#5 - Elena: While I was at the dog show, every dog that

[Dave Killoran]

Complete Question Explanation

Must Be True-SN. The correct answer choice is (C)

The stimulus in this argument contains two conditional statements:

• DG = dog growled WP = white poodle
  
  Premise 1: DG WP
  
  Premise 2: WP DG

Note that since this a Must Be True question, we must accept both of the above premises as true. Thus, we cannot claim that the second premise is a Mistaken Reversal of the first premise. This would only occur if we were attempting to infer the second premise just on the basis of the first premise. In this case Elena has stated both premises as facts and we thus accept them as true. This generates an interesting situation for Elena where every dog that growls at her is a white poodle, and every white poodle growls at her. Thus, each condition is both sufficient and necessary for the other condition. We can diagram such a statement as:

• DG WP

The double-arrow indicates that both conditions must occur together, or that alternately neither of the two conditions will occur. There are no other possibilities in such a situation. With that in mind, let's look at the answer choices.

Answer choice (A): This answer is incorrect because Elena may have seen other white dogs—her comments are limited to dogs she saw that growled at her. So, for example, she may have seen a white Husky, and all we would know was that it didn't growl at her.

Answer choice (B): This answer is wrong because Elena only discusses the white poodles she saw; there may have been gray ones, and she may well have seen them, they just didn't growl at her. But she didn't mention it, so this answer fails the Fact Test.

Answer choice (C): This is the correct answer choice. We know that the only dogs that growled at Elena were white poodles, so no other dog growled at her. That would include gray dogs of any type (or black dogs, tan dogs, etc) .

The gray dogs aspect here causes many people to eliminate this answer immediately on the basis that gray dogs weren't discussed in the stimulus. But, is that really accurate? As Alex rightly notes below:

• "This is a common misconception - that if there is something unrecognizable in the answer choices, it must be new and has to be wrong. But as we can see here, that's not necessarily true (I'd venture to guess, in fact, that the LSAT testmakers were counting on people to see the word gray here and rule it out automatically), because this isn't actually "new" information.
  
  The key is to think logically about the answer choices, and if they are proved by the stimulus. Elena states that "While I was at the dog show, every dog that growled at me was a white poodle" - so we can conclude that no other types of dogs growled at her. that means no black dogs, no yellow dogs, no gray dogs, etc. This proves answer choice (C): "At the dog show, no gray dogs growled at Elena." We can think of a gray dog as a non-white dog, which we know could not have growled at Elena, and thus we have a direct inference from what was said, and not an answer that contains new information. Hope this helps!"

In other words, be careful with the "umbrella" that certain words and phrases create. This is especially when an absolute or powerful word is being used, such as "only" in this case. those words draw a line around what is included, and then the umbrella of the idea extends outward to include those not included as well. So, if I say "The only book genre l like is science fiction," then that means we can start talking about other genres (romance, fantasy, etc) and we'll know I don't like them. Knowing how this works can help unlock a number of tough LSAT Logical Reasoning questions, especially those in the Must Be True category.

Answer choice (D): This answer is is incorrect since it states that "All the white dogs that Elena saw growled at her," whereas her statements in the stimulus were specific to white poodles. Thus, we don't that this answer is not true, but we also don't know that it is undeniably true, and since that's the standard of the question stem, this answer is wrong. In other words, this answer could be true since maybe she only saw white poodles, but we're asked for what must be true, so this doesn't meet that standard since there could have been other white non-poodles that she saw.

Note that the problem with (D) is the phrase "white dogs;" we know that the white poodles growled at Elena, but we don't know about all the white dogs she saw.

Answer choice (E): This answer is similar to (B), and is wrong because Elena only discusses the white poodles she saw; there may have been gray ones, and she may well have seen them, they just didn't growl at her. But she didn't mention it, so this answer fails the Fact Test.

[Sdaoud17]

Can you please show the Digram of ever each answer. Even though I got the Answer Right I want to check if I digram it correctly.

Thank you

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Sure, here you go!

A) white dog poodle
B) gray poodle at dog show
C) gray dog dog growled
D) white dog dog growled
E) Elena saw gray poodle

Hope that helps!

Emily
PowerScore LSAT Instructor

[ellenb]

Dear Powerscore,

I just want to make sure I know why A and E are the wrong answers as well as B. Is it because they deal with only a part of the argument. For example if I have A<->B, than in this case, A, E and B are talking about one part A (seeing dogs a the show), and not the growling part which is B?


Please let me know

Thanks

Ellen

[Steve Stein]

Hi Ellen,

Thanks for your question. I would warn you against getting too formulaic in response to these--sometimes the right answer cannot be prephrased with certainty.

Answer choice (A) is incorrect because Elena may have seen other white dogs--her comments are limited to white poodles, so we don't know.

Answer choice (B) and (E) are wrong because Elena only discusses the white poodles she saw; there may have been grey ones, and she may have seen them. but she didn't mention it, so both answers fail the Fact Test, as they cannot be confirmed by the information in the stimulus.

I hope that helps--please let me know whether this is clear--thanks!

~Steve

[Blueballoon5%]

Hi! Although I got the right answer, I did not get the right answer by examining the conditional statement in answer choice C in relation to the conditional statements in the stimulus. Like the explanation above, I realized that "dog growled ↔ white poodle" from the stimulus, and thus the two must be together. So, no grey dogs could have growled at her (answer choice C).

However, when I focus purely on the formulas of the conditional statements, I don't see how I could come up with answer choice C. From Emily's explanation above, answer choice C is "grey dog dog growled." In other words: "a grey dog NOT dog growled" or the contrapositive "dog growled NOT grey dog." How does the conditional statement in answer choice C fit into the conditional statements in the stimulus (dog growled ↔ white poodle)? There is only one similar term between them ("dog growled"). Or, are we to equate "grey dog" = "NOT white poodle"?

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hi Blueballoon,

Thanks for the question! Definitely fun to revisit a response I wrote 5 years ago - time flies when you're answering LSAT questions!

Your analysis is totally right, and I think probably the easiest way to solve this one. Don't worry at all about not being able to select the right answer based solely on diagramming the answer choices; your approach was great! But you are also right about how you can make it work using your diagrams; a grey dog is, by definition, NOT a white poodle.

Hope that helps!

[ronniet]

I don't understand where the color gray comes from? I thought new information should not be present in the answers choices and we should strictly go off whats in the stimulus

[Alex Bodaken]

Ronniet,

Thanks for the question! This is a common misconception - that if there is something unrecognizable in the answer choices, it must be new and has to be wrong. But as we can see here, that's not necessarily true (I'd venture to guess, in fact, that the LSAT testmakers were counting on people to see the word gray here and rule it out automatically), because this isn't actually "new" information.

The key is to think logically about the answer choices, and if they are proved by the stimulus. Elena states that "While I was at the dog show, every dog that growled at me was a white poodle" - so we can conclude that no other types of dogs growled at her. that means no black dogs, no yellow dogs, no gray dogs, etc. This proves answer choice (C): "At the dog show, no gray dogs growled at Elena." We can think of a gray dog as a non-white dog, which we know could not have growled at Elena, and thus we have a direct inference from what was said, and not an answer that contains new information. Hope this helps!

AB

[demk26]

Hi Powerscore,

Based on the reply above, I understand why we can conclude with certainty that Answer (C) is correct.

Can you further explain why Answer (D) is incorrect? How do we know that this is not true: "All the white dogs that Elena saw growled at her"? Does this mean Elena could have seen other white dogs that are not poodles?

I assume that that does not follow from the stimulus, since other white dogs that are not poodles are not explicitly mentioned in the stimulus?

Thank you!