(iii) If what was shown on television did not affect people’s behaviour, then television advertising would never influence viewers to buy a product, But we know that it does. So it cannot be true that television does not affect behaviour.

(i) Students will only succeed in their studies if they do sufficient work outside of class. But if students do sufficient work outside class, they will not have time for a part time job. Therefore, no student with a part time job will succeed in their studies.

QUESTION 1

Put the argument from the following passage into standard form and construct an argument map diagram. There is no need to include unstated premises (assumptions) in your answer.  

(17 marks)

Utilitarianism is a more demanding ethical code than any other. For it says that we should always act to bring about the best consequences. So utilitarianism demands that we sacrifice our own interests whenever a greater good can be achieved by doing so, and that is almost always the case.

Is the following argument deductively valid or deductively invalid?

P1. Having good employee benefits is the easiest way to quickly attract a lot of job applicants.

C. Google must have good employee benefits.

Read the following case and answer the question that follows:

Rita worries that she's not very good at her job. Once this idea gets in her head, she starts to notice times when her colleagues seem frustrated or impatient, and she thinks "they must be annoyed with me". One night, when she's feeling particularly down on herself, Rita pores over her work email history and takes note of every time a manager has criticised her work – these comments weigh heavy on Rita's mind. After a big project, Rita's boss says "great work Rita!" but Rita is quick to dismiss this as an empty compliment. After all – as far as she's concerned – all the evidence points in the other direction...

Which cognitive bias is at play in Rita's thinking?

Which fallacy is committed in the following argument?

Free speech is a founding principle for any democracy. But in recent years, some of the most important speech in our public discourse has not only ceased to be free, it has become downright expensive! Whether it is online news outlets locking their articles behind prohibitive paywalls, or the rising cost of broadband internet, we are paying through the nose to access the speech of our fellow citizens. This assault on free speech has to stop!

What type of statement is the following?:

"The vast majority of all blindness and vision impairment in Australia is preventable or treatable if detected early."

A new

study indicates that watching videos and shows online on sites like YouTube and

Netflix may be negatively impacting young children’s academic performance. In one of the

largest studies of its kind, researchers were granted access to hundreds of

thousands of test scores of primary school age children. Along with this data

they gathered survey responses from the parents of the children, asking how

many hours a day they estimated their child spent streaming videos online. They

discovered that those children who watched over four hours of video content per

day were significantly more likely to perform worse than average on

standardised tests, compared with children who watched less than four hours per

day.

Marking

scheme

Opal Banking Union, a large Australian bank, wants to determine the degree of customer satisfaction with its services. It commissions web developers to add a feature to their online banking app: after one month of use, each new customer receives a prompt which asks them to report any issues they have encountered by typing in a textbox. They can also dismiss the prompt by clicking "I haven't encountered any issues”. After collecting data for 12 months, the bank receives over 35,000 responses. Of these responses, 12,000 reported an issue, and the remainder selected “I haven't encountered any issues”. In their internal annual report, Opal Banking Union reports that roughly 30-40% of their customers were dissatisfied with the bank’s services, and thus they must do much more to improve the customer experience.

Marking scheme:

In the context of evaluating causal arguments, what is a confounding factor?