I really wish that the stimulus, question stem, and answers were just displayed at the start of the lesson so I could try to break it down myself first, then go to the review. Even jumping through the video, the answer is marked and there's too many scribbles to concentrate :(
Context: Baxe Interiors, one of the largest interior design companies in existence, currently has a near monopoly in the corporate market.
Concession: Several small design companies have won prestigious awards for their corporate work, while Baxe has won none.
Conclusion: Nonetheless, the corporate managers who solicit design proposals will only contract with companies they believe are unlikely to go bankrupt, and they believe that only very large companies are unlikely to go bankrupt.
The statements above, if true, most strongly support which one of the following?
a. There are other very large design companies besides Baxe, but they produce designs that are inferior to Baxe's. wrong.
b. Baxe does not have a near monopoly in the market of any category of interior design other than corporate interiors. Incorrect.
c. For the most part, designs that are produced by small companies are superior to the designs produced by Baxe. Incorrect. Several and most aren't equal to each other.
d. At least some of the corporate managers who solicit design proposals are unaware that there are designs that are much better than those produced by Baxe. Incorrect.
e. The existence of interior designs that are superior to those produced by Baxe does not currently threaten its near monopoly in the corporate market. True.
Something I really struggle with is how to know when to make inferences. For example in answer choice C, the assumption was made that other small companies winning prestigious awards (and Baxe not) may insinuate that some of those small companies have designs superior to Baxe. This seems like a reasonable conclusion to make but that's the issue. I make assumptions like this all the time that I feel are reasonably justified and they trap me. How do I know when an inference is actually valid vs. trying to trap me?
@KateLevinson You are correct that it is reasonable to assume "some small companies have designs superior to Baxe" because "some" meaning "at least one" is easy to prove in this case. However, answer choice C says "for the most part" which implies that "most" small companies have better designs. We cannot make conclusions on "most" small companies because the stimulus only mentions "several." If you go back to the Foundations lessons, specifically Logic of Intersecting Sets Quantifier Inferences, there is a lesson about how all implies most and most implies some (All -> Most -> Some), but you cannot reverse the direction of the arrows (you cannot imply most from some).
@puddingeveryday I eliminated C as an option, but for a different reason. I thought that equating receiving awards for superior designs was assuming too much. There could be various reasons that they received awards while Baxe didn't. The awards could require you to apply for consideration and Baxe didn't do so, or the awards were specific to smaller companies, etc. etc.
Is this line of thinking incorrect and I just got lucky? Or is this just another angle to approach the questionn?
@JoshuaTWilkins I would not necessarily say that you “got lucky” because your line of reasoning is still correct (winning awards does not technically equal superior designs), but the bigger issue with answer choice C is that it some ≠ most. They are both assumptions that the author makes, but the first, (winning awards = superior designs) is a lot more reasonable of an assumption for the author to make than the second (some design awards = most of their designs are superior). For example if answer choice C said “At least ONE design produced by a small company is superior to the designs produced by Baxe” that would be reasonable because several design companies winning awards for their design work reasonably implies that at least one of their designs are superior, it does not imply that MOST are superior. (recall most means majority).
I think this is an interesting passage because it's one of the few that doesn't contain an argument. It's a statement of a phenomenon and then a statement of a causal explanation of the phenomenon (in the conditional chain), but the conclusion is not explicitly stated.
My logic for answering this was that since baxe has a monopoly but hasn't won any awards, the other design companies do not threaten its nearly monopoly because they have shown they can preform better to some extent yet Baxe still obtains contracts.
Is the way I did this dangerous? I didn't map out the conditional logic, and a lot of times I don't. Now I worry that this may impact my success in the future.
This question forces you to make the assumption that because small design companies have won prestigious awards for their designs that they are superior to those of Baxe.
@eaoneil yeah, I think the logic chain was backwards, and i think it was just because of how the information was processed. Being a large chain and being unlikely to go bankrupt are sufficient to getting a contract. the rest of the video still stands though.
(not an expert, someone correct me if i'm wrong abt that)
@MnM See, I had this instinct too, but then I went back to a strategy that helps me establish what the necessary condition is and what the sufficient condition is. If you take the contrapositive of that /Contract --> /Unlikely bankrupt, this is untrue. This means if you do not receive a contract, they do not believe that you are unlikely to go bankrupt. There could be many reasons why you do not receive a contract. If you take the contrapositive of what was shown in the video /Unlikely bankrupt --> /Contract, this makes much more sense - If they believe you are likely to become bankrupt, then you will not receive a contract. To be honest, though, it is confusing, as without this video, I would have probably done Unlikely bankrupt --> Contract.
I was between C and E, and ended up choosing E based on what makes the most sense. However upon watching the video it makes sense that they used Several in the text versus Most in the answer.
I know this doesn't matter to the actual question/answers provided here, but just to understand the question better, how could several small design companies have prestigious awards for their corporate work if no corporate managers will hire small companies?
Several is conflated with Some, and from our lessons, some is as little as 1, and as many as all. But sometimes some explicitly EXCLUDES all, and the context of the paragraph above gives away that they are also kind of excluding most as well. My thinking, is that the near monopoly of Baxe first starts to exclude small companies in the first place, but the fact that they have become a large company, and have the laid out necessary condition, leads me to believe that most small businesses truly cannot be having the better designs AND Baxe is still running circles around them. Baxe wasnt dropped on this earth as a large company, it most likely built from having superior designs at some point, and then capitlized on their growth and security.
@smongu7280 The way "several" is used is highly variable, like with "some." If I say I have several donuts, I am not saying I actually have 51% of all donuts. Likewise, if you say there are 10 collectibles in a product line and that you have several of them already, it implies that you could have anywhere from 3-9; but, because this is LSAT world, several = some, and some is considered to only say there's a relationship, not the nature of that relationship.
I understand E is the right answer, but it does seem like a bit of an assumption about the real world and our own biases to assume that just because small design companies won prestigious awards that makes them "superior." Especially since this could be a matter of opinion (what is or is not superior/inferior and on what basis we judge these things). There is nothing explicitly in the passage that says or even implies that those that win prestigious awards are "superior." So how exactly is this a reasonable assumption?
I agree with this. The support merely implies the awards for their corporate work and then compares it to Baxe. But the support doesn't elude to the scale of comparison between the two companies. The award could just as well have been won from a community business scale rather than a national business scale. We just don't know given the stimulus - which makes it difficult to rationalize "superiority" as a valid assumption. I understand it implies the comparison to each other for the support in the answer choices, but I worry this will trap me during other questions under the time constraint.
Exactly, it’s like: “do not make assumptions based on your understanding of the real world that are unreasonable. Rely on logic and information in stimulus.”
But also:”sometimes make assumptions based on your understanding of reality that have nothing to do with the stimulus.”
Right, I got the right one but was uncomfortable with that assumption as well. We don't even know if the corporation cares to enter competitions. We also don't know what the competitions' judgement criteria are, maybe they are competing on who can make the most innovative product, with overall quality being unconsidered. Kind of weird.
I got this right but for the wrong reason I guess - what really confused me here was the fact that the stimulus used awards as a way to indicate that small companies had superior designs - I interpreted this as not being an indicator of one's quality (someone might have connections that ensure that they will get award, etc.). I think that this is a good reminder for me not to let my own biases and outside knowledge interfere with my rationale and stick to the stimulus
It's easier to avoid letting your own thoughts or opinions interfere when selecting an answer by reading each choice and mentally asking, "BUT WHY?" Then, turn back to the stimulus for support.
However, several small companies won awards for their corporate work! I'm having a hard time understanding, how on earth they got to work on those contract, forget winning an award? Remember, only large companies get corporate contracts. Isn't it a flaw in the Stim?
Stim instead should have just stated that, several small companies won award for their work / designs etc. This phrase 'corporate work' is inconsistent with rest of the stim.
I like to think that C requires two assumptions whereas E requires only one assumption.
C: requires you to assume "several small companies" is enough "for the most part," and equivocate "awards" to being "superior." It could be the case that awards are only given to smaller firms for "fairness" or that they are equal in quality to large firms.
E: You only have to assume the last part of C again. This is one less assumption.
I swear I listen to him talk about the problem, and he runs through the steps and makes it so simple. In my head I say I got this then when an actual question comes, Im like what...?
I am not understanding why the correct answer choice is E. Obviously because of conditional logic we know that the superior design ideas from small corporations are not going to threaten Baxe's monopoly, but how do we know that there aren't other large corporations that have superior design ideas and therefore could threaten the monopoly that Baxe has? Especially because the stimulus states that Baxe is only ONE of the largest companies in the corporate market. I would say this answer choice should just sit in the middle with the rest. Please help!
Yeah I think you are injecting your own outside assumption into this, you really have to only focus on what is provided in the text. What you are saying could very well be true, there just isnt anything in the passage stating anything like that.
I think personally that assuming that there are other large corporations that could threaten the monopoly Baxe has is over-assuming. In answer E, they don't necessarily mention "larger" companies; instead, they mention "interior designs that are superior." This could be a small or a large company. That's kind of how I thought about it when looking at E.
I think that would generally be a safe assumption! The way I think about it in regards to the Spectrum of Support is like this:
Most wrong answers are going to land in the middle (merely consistent with/unsupported).
If an something is not addressed in the stimulus (i.e. it is new information), then it is unsupported.
Since Most Strongly Supported questions are looking for the answer that is, well, most strongly supported by the stimulus, you can eliminate all answers that are not unsupported.
Hopefully that makes sense! It at least works for me. :)
It is an assumption, but the question depends on the tester realizing that it is a pretty reasonable assumption, especially in the context of the other answer choices (keep in mind that for MSS questions, the correct answer may not be the ideal answer)
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79 comments
I really wish that the stimulus, question stem, and answers were just displayed at the start of the lesson so I could try to break it down myself first, then go to the review. Even jumping through the video, the answer is marked and there's too many scribbles to concentrate :(
@JessM you can click on the show question button next to the comments button to show the full question and try to give it a go from there!
@ps939 OMG I missed that whole button! tysm this is a god send
Context: Baxe Interiors, one of the largest interior design companies in existence, currently has a near monopoly in the corporate market.
Concession: Several small design companies have won prestigious awards for their corporate work, while Baxe has won none.
Conclusion: Nonetheless, the corporate managers who solicit design proposals will only contract with companies they believe are unlikely to go bankrupt, and they believe that only very large companies are unlikely to go bankrupt.
The statements above, if true, most strongly support which one of the following?
a. There are other very large design companies besides Baxe, but they produce designs that are inferior to Baxe's. wrong.
b. Baxe does not have a near monopoly in the market of any category of interior design other than corporate interiors. Incorrect.
c. For the most part, designs that are produced by small companies are superior to the designs produced by Baxe. Incorrect. Several and most aren't equal to each other.
d. At least some of the corporate managers who solicit design proposals are unaware that there are designs that are much better than those produced by Baxe. Incorrect.
e. The existence of interior designs that are superior to those produced by Baxe does not currently threaten its near monopoly in the corporate market. True.
Something I really struggle with is how to know when to make inferences. For example in answer choice C, the assumption was made that other small companies winning prestigious awards (and Baxe not) may insinuate that some of those small companies have designs superior to Baxe. This seems like a reasonable conclusion to make but that's the issue. I make assumptions like this all the time that I feel are reasonably justified and they trap me. How do I know when an inference is actually valid vs. trying to trap me?
@KateLevinson You are correct that it is reasonable to assume "some small companies have designs superior to Baxe" because "some" meaning "at least one" is easy to prove in this case. However, answer choice C says "for the most part" which implies that "most" small companies have better designs. We cannot make conclusions on "most" small companies because the stimulus only mentions "several." If you go back to the Foundations lessons, specifically Logic of Intersecting Sets Quantifier Inferences, there is a lesson about how all implies most and most implies some (All -> Most -> Some), but you cannot reverse the direction of the arrows (you cannot imply most from some).
@puddingeveryday I eliminated C as an option, but for a different reason. I thought that equating receiving awards for superior designs was assuming too much. There could be various reasons that they received awards while Baxe didn't. The awards could require you to apply for consideration and Baxe didn't do so, or the awards were specific to smaller companies, etc. etc.
Is this line of thinking incorrect and I just got lucky? Or is this just another angle to approach the questionn?
@JoshuaTWilkins I would not necessarily say that you “got lucky” because your line of reasoning is still correct (winning awards does not technically equal superior designs), but the bigger issue with answer choice C is that it some ≠ most. They are both assumptions that the author makes, but the first, (winning awards = superior designs) is a lot more reasonable of an assumption for the author to make than the second (some design awards = most of their designs are superior). For example if answer choice C said “At least ONE design produced by a small company is superior to the designs produced by Baxe” that would be reasonable because several design companies winning awards for their design work reasonably implies that at least one of their designs are superior, it does not imply that MOST are superior. (recall most means majority).
I honestly got this one right by POE. It was hard to understand at first.
I think this is an interesting passage because it's one of the few that doesn't contain an argument. It's a statement of a phenomenon and then a statement of a causal explanation of the phenomenon (in the conditional chain), but the conclusion is not explicitly stated.
If C had said "SOME designs produced by small companies..." instead of "most", could that have been correct?
My logic for answering this was that since baxe has a monopoly but hasn't won any awards, the other design companies do not threaten its nearly monopoly because they have shown they can preform better to some extent yet Baxe still obtains contracts.
Is the way I did this dangerous? I didn't map out the conditional logic, and a lot of times I don't. Now I worry that this may impact my success in the future.
This question forces you to make the assumption that because small design companies have won prestigious awards for their designs that they are superior to those of Baxe.
@JoeSolana4 yes. that's a feature of the MSS (most strongly supported) type of question. I think if it was a MBT (must be true), E would fail.
Isnt "only" a Group 2 Necessary condition indicator? Why is the contract being put in the sufficient condition?
@eaoneil yeah, I think the logic chain was backwards, and i think it was just because of how the information was processed. Being a large chain and being unlikely to go bankrupt are sufficient to getting a contract. the rest of the video still stands though.
(not an expert, someone correct me if i'm wrong abt that)
@eaoneil I noticed that too. It should have been:
Unlikely bankrupt -> Contract
Unlikely bankrupt -> Large companies
Therefore,
Unlikely bankrupt -> (large companies + contract)
@MnM See, I had this instinct too, but then I went back to a strategy that helps me establish what the necessary condition is and what the sufficient condition is. If you take the contrapositive of that /Contract --> /Unlikely bankrupt, this is untrue. This means if you do not receive a contract, they do not believe that you are unlikely to go bankrupt. There could be many reasons why you do not receive a contract. If you take the contrapositive of what was shown in the video /Unlikely bankrupt --> /Contract, this makes much more sense - If they believe you are likely to become bankrupt, then you will not receive a contract. To be honest, though, it is confusing, as without this video, I would have probably done Unlikely bankrupt --> Contract.
Isnt only a Group 2 Necessary condition indicator? Why is the contract being put in the sufficient condition?
@FranciscoLee I had the same question that really confused me
is there an easier explanation for D?
@Milem nvm i figured it out!
I was between C and E, and ended up choosing E based on what makes the most sense. However upon watching the video it makes sense that they used Several in the text versus Most in the answer.
I know this doesn't matter to the actual question/answers provided here, but just to understand the question better, how could several small design companies have prestigious awards for their corporate work if no corporate managers will hire small companies?
@JackSykes There's like awards for best designed stuff which doesnt require you to be succesful
Though I got this one right, I was very close to choosing
C. For the most part, designs that are produced by small companies are superior to the designs produced by Baxe.
Maybe I need to review most / some, but "several" seems to imply at least 51% or more, which would be most
Several is conflated with Some, and from our lessons, some is as little as 1, and as many as all. But sometimes some explicitly EXCLUDES all, and the context of the paragraph above gives away that they are also kind of excluding most as well. My thinking, is that the near monopoly of Baxe first starts to exclude small companies in the first place, but the fact that they have become a large company, and have the laid out necessary condition, leads me to believe that most small businesses truly cannot be having the better designs AND Baxe is still running circles around them. Baxe wasnt dropped on this earth as a large company, it most likely built from having superior designs at some point, and then capitlized on their growth and security.
@smongu7280 The way "several" is used is highly variable, like with "some." If I say I have several donuts, I am not saying I actually have 51% of all donuts. Likewise, if you say there are 10 collectibles in a product line and that you have several of them already, it implies that you could have anywhere from 3-9; but, because this is LSAT world, several = some, and some is considered to only say there's a relationship, not the nature of that relationship.
I understand the explanation but how the world do we do achieve this understanding during the LSAT under time constraints?
I understand E is the right answer, but it does seem like a bit of an assumption about the real world and our own biases to assume that just because small design companies won prestigious awards that makes them "superior." Especially since this could be a matter of opinion (what is or is not superior/inferior and on what basis we judge these things). There is nothing explicitly in the passage that says or even implies that those that win prestigious awards are "superior." So how exactly is this a reasonable assumption?
I agree, I did choose E due to process of elimination but it still felt like a big jump that I was not confident in.
I agree with this. The support merely implies the awards for their corporate work and then compares it to Baxe. But the support doesn't elude to the scale of comparison between the two companies. The award could just as well have been won from a community business scale rather than a national business scale. We just don't know given the stimulus - which makes it difficult to rationalize "superiority" as a valid assumption. I understand it implies the comparison to each other for the support in the answer choices, but I worry this will trap me during other questions under the time constraint.
Exactly, it’s like: “do not make assumptions based on your understanding of the real world that are unreasonable. Rely on logic and information in stimulus.”
But also:”sometimes make assumptions based on your understanding of reality that have nothing to do with the stimulus.”
I guess it really depends on the question type.
Right, I got the right one but was uncomfortable with that assumption as well. We don't even know if the corporation cares to enter competitions. We also don't know what the competitions' judgement criteria are, maybe they are competing on who can make the most innovative product, with overall quality being unconsidered. Kind of weird.
I got this right but for the wrong reason I guess - what really confused me here was the fact that the stimulus used awards as a way to indicate that small companies had superior designs - I interpreted this as not being an indicator of one's quality (someone might have connections that ensure that they will get award, etc.). I think that this is a good reminder for me not to let my own biases and outside knowledge interfere with my rationale and stick to the stimulus
It's easier to avoid letting your own thoughts or opinions interfere when selecting an answer by reading each choice and mentally asking, "BUT WHY?" Then, turn back to the stimulus for support.
Corporate contracts > Large companies
-Large companies > -Corporate contracts
However, several small companies won awards for their corporate work! I'm having a hard time understanding, how on earth they got to work on those contract, forget winning an award? Remember, only large companies get corporate contracts. Isn't it a flaw in the Stim?
Stim instead should have just stated that, several small companies won award for their work / designs etc. This phrase 'corporate work' is inconsistent with rest of the stim.
This was such a weirdly worded question
I like to think that C requires two assumptions whereas E requires only one assumption.
C: requires you to assume "several small companies" is enough "for the most part," and equivocate "awards" to being "superior." It could be the case that awards are only given to smaller firms for "fairness" or that they are equal in quality to large firms.
E: You only have to assume the last part of C again. This is one less assumption.
I swear I listen to him talk about the problem, and he runs through the steps and makes it so simple. In my head I say I got this then when an actual question comes, Im like what...?
you are not alone lol!
I am not understanding why the correct answer choice is E. Obviously because of conditional logic we know that the superior design ideas from small corporations are not going to threaten Baxe's monopoly, but how do we know that there aren't other large corporations that have superior design ideas and therefore could threaten the monopoly that Baxe has? Especially because the stimulus states that Baxe is only ONE of the largest companies in the corporate market. I would say this answer choice should just sit in the middle with the rest. Please help!
Yeah I think you are injecting your own outside assumption into this, you really have to only focus on what is provided in the text. What you are saying could very well be true, there just isnt anything in the passage stating anything like that.
I think personally that assuming that there are other large corporations that could threaten the monopoly Baxe has is over-assuming. In answer E, they don't necessarily mention "larger" companies; instead, they mention "interior designs that are superior." This could be a small or a large company. That's kind of how I thought about it when looking at E.
Is it safe to say that our POE should be to eliminate new information?
I think that would generally be a safe assumption! The way I think about it in regards to the Spectrum of Support is like this:
Most wrong answers are going to land in the middle (merely consistent with/unsupported).
If an something is not addressed in the stimulus (i.e. it is new information), then it is unsupported.
Since Most Strongly Supported questions are looking for the answer that is, well, most strongly supported by the stimulus, you can eliminate all answers that are not unsupported.
Hopefully that makes sense! It at least works for me. :)
How can you assume that just because they won an award, their designs are superior? Doesn't that taint two answer choices?
It is an assumption, but the question depends on the tester realizing that it is a pretty reasonable assumption, especially in the context of the other answer choices (keep in mind that for MSS questions, the correct answer may not be the ideal answer)
Thank you!!!