#15 - Municipal officials originally estimated that it would

[angie23]

I picked B) for this question but it was wrong. Can someone explain why E) is correct and why B) is wrong? Thanks!

[David Boyle]

I picked B) for this question but it was wrong. Can someone explain why E) is correct and why B) is wrong? Thanks!

Dear angie23:

Answer B would actually hurt, in that it shows things to be the same for public or private workers, i.e., both get overtime after 40 hours. You want something which explains a difference, not a sameness.
Answer E does that, showing a difference, i.e., that municipal agencies have to go through a bidding process, but private firms don't.

Hope this helps,
David

[OneSeventy2019]

Powerscore,

This question really has me scratching my head.. I was debating between choice A and choice E (correct response) but ultimately went with choice A. Here was my reasoning/approach to the question:

Analysis of the argument: Officials estimated 6 months to complete project; officials presumed private industry could not do better; project assigned to private industry and completed in 28 days.

A) I believed that this COULD resolve the discrepancy. The argument does not specify at what point the officials estimated that the job would take 6 months to be completed AND the argument does not tell us when the project was assigned to private industry. Imagine, the officials estimated (sometime in January) that it would not be for another 6 months that the project would be able to be completed and then on June 1st the job was finally assigned to a private contract who was able to complete the job in 28 days since it could start work immediately. This would also explain why the argument specifically mentioned, that the officials didn't believe that it would take private industry any longer.

B) mentions something common between private industry and municipality, this does NOT help us resolve

C) again, mentions a similarity; does not help

D) makes us think that the municipality would be faster; does not explain why municipality believed it would take ~6 months and it only took private industry 28 days.

E) at face value, I believed this could potentially resolve the discrepancy between the estimate. But remember that the officials believed it would take private industry the SAME amount of time. Ergo, we would haver to assume that the government officials didn't know that private industry would not have to go through a lengthy bidding process? That seems like a pretty far-fetched assumption. Further on an LSAT, strategy perspective, I was thinking that, "okay, we're getting into the harder LR questions and this is classic LSAT test writer strategy - put a seemingly convincing wrong answer choice as the last answer choice that is appealing because people will intuitively link the concept in the answer choice with what they know about the subject matter (i.e. government procurements and bidding processes).

Not sure where I went wrong here so any help would be much appreciated! Thank you in advance!

[Paul Marsh]

Hi OneSeventy2019! Good job getting it down to Answer Choice (E) and just one other choice.

In your explanations for both (A) and (E), you seem to be reaching a bit for hypotheticals and assumptions. Do not try to read into an answer choice and more than what's there! "Maybe they made the prediction in January but didn't assign a private contractor until June" is reading too far beyond what's provided in the answer choice.

The paradox here is that municipal officials predicted the municipal crew would take 6 months and predicted the same for a private contracting crew, while the private contractor ended up doing it in less than a month. To resolve that paradox, we want an answer that will explain why there is some difference between the time it would take the municipal road crew and the time it would take a private contractor to finish the job. Answer Choice (E) is the only choice that addresses that. We can't assume anything about what the municipal officials did or didn't know, we only know that (E) is the only answer providing a reason for the time difference. Hope that helps!

[darrengao]

I had the exact same reaction: narrowing down to A and E and went with A, with quite a bit of confidence too. Reasoned as this:

Official estimated it would be 6 months before contractors (private or municipal) finish paving the road. However, when the job was assigned to a private contractor, it was completed in just 28 days. Resolve the discrepency.

Option A gives an explanation how both can be true. Offcial estimated 6 months because its not the time to pave roads, and when the private contractors are awarded the contract it is the season to do the work and they finished in 28 days.

Option E on the other hand, is saying the official's estimate is plainly wrong. I mean, technically it does resolve the discrepency, but is that even legal? lol, That there is no conflict because one of the conflicting party is wrong. It seems too.... cheap? Anyway that was where I was wrong.

In retrospective, because the it is someone's opinion, (instead of plainly stated in the stimulus), and the question didn't say assuming everything is true, the paradox CAN BE resolved by simply denying its truth. Is this something that can be generalized in LSAT, or I shouldn't read too much into it.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Darren,

We can't read anything into the answer choices that they don't give us. So we can't assume that the municipal authorities would have been working in a different season than the private contractors. We can only go with what they give us, both in the stimulus and in the answer choices.

So let's start with the stimulus.

Municipal authorities thought it would take 6 months for both road crews and private contractors to pave the road. But the private contractors were able to do to it in under a month! Those facts are all true. We can't fight them.

Note though that we don't know WHY the municipal authorities think it will take that long. We know they are incorrect. We know they have an incorrect estimate. But we can't assume that it's because the stimulus is untrue. It's a true statement of their belief but not an accurate prediction of what would happen.

So in order to resolve the paradox, we need to figure out a fact that would make the municipal team different from the private contractors. Answer choice (E) is the only one that gives us a difference that would explain why the private contractors were so much faster.

Hope that helps!