#10 - The government of Penglai, an isolated island

[voodoochild]

Experts,
I chose the correct answer because it matched my prephrase. But, I am curious. Why is C wrong? Why can't we discount the fact that quoted statistics could be faulty?

Thanks

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Voodoo,

Let's turn your question around here. We know (C) is an incorrect answer choice. Why do you think the test makers think it is wrong? What could be the explanation for that?

Let's think like the test makers here and see where that gets us

Thanks!

[voodoochild]

Hello Dave,

It's good to hear from you after such a long time. I thought about your question. The test makers could say that statistics provided by the government is a premise. However, I have seen LR problems, in which quoted statistics is sometimes used to weaken the problem.


For instance,

Principal - My school is doing really awesome. My survey results indicate that all the students in my school have scored 99%ile on the standardized test.

Critic - The survey results could be biased because under-performers were rusticated from the school.

Something like that. I am not sure.

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Voodoo,

I've been on the forum every day just like usual, but you've been asking a lot of RC questions, and I'm answering more LG and LR questions right now because I'm working on books involving both those question types

As far as your reply, well, that's a start, but you really didn't go into very much detail, and I know you are capable of much more If you're really going to master these questions, you've got to start seeing the test from the view point of the people who make the test. You and I have had a lot of prior discussions about various questions, and I've seen you carefully parse the meaning inside each question and answer. So, knowing that (C) is incorrect, play the role of the test makers. How would you defend this answer, or at least explain why it is not correct? If you can start thinking from their viewpoint, your progress will be much faster and farther than if we simply toss an answer out there.

In responding, consider also how your example is different from the one given in this problem. Once you start changing the elements involved, we are then basically discussing an entirely different problem (and the one you cited is pretty easy to attack--so how is it different that the original question under consideration?).

Thanks!

[voodoochild]

Hello Dave,
I thought about this question for two days. I think the difference is that in my argument concerning school Principal, the survey results are quoted, and presumable done, by her. However, in the LSAT question, the survey is done by a third party -- the government. Do you think I am on the right track?

Another point that I could think is that the definition of "objective" -- objective in what sense -- i.e. favoring merchants or going against their proposition? However, after a second thought, I ruled this out because in both the cases, the examples have been presented to favor the conclusion (ignoring other major holes such as logic shifts between "overall volume" and "market share" and the one presented in the correct answer)

That's all I could think as of now. Can you please help me?

Thanks

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Voodoo,

Ok, now you are getting somewhere with the ideas in your first paragraph As you note, in your example, the principal--who has an interest in the school performing well--conducts a survey that reveals all students are doing great. That creation of the survey by an interested party is a concern right there, and a reasonable question could be raised about survey (but, it's just that: a question. We don't know for sure that the principal created a poor or biased survey. Thus, it's good that the critics response in your example uses "could be biased," but it's a bit questionable because the concern they raise is so specific--there could be other errors than that one).

Now, go back to the Penglai stimulus. Did the island merchants make the report? No--they cited a report from the government itself. And note that the government is not a 3rd party here; they are actually the entity creating the law that the merchants are arguing against. So, we have a very different situation from your example, and in the Penglai question, there's no reason to suspect that the report done by the government was not objective.

As a side note, I think this question can be helpful for you moving forward. One of the things you like to do when analyzing questions is to make analogous scenarios to help understand the reasoning. I strongly support this approach, and it's one I use frequently when I teach (it's especially helpful with the hard science problems that sometimes come up on the LSAT). But, in some cases when you create your examples, you don't conform to the parameters set up in the question. When that occurs, it actually becomes more confusing to have the example in play. So, just keep in mind that when you are looking for analogous scenarios, you have to keep the basics of the example roughly similar.

Please let me know if that helps. Thanks!

[Johnclem]

Hi powerscore;
Could you please cheack my understanding for this question?- particularly in regards to my understanding of answer choice B. It was very wordy for me , and if all the other answer choices weren't terrible I would not have picked this.


1- the report indicated business that used advertising had a larger share than those that did not.
c: the island merchants claim that removing of the signage would reduce the overall business in Penglai .

My thinking before approaching the questions.
- at first I thought maybe this is causal issue .. Because there could have been other reasons other than signage that the shares changed . But because the author didn't make a causal conclusion I thought maybe not.

- this is a flawed argument: we know nothing about the total or overall based on the percentages in the stimulus. It is for sure possible for shares to have a smaller or bigger percentage without affecting the overall total .


B) is this choice stating that the author is assuming the shares changed because of advertising rather than just looking at how much a company may hold in terms of it share in comparison to other companies ? If not I have no idea what this choice is saying!


Thank you
John

[Nikki Siclunov]

Hey John,

Thanks for the question. Let's break down the stimulus first:

• Premise: Businesses that used outdoor advertising (let's call them BOA) have larger market shares than those that did not.
  
  Conclusion: Eliminating outdoor advertising would reduce the overall volume of business.

There are several errors in reasoning here. One, as you point out, is causal: the author assumes that outdoors advertising is at least one factor in increasing the market shares of those businesses that use it. The correlation between the two does not prove that one caused the other.

More importantly, we have a numbers-and-percentages error: the author is making a conclusion about the overall volume of business based on a shift in market shares. Even if we assume that outdoors advertising does indeed contribute to an increased market share of BOA, the author should have concluded that eliminating outdoor advertising will negatively affect BOA: perhaps their market share will indeed decrease. However, this does not mean that the overall volume of business will decrease! Who is to say that the customers who formerly used BOA won't simply go elsewhere, and seek the services of a business that never used outdoor advertising before? The overall volume of business need not decrease; trade will simply be redistributed more equitably between the different business, as the BOA will no longer have a competitive advantage.

The author's assumption, therefore, is that the scenario I just described will NOT happen. In other words, he is assuming that BOA obtained a larger market share by some means other than diverting trade from competing businesses. If you're unconvinced, try the Assumption Negation Technique and see if the logical opposite of the assumption in (B) would weaken the argument:

Answer choice (B) when negated: The outdoor advertising increased market share solely by diverting trade from competing businesses.

If that were the case, then eliminating outdoor advertising will automatically re-divert this trade back to the competing businesses, and the overall volume of business will remain unchanged. Since the logical opposite of the assumption presented in answer choice (B) weakens the conclusion of the argument, answer choice (B) states the flawed assumption upon which the conclusion depends.

Hope this clears it up! Let me know if you have any questions

Thanks,

[Legalistic]

Thank you Nikki, that was a very well explained answer. I understand why B is the correct answer now.

I did not have much trouble discounting A and E. I picked D as the correct answer. Can you please explain why D and C is incorrect?

[Adam Tyson]

The problem with answer C, Legalistic, is that even if the merchants ignored the issue of objectivity, that would not be relevant to the conclusion. Their mistake is confusing market share, a percentages idea, with the total size of the market, which is a numbers idea. Even if the survey was deeply flawed, that would be the government's flaw, not the merchants' flaw!

Answer D is incorrect because it doesn't matter if the advantage is directly proportional to the amount of advertising. For one thing, it's not clear that larger signs = more advertising, so the "amount of advertising" idea in this answer is not really related to the argument. For another, even if by "amount of advertising" they mean the size of the signs or their content, it's not necessary for their advantage to be directly proportional to that amount. If they could show that the new rules would actually reduce the total amount of business, then how direct those proportions are or are not would not matter, they would still have good argument. The reason they don't have a good argument is that no amount of evidence about how the market is divided between businesses will ever tell us anything about how much total business there is!

Here's a shorter answer - answer C and D are incorrect because they do not describe problems with this argument. Even if the author did the things described in them, neither of them constitutes a logical flaw!