#16- "Good hunter" and "bad hunter" are standard terms in

[SLF]

With regard to LSAT #54, Section #2, Question #16, how should I correctly discriminate between answer choices 'B' and 'D'?

[Lucas Moreau]

Hello, SLF,

First, let's establish some relationships. If a cat is a good hunter (GH), it has a high muscle-to-fat ratio (HM2F). All cats that are GH, therefore, have HM2F.

This is an indirect sort of numbers and percentages question. With those, you always have to keep in mind the starting amounts. While it's true that most wildcats are GH (and thus have HM2F), and only some domestic cats are GH (and thus, ditto), that doesn't at all take into account the respective total numbers of wildcats and domestic cats.

Imagine that 80% of wildcats (that's a fairly reasonable "most" figure) are GH. The exact number isn't so important. Now for domestic cats, "some" are GH, so, er, let's go with 30%. Again, the concept is important, not the specific numbers involved. 80% of wildcats sounds bigger than 30% of domestic cats...

...but what if there are way, way more domestic cats than wildcats? What if there are ten times as many? Imagine there are 1,000 wildcats and 10,000 domestic cats.

1,000 x 80% = 800
10,000 x 30% = 3,000

Thus you can see, even with the "most" and "some" placed as they are, there's no guarantee that there are more wildcats who are GH than there are domestic cats who are GH. So B is not sufficiently indicated for a "Must be True" response.

D is better, because since we know some domestic cats are GH, and that all cats who are GH also have HM2F, we know logically that at least some domestic cats have HM2F. D is just another way of saying that.

Hope this helps,
Lucas Moreau
PowerScore

[SLF]

Aha! Thanks so much.

[Sherry001]

Hello ;
Could you please help me understand why B is wrong ?
1. Good Hunters ---> Kill Prey
2. Good Hunters ---> High Ratio
3. Wild Cats -most-> Good Hunters
4. Domestic Cats <-some-> Good Hunters

B) - a smaller number of domestic cats than wild cats have a high muscle to fat ratio.

If some = 1 or 2 and most = everything but all , then why can't we infer this ?


Thank you
Sherry

[Anthony Esposito]

Hi Sherry,

Answer Choice (B) is incorrect because we don't know the actual number of wild or domestic cats that have a high muscle-to-fat ratio. All we know is something about the proportion of wild and domestic cats that have a high muscle-to-fat ratio. Basically, we know that "most" wild cats have a high muscle-to-fat ratio and "some" domestic cats have a high muscle-to-fat ratio.

Taking it even further, in "LSAT-speak," "some" encompases everything but "none," so we can't even really say that the proportion of domestic cats that have a high muscle-to-fat ratio is certainly (Must Be True) smaller based on the stimulus.

Hope this helps!

[srcline@noctrl.edu]

Hello

Can somebody post the correct diagram for this. I had:

1. All GH high M: FR

2. Most WC GH

3. Some DC GH

Not seeing how D is correct here.

Thankyou
Sarah

[srcline@noctrl.edu]

hello

Really appreciate if someone could get back to me on my posts, I tried looking at other explanations and they're still not making sense. I always appreciate powerscore's spot on explanations.

Thankyou
Sarah

[Jonathan Evans]

Hi, Sarah,

Good job diagramming this stimulus. Might refine in a couple places as follows:

GH High MFR

WC GH

DC GH

Clearly, you are pretty much spot on. I just used our nifty codes to the right to facilitate the diagramming. I would caution you on your diagramming to try to adhere to a somewhat separate system such as the notated arrows above for diagramming quantity relationships such as "most" and "some." Otherwise you might encounter overlap/confusion with standard conditionals.

Now to prephrase, look at what you might be able to put together from this diagramming. What do we know for sure by putting together some of this information?

To start, you could infer correctly that most Wild Cats have a High MFR and can kill prey that weighs twice their body weight.

WC High MFR & kill 2XBW

Some Domestic Cats have a High MFR and can kill prey that weighs twice their body weight.

DC High MFR & kill 2XBW

From the second inference that we made (immediately above), we have support for Answer Choice (D). Does this help? Thanks!

[srcline@noctrl.edu]

Hello Jonathan,

I totally missed the double arrow, I think from now on I'm gonna diagram these types of questions with the most and some included in there...that was my problem. I see how we have support for D ...since we are trying to link up domestic cats to High MFR.

Thankyou for your explanations
Sarah

[jessicamorehead]

Question on the double arrow.... do you use it whenever the conditional statement uses "most" or "some"?

So for this one it would be:


Good Hunter --> Kill Prey
Good Hunter --> High m:f

Wild Cats <--MOST--> Good Hunter
Domestic Cats <--MOST--> Good Hunter

Is that correct?