#17 - We can be sure that at least some halogen lamps are

[Leela]

The formation of two "somes" in succession does not allow for a valid conclusion.

Hi Dave,

Could you please elaborate a little more on your point above? The first thing I did when evaluating the stimulus and answer choices was to hone in on key words. For the stimulus I immediately made note of "some," "most," and "any." I want to be sure I'm accurately assessing these key words as they relate to the validity of arguments, since I know that has to be paralleled too.

[Brook Miscoski]

Leela, let's consider the following example:

Some cars are painted white. Some houses are painted white.

Even though we could write out:

Cars painted white houses,

That does not mean that some cars are houses.

Another proof is more technical. Imagine that you have 100 things that are painted white. One is a house, and one is a car. You can make the above statements, but you can't draw the inference that a house is a car, because the group of things that are white can be very large, and the intersection of "car" and "house" doesn't have to happen. So multiple "some" statements shouldn't be chained together.

[Leela]

Thank you for the clarification, Brook! Very helpful!

[kgbarbosa96]

Hi there!

I'm a little confused by the roles of "many" and "teeming" in Answer Choice D. Is someone please able to explain why answer choice D appears as follows:

"In comparison, answer choice (D) appears as:
Premise (1) + (2): Minnows Lake Healthy

Conclusion: Minnow Healthy (Invalid)"

I had initially read it as:

We can be positive that at least some minnows are healthy = Minnows healthy
because many different species of minnow can be found in lakes nearby = Minnows Lakes Nearby
Every LN is teeming w/ healthy fish = LN TwHF

For clause 2, I am beginning to understand that many cannot be most here because the statement that "many diff species of minnow can be found..." does not mean that most minnows can be found in lakes nearby. Also, some does equal 1-100. Would it be an accurate statement to say that quantifier words like several, many, a large amount of etc are all synonyms for some on the LSAT? What are the words we can validly translate to most?

Thank you!

[Paul Marsh]

Hi kgbarbosa! Nice job noticing the difference between "most" and "many". Because of that, the second clause of Answer Choice (D) is more similar to "some minnows are in lakes nearby", or in conditional format: minnows lakes nearby.

The language "every lake nearby is teeming with healthy fish" is not the same as, "every lake nearby is filled exclusively with healthy fish." (if it was, (D) would be a good answer). Instead, it is more analogous to saying "every lake nearby has some health fish."

And you correctly diagrammed the conclusion (first clause of the answer choice): Minnows healthy

So taking all that together, you get the same diagram of Answer Choice (D) that Dave commented and that you quoted.

As for your last question - yes, those are all roughly synonyms for "some" on the LSAT. We can think of all of those as "at least 1". There are not many things that mean "most" on the LSAT, one that I've seen a couple times is the phrase "more often than not" or "more likely than not" or something along those lines. For instance saying "more nearby lakes than not contain minnows" is the same as saying "most nearby lakes contain minnows". Keeping track of qualifiers can be tricky. Take a second to think, "Does this word mean that it happens every single time? Or does the word mean that it certainly, mathematically happens greater than 50% of the time?". Or does the word just mean that it happens some vague amount more than once?" Thinking through the mathematical implications of the word will usually guide you correctly. Hope that helps!

[VamosRafa19]

Hi, I diagrammed this the following way.

HL = halogen lamps
WC = well crafted
DFL = on display at Furniture Labyrinth
Premise:
HL FDL WC

Conclusion (where I guess we could also infer HL WC):
HL WC

I ruled out B, because I didn't see a most. I guess if you interpret "has written several kinds of sonnets as" "Melinda writes some sonnets" you could diagram as:
M = Melinda
S = Sonnet
D = Disturbing
W = Melinda writes

Premise:
S W D

Conclusion:
S D

In this scenario the argument is similar except instead of most you use some as the premise. Is this approach correct? I initially picked the D because I felt it mirrored my diagram of the stimulus perfectly, except now I see I incorrectly assumed that "teeming with healthy fish" does not equal minnows being healthy.

[Adam Tyson]

I see one problem in your analysis and diagram, VamosRafa19, and that is around the use of "most" in the first sentence. Your diagram, as written, would be read aloud as "most halogen lamps are on display at Furniture Labyrinth." But that isn't what the line says, or what it means. The "most" refers to "major manufacturers" and not to the lamps themselves. It could be that there are 10 major manufacturers, each of which makes thousands of halogen lamps, but only 6 of the manufacturers have any such lamps on display at FL (6 is most of 10), and they are each displaying only a single such lamp. All we can really get from this sentence is that there are SOME halogen lamps on display, not that most are!

Once you get that issue of "most" out of the way answer B is a much better match!

[VamosRafa19]

Hi Adam,

Thanks for your response. I see what you mean about most/some. So in the phrase "because halogen lamps from most major manufacturers are no display" the part about manufacturers just irrelevant to the question? It could just say "Some halogen lamps are on display"?

[Robert Carroll]

Vamos,

Yes, because the argument does not rely on "most" at all.

Robert Carroll

[tetsuya0129]

Hi there, for the purpose of learning all the tricks, I want to dive solely into (E). Could you please show me how to diagram E?

Honestly, I thought it's utterly a different type of reasoning: it's saying a specific subtype belongs to a group, and all subtypes within such group all share two properties. Even so, I still want to learn how to diagram this type of reasoning, because I believe the cognitive command to put reasonings into symbols will help my speed and accuracy.

Thank you very much for your time,

Leon