A block officer's note reads: 'Across the block's ninety villages, the more irrigated land a village holds the greater as a rule are its milk sales. Sonpur holds more irrigated land than any other village in the block. Sonpur must therefore have the largest milk sales in the block.' The note's reasoning is most open to criticism because it

The officer's conclusion would follow only if irrigated land and milk sales moved together in every one of the ninety villages without a single exception, and 'as a rule' says considerably less than that. Sonpur may be a village that grows sugarcane on all its irrigated land and keeps few animals; the rule across the block would survive untouched while the conclusion about Sonpur fails. How the land was measured bears on the accuracy of the figures rather than on the step from the many to the one. Where the milk was produced is a separate quibble that would trouble the rule itself as much as the conclusion. And quantities in different units are related by rules of this kind all the time; that is not the difficulty.