#15 - A well-known sports figure found that combining public

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Parallel Reasoning-SN. The correct answer choice is (B)

This is a sufficient / necessary question. The stimulus of the problem states that the sports figure will not compete and appear in bookstores within the same trip. This means that within a trip, if there is one, there cannot be the other:

• Compete Bookstore Appearance
  
  or
  
  Bookstore Appearance Compete

Since she is traveling to London to compete, she will, therefore, not appear in any bookstore during the trip.

Answer choice (A) This answer choice contains a valid restatement,

• Acme .....Wasps Killed
  
  Acmez .....Wasps Killedz

But it does not contain the "if one then not the other" or "A B" idea as the stimulus does. Thus it is not the correct answer.

Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice. Like the stimulus, it contains the "if one then not the other" idea: the hospital attends to relatively less serious emergencies only when there are no critical emergencies. Which means the hospital will not attend to both at the same time. The diagram would be:

• Less Serious Critical
  
  or
  
  Critical Less Serious

Since the hospital attended to less serious emergencies on Monday, we can therefore conclude that there was no critical emergencies to take care of at the time. This answer choice matches the reasoning of the stimulus.

Answer choice (C) This answer choice does not contain the "if one then not the other" idea as the stimulus does. The diagram for this answer choice is:

• Tomato Thrive .....Hot Summer (Tomato plants require hot summers to thrive)
  
  Hot Summer Tomato Thrive(Country Y, with its cool summers, probably does not have thriving tomato plants)

It is almost a correct contrapositive. Although the conclusion of this answer choice states that country y "probably" does not have thriving tomatoes, which is incorrect.

Moreover, this conclusion gives us another reason to eliminate this answer choice: the conclusion of the stimulus states that "she will not be making any appearances", while the conclusion of this answer choice states that "farms probably do not have thriving tomato plants". Since the two conclusions are different, C is not a correct answer.

Answer choice (D) This answer choice is incorrect, because it provides correct conditional linkage.

• Higher Grades Better Job Opportunities
  
  Studying Higher Grades
  
  Thus, Studying Better Job Opportunities

Since this is different than the reasoning of the stimulus, and does not contain the "if one then not the other" reasoning, it is not the correct answer.

Answer choice (E) This answer choice is incorrect for a variety of reasons. First of all, the conclusion of this answer states that "suspect X's butter knife may have been the murder weapon", which is different from the stimulus' conclusion of "she will not be making any appearances". Moreover, this answer choice does not contain the "if one then not the other" reasoning as the stimulus does. It is thus not the correct answer.

Although this is not an answer that needs to be diagrammed (due to the clear problems with the language in the conclusion), if you did diagram it or are wondering how it would work, this is a close approximation:

• Butter Knife Sharp
  
  Murder Weapon Sharp
  
  
  Thus, Butter Knife maybe Murder Weapon

[lsatayn]

"A well-known sports figure..."

Reasoning:
Play --> ~Publicity
Play this week, therefore no publicity this week.

Thinking: This seems like a classic A -> ~B, A, therefore ~B reasoning to me. Further, the conclusion is a statement about the near future (she will not be making any publicity appearances).

Answer Choices:
A) Modus ponens
Acme Bugkiller --> many wasps are killed.
Acme Bugkiller. Therefore, many wasps will soon be killed. (statement about the near future)

B) Modus ponens
Attend to relatively less serious emergencies --> no critical emergencies
On Monday, attended to relatively less serious emergencies --> no critical emergencies at the time (statement about the past)

C) Valid contrapositive --> OUT
thriving tomato plants --> hot summer
farms in cool summer country (~hot summer) --> no thriving tomato plants

D) Valid chain --> OUT
Higher grades --> better job opportunities
studying --> higher grades
therefore, studying --> better job opportunities

E) Invalid, mistaken reversal --> OUT
Butter knife --> not sharp
knife that killed Q was not sharp --> the butter knife might have been the murder weapon

So, AC A and B seem like strong candidates. A seems stronger than B because A, like the stimmy, makes a claim about the near future rather than the past.

Yet, B is the correct answer choice.

Would love some help here!

Thank you.

[Adam Tyson]

Good job on your analysis of B, C, D and E. I might add that you can also eliminate answer D because it is causal, not conditional ("leads to" is a causal phrase).

So what's wrong with A? Look closer at the conclusion, and the problem is with one small word. That word is "any". The premise says that "many" will be killed, and that's not strong enough to conclude that "any" (all) will be killed. As so often happens on this test, this one just comes down to very careful reading to see the difference between a valid repeat statement and an invalid evidence flaw.

With A safely out of the way, and your fine job of eliminating the others, B stands alone.

Hope that helped!

[kayyoh]

I'm confused on the diagramming of the correct answer choice. The sentence in question states "the only times" the ER staff works on less serious injuries are "when" there are no critical injuries. Based on those S/N indicators, it seems that should be diagrammed as:

~CE -> LSE

Making it a false reversal of the argument in the stimulus. Where am I messing up?

Thanks.

[Francis O'Rourke]

Hi Kayyoh,

There is a very specific use of the word 'only' in this answer choice. Answer choice (B) state that "The only times that...." It is helpful to interpret this phrase as a sufficient condition indicator. It's not the case that the hospital's ER staff is always attending to some type of emergency, but rather that the ER staff cannot attend to both types of emergencies at the same time. For more information about the use of this phrase, check out the following forum post: lsat/viewtopic.php?t=7614

[kayyoh]

That makes sense. Thanks for your help!

[lathlee]

hi. this is the problem I have with this question.

after getting incorrect for the 2nd time, I got this question correct by using the technique of abstraction, and I got this question correct (in my 3rd attempt) cuz other than b), which is the correct answer, the other choices were just way too far different to be a correct answer. but I chose b with very tentative mind with weak confidence.
When I came here, the forum, to check this answer (which is 8-49 Q 1 from the Powerscore lessons), I was shocked that conditionality relationship played such a significiant role without any indicator words; I know there can be conditionality relationships without indicator words anyways but I often miss out when there is condionality relationship when they are not indicated by indicators (e.g.if and then) which have been one of my greatest fears and I ask consultation Dave what to do about it many times which Dave kindly enough explained every time. (BTW, Dave again, you are such a kind gentleman, Thank you and I always appreciate your amazing patience as well)

Anyways, a situation like this, as in a question stem like this, what are the good clues or reasons that I should recognize that there are conditionality relationships exist and play a strong role?

[Adam Tyson]

I think your decision to use abstraction (which I do with most LR questions) was a wise one, and it probably led you to a conditional paraphrase of the argument, perhaps something like "if I do one thing I will not do the other thing, and I am doing the one thing so I won't do the other one". Abstraction is a great way to uncover subtle conditional claims! Another clue here would be the use of language that is absolute, like "never" and "always", which lead us to conditional ideas like "if this then not that" or "if this, then that". In this case, the absolute language that should suggest a conditional relationship was "no longer". Watch for that sort of language, as opposed to the language of sometimes or of possibility, and that may help you to uncover, and abstract, the more subtle conditional claims.

[sean.reilly]

Hello -

I chose A instead of B, mainly because I felt that B failed the conclusion test as it describes something that happened in the past - ie "must have not" rather than the "will not" expressed in the stimulus. I was torn because B seemed to better express that either / or conditionality from the premise, but I thought that failing the conclusion test disqualified it.

Am I mis-applying the conclusion test here ie B does not actually fail it? Or is this somewhat similar to a Most Strongly Supported in that, while B does not perfectly parallel the stimulus, the most important factor to parallel is the Method of Reasoning and B is the answer that best parallels this, even though other answer choices more closely parallel the conclusion?

Thanks-

Sean

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Sean,

I'm glad that you asked about matching the wording of the conclusion.

What you are matching in the conclusion is the level of certainty or the intent of the conclusion, rather than the exact wording. For example, if the conclusion in the stimulus states that something "will" happen, you want to match that absolute level of certainty and any conclusion that says something "can" happen, or "may" happen, or "probably will" happen are not parallel.

You do not need to match the verb tense (past, present, tense).

(The one exception to this would be if the reasoning of the argument hinges on a shift in verb tense. For example, if an argument has a time shift flaw and tries to use what happened in the past to predict the future, then the verb tense in the conclusion would matter.)

Here though, the verb tense is not critical to the reasoning. Even though the stimulus is discussing something that "will not" happen this week and the correct answer is discussing something that "must not" have happened on that Monday night, they are both absolutes in terms of certainty and the underlying reasoning matches.

Answer A is wrong for two main reasons. First, it doesn't follow the basic reasoning in the stimulus which involves two effectively mutually exclusive things (if she does A, then she won't do B). Second, the reasoning in this argument is flawed because the argument shifts from "many wasps are killed" in the premise to "any remaining wasps will soon be killed" which is not the same term and is therefore unknown/unsupported.