [as opposed to cardiologists]. The grounds for the suggestion are that the [computer] program correctly diagnosed a significantly higher proportion of the cases that were later confirmed to be heart attacks than did the cardiologist. Our goal is to cast doubt on the notion that cardiologists ought to be pushed aside when it comes to interpreting EKGs.

Answer choice (E) is problematic because the passage tells us that the cardiologist in the trial was highly skilled. If this highly skilled cardiologist was unrepresentative of cardiologists in general with respect to skill and experience, we cannot assume that other cardiologists would be either more or less skilled. Perhaps other cardiologists, in general, are less skilled, and the argument could hold. We simply have nothing to lean on.

By contrast, answer choice (C) allows us to appreciate that a qualified cardiologist might be better to keep around when it comes to interpreting EKG data. You are correct that the EKG report is not mentioned directly, but we are left to wonder, then, how the cardiologist diagnosed something—in fact, the very criterion (a diagnosis) used in the comparison. If the cardiologist outperformed the computer program with one type of diagnosis based on an EKG report, then we have a compelling reason to doubt the argument. Choice (C) is a perfectly qualified answer.

I tend to be more careful on LSAT Logical Reasoning questions than on Critical Reasoning questions, since the former tend to present finer points to consider or debate within the answer choices; even so, I took just over two minutes on this one. None of the other answer choices fit the given argument. (I could not care less about what experts agreed on in answer choice (A), for example. A subpar human interpretation of an EKG could still be worse than the reading the computer program had given, not to mention that I take no comfort in few. Why would a highly skilled cardiologist make even one obvious mistake. Yikes!)

I hope that helps resolve your doubts on this one. Thank you for thinking to ask.

- Andrew

It seems a few people aren't too persuaded by the OA here, but the answer is unambiguously C. Anyone could do better than an expert cardiologist if judged solely by the metric in the question stem. You could just say, looking at every EKG, "yup, that was a heart attack". Then every time the EKG actually was from a heart attack, you'd be right. You'd also be wrong every time it wasn't from a heart attack, but the question stem isn't judging the computer's wrong answers, only its right ones. That's why we need some information about how often the computer was right in cases when a heart attack didn't happen, or else we have no way to know if the computer is just saying "heart attack" way too often, or if the computer is genuinely good at diagnosing heart attacks from EKGs.

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