#23 - Tony: A new kind of videocassette has just been

[Legalistic]

Hello,

I find this stimulus quite challenging to understand, let alone the questions that follow it.
Can someone please help me understand the stimulus and the thought process I should have while tackling a question like this?

Thanks in advance!

[James Finch]

Hi Legalistic,

Could you expand a little about what you found difficult about this stimulus? This is a classic two-speaker setup, where Speaker 1 presents an argument and Speaker 2 an assumption being made by Speaker 1, thus weakening their argument. Here Tony is arguing that, based on his napkin math, the newer less-expensive VHSs would be cheaper for rental stores than the older, more durable kind. Anna responds by attacking his assumption that the primary or only cost to the stores are the VHSs themselves by stating that the primary cost is royalty payments, and then adding another premise that royalties must be paid on each individual VHS purchased. This effectively destroys Tony's argument by rendering his premise about pricing moot and his conclusion false, an inference we can make as Anna doesn't explicitly say this. (D) reflects this inference, making it the correct answer to this Must Be True question.

Hope this helps!

[lsatquestions]

Hi, I had picked C which I now realize is wrong because they do not discuss what customers are paying. For D, I was thrown off by "small or nonexistent." Is this wording valid because the cost of the videocassette is only 5% of the cost to video rental stores, so 1/3 of 5% is a small cost savings? Also the fact that they will have to pay royalties on additional copies will increase costs, making the videocassette tapes "nonexistent?"

[Adam Tyson]

That's pretty much it! Tony is saying that stores will save money by switching. Anna is suggesting that they will not. Thus, her argument is structured to lead to the conclusion that Tony is wrong, and there will not be much, if any, savings.

[sadjasmine]

Can someone explain why D is correct? I originally thought D was correct as well but then I saw the e d of the sentence stating “the more durable ones will be small or non existent” and thought it was out of scope because nothing references that in the stimulus..

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi sadjasmine,

The durability is referenced directly in the stimulus when Tony talks about how long the new tapes last. How long something lasts is another way of saying durability. When answer choice (D) talks about the cost savings from switching to the cheaper video cassettes from the more durable ones, we can use Tony's statements to understand that they are talking about the same switch he is recommending in his statement.

Often, it can be tempting in these dual speaker stimuli to focus on the second speaker when the question directly refers to the second speaker. But we are always reading the second speaker in the context of the first speaker. The second speaker responds directly to someone, and we use that context to understand the second response.

Hope that helps!