#4 - Global, Maximum/Minimum

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[LSAT student]

How do you solve this problem? I picked answer choice B instead of C. Thank you

[LSAT student]

How do you solve this problem? I picked answer choice B instead of C.

[Jeremy Press]

Hi LSAT Student,

The first thing you'll do here is use your Not Laws in your Global diagram to determine what cannot be offered at 3:00. We know Utilization and Management cannot be presented at 3:00, because both of them have to be presented earlier than other films. Since the Global diagram doesn't give us any other Not Laws on 3:00, we suspect that all the other 4 films can be presented at 3:00. So, I'd pick answer choice C, but I'd also flag the question and come back to it after I drew up all solutions/mini-diagrams I needed for other questions. What I'd be looking for is whether I drew diagrams that had each of the other 4 variables as a possible film to be shown at 3:00. If a variable didn't show up in one of my diagrams, I might run a quick test just to confirm that it could indeed be presented at 3:00. But if I was running low on time in the game, I might skip that last step and feel confident that I'd captured the right Not Laws that showed me precisely which variables cannot be at 3:00 (leaving the other ones all as possibilities for 3:00).

I hope this helps!

[andy12]

Do you have any advice for dealing with uncertainty with questions like this? When doing this in practice, I arrived at question 4 after completing questions 1, 2 and 3, with no fully executed hypotheticals, and only not laws (notM, notU) under 3pm. While I selected C (meaning GOPS could be at 3pm) , I wasn't as confident as I'd like to be for a question that does seem to be very straightforward. I noted Jeremy's suggestion to pick C, flag it, and return, however I didn't fill out any hypothetical fully for this game.

Is there something I'm missing, in being able to distinguish this from a more difficult or nuanced maximum/minimum question?

Thanks in advance!

[Dana D]

Hey Andy,

3pm is the last slot a movie can be shown. We're told that O and P both need to follow M, which means M could not be shown at 3. We also know U must be shown before G, U cannot be shown at 3. So that leaves us with GOP and S which could be shown at 3. If you flagged this question and then came back to it, you could try out G/O/P/S each in a 3pm slot. The benefit of coming back is that you may already have shown in other questions that these are possibilities, so you don't have to test all 4 movies. You could also use some of the partially filled in boards from your other questions to help test, but really if you are seeing no reason why any of G/O/P/S couldn't be at 3pm, especially after having worked through the rest of the questions for this game, then all 4 are probably ok. If there was an inference or something you were missing which would indicate one of these movies can't be at 3 pm, it probably would have come up in a later question or you would have discovered it as you continued to work with the game.

Hope that helps!
Dana