#25 - At the company picnic, all of the employees who

[Johnclem]

Hi powerscore,
is this problem a biconditional one ? Also what exactly is the flaw ?
Here is how I approached it .


1) participated +4 events <---> eligible for raffle
2) small % were eligible for raffle ---> fewer than 4 participated in events.


flaw : i think its that fewer than 4 doesn't have the be the case. 4 would have worked . I've never seen this kinda flaw ! What is this ?

Thanks John

[Claire Horan]

Hi John,

Yes, this is a biconditional! It helps me to call them "if and only ifs" and check the statement separately for each. I might call this a number or a percentage flaw. The flaw, more broadly, is assuming there are only two possibilities, when, in fact, there are more. Another lesson is not to discount a possibility just because it seems less likely to apply than the others. The LSAT can give you any new question type, so you can't always identify questions by particular labels. But all of them can be solved by reading slowly, marking key words, diagramming, and checking assumptions to see if they are really true.

[Sophia123]

Hi!

Just to follow up on this question: is the additional possibility that employees could have participated in exactly 4 events? This would mean that these employees that did not qualify for the raffle because they didn't do more than, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they did fewer than 4 events since they could have done exactly 4 events (or fewer). Answer choice E makes the same mistake since it is saying that swimmers won awards if their times decreased, but then the last sentence is saying because fewer than got awards it means that their time increased when the alternative possibility is that their time could have stayed the same?

[Steven Palmer]

Hi Sophia,

That's exactly right! The flaw here is failing to realize more possibilities. While everyone who completed more than 4 events (i.e., 5 or more) became eligible, the author assumes that everyone else must have completed 3 or fewer, while they could have just completed 4 and still not have been eligible.

In Choice (E), the author ignores the possibility of a swimmer's time staying the same, just as you said!

Hope this helps!
Steven

[Noodles93]

Could it also be another possibility that "most" of the employees did not participate at all?

[Adam Tyson]

Absolutely, Noodles93, but zero is fewer than 4, so that's already covered by the conclusion. That's not what the argument overlooks. The only possibility not covered by more than 4 vs less than 4 is exactly 4.

"Participated in fewer" does not imply "participated in some"! That's an easy mistake to make, because in ordinary conversion we would assume that "participated in fewer than 4" would indicate that they did participate in some. But the LSAT doesn't test casual, ordinary use of terms. It tests a more highly technical use of language. Any amount less than 4 - including zero - is "fewer than 4."

Here's another example of the difference between causal, everyday English conversation and LSAT English: "Some" means any number more than zero. In the real world, we would almost never use that word if we meant just one, or if we meant all of something. If I say I had some of the beer in your fridge, you would expect to find some beer still left in the fridge, and that would be reasonable in the real world. Not on the LSAT! If I say I had some, you have to be prepared for the possibility that I had it all!