#17 - Two hundred randomly selected subjects were asked,

[taylorballou]

Hello,

I narrowed down my answers to C and E, and chose C because I though since I had the whole number (woo) and the other percent (40%) that this was a legitimate inference. The answer explanations in the book say the 60% being described would require us to know how many people woke up seemingly paralyzed without sensing a strange prescence in the room. I thought since the “seemingly paralyzed” in the stimulus was set off with commas that this phrase isn’t necessary to the main point of the question which was whether the strange prescence was involved.

Thank you,

Taylor

[nicholaspavic]

Hi Taylor,

Great question!

This is a Must Be True question about numbers and percentages, a topic near and dear to the LSAT. So for every Must Be True question, we have to accept the stimulus's statements as true. This is why Answer Option (C) is incorrect, as it states that part of the stimulus is false. But let's look at why Answer Choice (E) is correct.

E is classic criticism that the LSAT makes of all surveys. Namely, that the survey itself was flawed in some way. Oftentimes, the LSAT presents this exact type of scenario in the stimuli where the variation of the question being asked, explains the seemingly inaccurate result from survey. This problem of many surveys is one that the LSAT loves to constantly test in its survey type questions along with two other classic patterns.

Thanks for the great question and I hope this helps!

[adlindsey]

What part of the stimulus does C say is false? thanks

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Alberto,

I'm going to correct what Nicholas said above about answer choice (C)—he meant to say, "Isn't certain or known to be true."

The reason is that the question asked to the first group has multiple parts to it: "Have you ever awakened, seemingly paralyzed, with a sense of a strange presence in the room?" This question contains two elements: awaking seemingly paralyzed and also having the sense of a strange presence. Despite the comma setoff mentioned by the first poster, the question references having both elements at the same time. This means that 40% of respondents answered that they had had experienced both the elements upon waking. That doesn't tells us how many respondents awoke with just a the one element of strange presence (and were not seemingly paralyzed).

Here's an analogy:

• Question: Have you ever eaten at 5 PM and had potatoes?
  
  40% of respondents said they had.
  
  Answer choice (C): If the reports are accurate, approximately 60 percent of them had never eaten potatoes.

In that example, you can see how the 5PM aspect is key, and if you ignore that and focus just on potatoes, the whole thing changes.

Very tricky!