#24 - Columnist: George Orwell's book 1984 has exercised

[dotsellaw]

Hi powerscore,

I have a much better understanding of this question after reading through the forum, but I have one point that I'm hoping to gain more clarity on. Lets say that in an extreme case, there are 5 billion newspaper readers. Based on the stimulus, we can claim that at most 499 people chose 1984. 499 seems to be a great number when isolated, but 499 out of 5 billion total readers doesn't seem to be much. Does this mean that the "great number of this newspaper's readers" is not relative to the total number of newspaper readers?

I've run into issues determining when to view numbers as absolute and relative, so an explanation of why it seems to be the case that the "great number" here isn't relative to the total would be much appreciated!

[Jeff Wren]

Hi dotsellaw,

The phrase "a great number" and its equivalent term "many" are intentionally vague on the LSAT. Exactly how many qualifies as many is left undetermined. I describe "many" as "more than a few." Determining what qualifies as "a great number/many" is usually relative to the total based on the context. The important point to note is that "many/a great number" does not indicate "most," and "most" in turn does not automatically indicate "many/a great number." (For example, if 2 out of 3 people in a room have brown hair, most of those people have brown hair, although 2 is not considered many/a great number.) The test makers know that students often conflate these two terms.

Here is a link to a blog post that discusses some of these terms.

https://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/bid-15 ... -and-many/

In this question, before reading the answers, prephrase what you would really want to know about the survey. Here, knowing that 1984 came in second doesn't really tell us much without knowing exactly how many people in the survey voted for it, so that is really the most important piece of information we need. While we don't know for certain whether 499 readers would be considered "a great number" of readers, it would at least support this claim. If nearly half of all readers surveyed chose 1984, this would likely indicate that other readers would also choose 1984. On the other hand, if only 1 or even 2 readers out of 1,000 chose 1984, that could simply be an outlier and would not support the conclusion.

[dotsellaw]

Thanks for the help, Jeff! Appreciate the link to the blog post.