Incorrect Analogy on GMAT Critical Reasoning
Incorrect Analogy on CR
In GMAT critical reasoning, there are several different types of questions that you will encounter. In this short article, we will cover the characteristics of questions involving incorrect analogies and how to solve them.
Incorrect Analogies
One type of fallacy found in GMAT CR questions is the use of incorrect analogies. Analogies are said to be incorrect on the GMAT if they compare two dissimilar entities or compare two entities without first establishing similarity between them.
Let’s now take a GMAT-like example to understand this concept better.
Example 1:
When Xaku was struggling with a budget deficit, it endorsed foreign direct investments and achieved good progress in alleviating its budget deficit. Sontario is struggling with budget deficit; the Sontarian government must encourage foreign direct investment in Sontario.
Can you identify what the flaw in this reasoning is?
The flaw is that before suggesting the same measure that helped one country reduce its budget deficit will work in another country, no similarity between the countries has been established. Now, please take a look the following example of a correct analogy.
Example 2:
When Xaku was struggling with a budget deficit, it endorsed foreign direct investments and achieved good progress in alleviating its budget deficit. Sontario is struggling with budget deficit. The sociopolitical and geoeconomics conditions of Sontario are similar to those of Xaku when it endorsed foreign direct investment. The Sontarian government must encourage foreign direct investment in Sontario.
Now, a close look will show that he highlighted portion indicates similarity between the two entities involved, so this analogy is all right. Please understand, it is not incorrect to draw an analogy, but the entities involved must be similar. Once similarity has been established, its totality acceptable to compare the entities involved.
This article has deliberately been kept brief; for a more elaborate explanation, please refer to the Experts’ Global Stage One Critical Reasoning videos.
