Setup and Rule Diagrams

[Dave Killoran]

Setup and Rule Diagram Explanation

This is a Grouping: Defined-Moving, Balanced, Numerical Distribution game.

This is a very unusual game, because it is purely numerical. That is, the game setup consists of identifying the distributions of days to cities, and cities to countries. The three named countries—X, Y, and Z—do not play a role until specific questions locally reference the countries. Thus, they play no role in the setup.

O91_Game_#3_setup_diagram 1.png

The ten possible days-to-countries numerical distributions are not needed to answer the questions in this game.

[Adam Tyson]

The book says, "the game setup consists of identifying the distributions of days to cities, and cities to countries." How do you know to do that? I identified the distributions for days-to-cities-to-countries (which was difficult / weird).

He angel, good question. The answer for this highly unusual game is that there's nothing else to work with! This game is solely about numerical distributions - we don't have a list of cities that she visits. How many cities in each country? At least 1, but maybe more, as many as 4 being possible. How much time in each city? At least two days, but maybe a lot more than that. What else is there to think about but the numbers?

We like to tell our students "think about the numbers" in every game. Sometimes the numbers are not much help, like in a basic linear game with 6 things happening in six different time slots, 1 thing per time slot and nothing repeating. That's a boring old 1-1-1-1-1-1 numerical distribution, but even then you have to think about the numbers. Does a given solution have all six variables in it? Here, thinking about the numbers is the start and finish of the whole thing.

Always think about the numbers, angel!

[mrcheese]

What would indicate in the rules that she can not visit the same city twice?

I figured that could be a possibility... is it?

[Malila Robinson]

Hi Mrcheese,
That is a really interesting question. I don't know that there are any words that I can point to specifically, but the gist seems to be that she is moving around to different places, nothing brings in info that would suggest that she would double back. Additionally, the game says things like she will spend at least 2 days in each city she visits, so even if we say that she stays a day and then goes somewhere else, and then comes back, it would still meet the requirement for staying for at least 2 days.
Did this assumption lead you to any incorrect answers? That may help us to tailor our answer a bit better.
-Malila

[saygracealways]

Hi PowerScore,

I have a couple of questions I am hoping you can answer:

1. What is the purpose of the second rule "Each of the three countries has many cities"? We already know from the third rule "Hannah visits at least one city in each of the three countries" that X, Y and Z must have at least 1 of the 6 cities she visits, so is the second rule implying that X, Y and Z have cities that are NOT the six cities Hannah is visiting? That seems a bit irrelevant and redundant to me, so not really sure why the test-makers included that in the first place.
2. This game was really difficult for me because of its unusual scenario... how likely are games like this one to appear on an upcoming LSAT test?
3. Why would this game be labeled as balanced? I had asked this question before on another game and one of your staff replied that "PowerScore discusses balance on the terms of definitive selection/certainty about the numbers themselves" - e.g. like how we know in this game that all 6 cities must be visited exactly once in all 14 days in all 3 countries, but I can't help thinking that that explains why this game is FIXED, instead of BALANCED. Wouldn't this game be considered unbalanced because it has an overloaded set (cities/days over # of countries)? Not sure if I'm over-obsessing about the particular labeling of games here, so please let me know!

Thank you so much!!

-Grace

[sneeze]

I am also wondering about the second rule that the above poster mentions. I read it to mean that each country had 3 cities in it ("as many cities")

does this rule just not matter?

edit: just realized it says "has many cities" not "as many cities" whoops

[Adam Tyson]

Hey there, Grace and Sneeze, let me see if I can help!

That rule about there being many cities in each country is there for two reasons that I can see. First, it is to let you know that there is flexibility within each country. Second, and perhaps more important, I think it is there to challenge you - will you see that rule and freeze up, unsure of what to do, or will you just take it at face value and say "okay, cool, whatever" and move on to more important things? It's a speed bump, nothing more. Slow down a moment, deal with it, and then put it behind you, because once it's behind you it has no meaning or value.

To Grace's other questions - this game is unique so far in the modern history of the LSAT, and I don't expect you will see one quite like it again. You could, but it's not something to worry about. It is, however, an excellent game to study to understand the importance of paying attention to numeric distributions, and to make you a more flexible thinker.

I would say this is NOT a fixed game, because we don't know how many cities per country, or how many days per city - those are each unfixed relationships. I'm not sure why we would call this one balanced, since there are more days than cities and more cities than countries. Seems very unbalanced to me! But you're right that you should NOT be obsessing over labels. Focus on understanding what's happening, rather than labeling it.

[RDRutley]

This setup broke my brain. Specifically the rule "Each of the three countries has many cities."

I read it "Each of the three countries has AS many cities" which I interpreted as an equal amount of cities per country out of the six. As such, I went with the assumption that she visited two cities in each country. As you can imagine, it didn't work. (Ironically, I wrote out the correct city distribution setup BEFORE reading the "many cities" rule, and scratched it out upon my misreading.)

So I re-tried, and I took the "many cities" rule to mean each country had THREE cities. ("Each of the THREE countries has AS MANY cities.") This seemed to work fine until Q16.

In retrospect, the best clue for interpretation of the "many cities" rule is that it's specifically not telling us about the distribution of cities.

[Adam Tyson]

That's right, RDRutley! That rule is very specifically telling you that the numbers are all very flexible, such that each country has a limitless number of cities from which to choose. Of course, Hannah can only visit 6 cities total, but this rule allows those 6 cities to be spread out among the various countries in many different ways. It's not a rule of restriction, but a rule that removes restrictions, which is highly unusual!