#15 - The production of leather and fur for clothing is

[Administrator]

Please post below with any questions!

[ph28801]

Hello!

When I was taking the practice test, I chose A. Now that I am reviewing, I wonder if A is incorrect because it deals with the price of "any manufactured good," whereas the stimulus addressed only selected manufactured goods. I completely disregarded E originally. Intuitively, it makes sense that fashion trends are cultural trends, but I did not link these two while taking the test. I have been struggling with generalization questions. Do you have any additional tips on how to attack this question? Thank you.

Respectfully,

Patrick

[Adam Tyson]

Good question, Patrick, and thanks for asking. The problem with answer A here is the comparative nature of the answer. Our stimulus told us that prices have gone down on some unfashionable materials and have gone up on some newly fashionable ones, and so it is reasonable to infer that fashion does have an impact on price. That's not enough, though, to determine that fashion is always more important than other factors. For example, we haven't examined the effects of things like supply and demand - maybe prices go up not because of how fashionable something is, but because of supply problems? That may be indirectly caused by changes in fashion - more fashionable items sell more, driving up demand and possibly leading to reduced supply - but that doesn't mean fashion is the direct cause. Or, maybe in some cases fashion has no impact at all: if a completely unfashionable item was spun from 14k gold thread and studded with rubies and diamonds, might that be very expensive notwithstanding the fact that most people would not be caught dead wearing it? Comparisons like this, setting one thing as being more important, better, more influential, etc. than another, when all we know is that the one thing may have SOME influence, is a pretty common problem, especially in Must Be True questions.

The generalization here is essentially a Principle - a guideline or rule to be followed. Principles can be found in Strengthen, Weaken, Must Be True, Cannot Be True, and Parallel Reasoning questions, among others. Your approach to the question and answer choices will vary based on what question type it is. If it's a Strengthen question, you will want to find the generalization/Principle that helps the conclusion the most, and so strong language like "most" and "best" and "only" will be welcomed as useful concepts. This question, which I would probably classify as a "Most Strongly Supported" (a type of Must Be True), calls for a softer, milder answer, one that can be proven based on the stimulus. Strong answers in these questions are hard to defend, and we don't want that.

One more thing to consider here, and that is a comparison between answers A and E. If answer A is correct, doesn't it also force answer E to be correct? If fashion is more important than materials, doesn't that prove that cultural trends (i.e. fashion) are important? That's what we call the uniqueness principle of answer choices. When one answer, if correct, forces another to also be correct, then the one doing the forcing cannot be the credited response. Perhaps the one being forced is right, or perhaps they are both wrong. If in your materials you came across a question about a headache relieving pill that had answers about one person's headache being relieved faster than another's, and also about one person getting relief at least as quickly as the other, then you have seen the uniqueness principle in action. It doesn't come up often, but when it does it is a great way to eliminate what could be a very attractive wrong answer. Take a look at those two answers in that light and see if that makes some sense.

Keep at it! We're here for you if you need us!

[ph28801]

Thank you for the excellent advice, Adam.

[PamelaO]

I had trouble with this question and eventually chose C. I thought that the less labor was important, but I guess it was never explicitly mentioned that there was less labor here. Can you better explain why E and not C? Thanks!

[dudleym]

Hi Powerscore,
I originally counted E as a loser answer choice because I thought it was a stretch to equate cultural trends with fashion. My thinking was that cultural trends could encompass many things that have nothing to do with fashion (for example cultural behavior trends) and therefore would not be an important determinant of the prices of materials used in manufacturing. Am I over analyzing?

When I first started practicing I was getting problems wrong because I tended to overgeneralize. Now I feel like I'm getting them wrong because I'm being to picky. How do I find the middle ground?

P.S. I did realize answer choice A was somewhat problematic because the "more" was too strong and could not necessarily be proven in the stimulus. But I choose it because it seemed like the best answer after already eliminating E.

Thanks for your help,
Michelle

[AthenaDalton]

I had trouble with this question and eventually chose C. I thought that the less labor was important, but I guess it was never explicitly mentioned that there was less labor here. Can you better explain why E and not C? Thanks!

Hi Pamela,

We're told in the stimulus that labor-intensive materials like leather and fur used to be fashionable, but that less labor-intensive materials are currently in fashion . . . for now. As you know, fashions change. Answer choice (C) makes a blanket statement about less labor-intensive materials tending to be fashionable. This goes too far -- we know that these materials are in fashion now, but they weren't in the past. So answer choice (C) is incorrect in saying that they "tend to be" fashionable.

Answer choice (E) is clearly supported by the statements in the stimulus. We are told that materials which require minimal labor to produce are cheap to produce, which in turn results in cheap clothing. So as long as inexpensive materials like cotton are in fashion over labor-intensive / expensive materials like leather and fur, clothes will be cheap to manufacture. But if leather and fur come back into style, the price of materials used in clothing will increase again. So production costs are very driven by what type of material consumers want to wear.

[AthenaDalton]

Hi Powerscore,
I originally counted E as a loser answer choice because I thought it was a stretch to equate cultural trends with fashion. My thinking was that cultural trends could encompass many things that have nothing to do with fashion (for example cultural behavior trends) and therefore would not be an important determinant of the prices of materials used in manufacturing. Am I over analyzing?

When I first started practicing I was getting problems wrong because I tended to overgeneralize. Now I feel like I'm getting them wrong because I'm being to picky. How do I find the middle ground?

P.S. I did realize answer choice A was somewhat problematic because the "more" was too strong and could not necessarily be proven in the stimulus. But I choose it because it seemed like the best answer after already eliminating E.

Thanks for your help,
Michelle

HI Michelle,

Yes, it sounds like you're over-analyzing a bit. Fashion is at least a type of cultural trend, so you can safely include it in that category.

It can be tough to find the right balance when you're confronted with a shift in language, because the LSAT does trip up students with subtle shifts in phrase (most vs all, rarely vs never, etc). It may be helpful for you to be most suspicious of quantifiable words like always/sometimes/never or all/many/some/none but to give a little more leeway to synonyms like "fashion" and "cultural trends."

On the LSAT, as in real life, the exact phrases used will shift a bit, and you have be ready to work with that.

Good luck!

[Albertlyu]

thank you all for your insights, I am still a bit confused about A, as it is a principle question, we are allowed to find a proposition that is broader than the assumption in the argument, as long as the proposition supports the assumption.

However, after reviewing it a couple of times, I am wondering if A is wrong because A changed one of the subject matters of the comparison a bit. the argument is about being fashionable and being labor-intensive, while A made the comparison between being fashionable and being the materials that certain products are made from. Yes, I noticed that if leather or fur, it is labor-intensive, but other products can also be labor-intensive, and the core here is about labor-intensive, not specific materials.

Please can anyone tell me if I am thinking this right?

thanks

Albert

[Robert Carroll]

Albert,

"Principle" is not really a question type. We have to determine the question type to know how the principle functions. Here, we have a Principle - Must Be True question. So we want something that follows from the stimulus.

With that in mind, a principle stronger than the stimulus would violate the rules of a Must Be True question. I think you read this as a Strengthen question, which might explain your confusion.

Answer choice (A) is too broad, not limited to the scope of the stimulus, so fails the requirements of a Must Be True question.

Robert Carroll