#12 - In the Centerville Botanical Gardens, all tulip trees are older than any maples.

[ChicaRosa]

Based on the explanation on diagramming the stimulus I understand how the first and last sentence is graphed, T>M>D, but I'm still confused how the second sentence should be graphed.

Since it says a majority, but not all, garden sycamore trees older than any of the maples would it be graphed as S>:some: M?

Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

That's part of it, chica. Another part, since we know also that not all of the sycamores are older than all the maples, is to somehow capture that there is at least one sycamore that is not older than at least one map;e. The youngest sycamore could be the same age as the oldest maple, or the youngest sycamore is younger than the oldest maple. Hard to show that diagrammatically, so perhaps just hold onto to it logically. At least one S is not older than at least one M - other than that, we don't know. We cannot say that some sycamores are younger than some maples, because they might be the same age. Some maples are "greater than or equal to" some sycamores? Sorry, don't know how to show that here!

[OneSeventy2019]

Powerscore,

General question here: how often do we see relative position questions in today's LSATs? Is this question more anachronistic given what we're seeing today be published or would someone reasonably anticipate a question like this to arise. Just curious..

Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

While there are typically two or three questions that at least bring up the concept of Formal Logic on each test, frequently that's not really the key to answering the question. It's an even smaller group that brings up this sort of relative relationship that might lead you to draw some sort of number line or similar diagram. The only one that comes to mind at the moment is one about seals and dolphins and how deeply they can dive while holding their breath, which was from the December 2015 test. There are probably a few others out there, but I would say they are very, very rare. The ideas tested are common - what can you prove about this or that group and how it relates to some other group - but are usually about conditional reasoning rather than formal logic, and the formal logic ones tend to be more about the sizes of groups rather than comparing things like height, weight, depth, distance, etc.

In short, while there are a lot of questions that cover comparisons between different groups, and this one is a great one for understanding how to do that, there will be few (none, probably) that are about the relative positions or sizes of things.

[lenihil]

Let me try this one:

① T > M
② M > D
③ S(most) > M
④ S(some) ≤ M

Combine ② and ③ : S(most) > M > D
Combine ① and ④ : S(some) ≤ M < T

So we get two inferences:

Most S are older than D.
Some S are younger than T.

Since "younger" means "not as old as", we get "Some S are not as old as T."
There you go answer choice (E).

[lilRio]

Let me try this one:

① T > M
② M > D
③ S(most) > M
④ S(some) ≤ M

Combine ② and ③ : S(most) > M > D
Combine ① and ④ : S(some) ≤ M < T

So we get two inferences:

Most S are older than D.
Some S are younger than T.

Since "younger" means "not as old as", we get "Some S are not as old as T."
There you go answer choice (E).

Thank you, lenihil. This explanation helped me greatly.

[lenihil]

Thank you, lenihil. This explanation helped me greatly.

Dear lilRio,

You are welcome. GOGO! Good luck on LSAT!!

[Crayola99]

Hi - I see how E is correct, but for C since we know that (i) most sycamores are older than any of the maples and (ii) maples are older than any of the dogwoods, then some sycamores must not be as old as the oldest dogwoods (since most sycamores would include some sycamores)?

[Dave Killoran]

Hi - I see how E is correct, but for C since we know that (i) most sycamores are older than any of the maples and (ii) maples are older than any of the dogwoods, then some sycamores must not be as old as the oldest dogwoods (since most sycamores would include some sycamores)?

Hi Cray,

This answer is saying that there are for sure some sycamores that are younger than the oldest dogwoods. But we don't know that to be the case. Those sycamores that are younger than the maples could still be older than all the dogwoods. So, while this is possible, it's not known to be true for sure.

Thanks!