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Difficulty: EasyEvaluating Reasoning Flaws

A boutique coffee roaster introduced a new line of dark roast coffee beans last month. During that same month, total customer traffic and overall sales at the store increased by 25 percent. The store owner concluded that the new dark roast line was directly responsible for the boost in sales. Which of the following best describes the flaw in the store owner's reasoning?

  1. It infers a causal connection between two events merely because they occurred during the same period of time.Answer
  2. B
    It fails to provide empirical statistics regarding the total revenue generated specifically by the dark roast line.
  3. C
    It assumes that introducing new product lines is always beneficial for retail businesses.
  4. D
    It provides evidence that strongly supports the conclusion that product diversity attracts more customers.
  5. E
    It treats a condition that is necessary for increasing store sales as though it were sufficient to guarantee high profits.

Answer

It infers a causal connection between two events merely because they occurred during the same period of time.
The store owner relies on the fact that two events (introducing dark roast beans and an increase in sales) happened at the same time to claim that the first caused the second. The correct answer points out this fundamental flaw: correlation or coincidence does not automatically establish causation, as other factors could have driven the sales increase.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the argument's premises and conclusion
Premise: A new dark roast line was introduced last month, and store sales increased by 25 percent during the same month. Conclusion: The dark roast line directly caused the sales increase.
Isolating the structure shows that two events happened concurrently.
2
Identify the gap in reasoning between premise and conclusion
The owner assumes co-occurrence (correlation/timing) guarantees direct causation, ignoring other potential factors like seasonal changes or marketing.
A temporal coincidence alone does not establish that one event caused the other.
3
Select the option that accurately describes this logical gap
The statement highlighting the improper inference of a causal connection from simultaneous events correctly describes the flaw.
This directly targets the correlation vs. causation error.

Key Concept

Evaluating Reasoning Flaws: Correlation vs. Causation
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Topics

Evaluating Reasoning Flaws

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