Which of the following, if true, strengthens the vice president’s argu

QUESTION

Which of the following, if true, strengthens the vice president’s argument?

A) Surveys suggested that the main reason people signed up for Buzz was related to its unique new features.
B) Twitter and Facebook have weak privacy controls.
C) Google spent more total dollars on launching Buzz than it did on any other new project in 2010.
D) A poll of 56 college freshmen determined that Buzz was less successful at identifying the location of upcoming frat parties than was Facebook.
E) Surveys suggested that the main reason people didn’t sign up for Buzz was related to an inability to disable public sharing.

ANSWER

Answer: E
Explanation: E) The vice president argues that Google’s development of Buzz focused on creating new features when it should have focused on privacy issues. If surveys suggested that the public’s main concern was that they couldn’t disable public sharing, then she was correct that Google should have focused on that privacy-related issue rather than new features, and thus Choice E strengthens her position. Choice A says that people signed up for Buzz for its new features, which weakens the vice president’s argument. Choice B says that two major competing sites have weak privacy controls, suggesting that privacy is not an issue for most users. To the extent that this is relevant to Buzz, it weakens the vice president’s argument that Buzz should focus on privacy. Choice C neither strengthens nor weakens the claim. She claimed only that a higher percentage of the R&D budget went into developing new features for Buzz. Whether Google spent more or less on some other project isn’t really relevant. Choice D has the problem of not being a representative sample—56 college freshmen could skew statistics in many directions. In any case, it doesn’t suggest much of a concern with privacy and thus weakens the vice president’s argument.