Self-study
All cattle ranchers dislike long winters.
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Structure: Conditional Reasoning
The stimulus gives us three diagrammable statements. First, all cattle ranchers dislike long winters:
rancher → /like long winter
By the contrapositive: like long winter → /rancher
Second, all ski resort owners like long winters because long winters mean increased profits. Let's focus on the first part of the statement, because it has a clear conditional marker ("all"). It's not clear if "long winters mean increased profits" is necessarily a conditional statement.
ski resort owner → like long winter
By the contrapositive: /like long winter → /ski resort owner
Finally, some lawyers are cattle ranchers:
lawyers ←s→ cattle ranchers
Analysis: Most Strongly Supported
Before trying to get to the statement in the question stem ("no ski resort owners are lawyers"), let's see what inferences we can make from the stimulus itself. From the contrapositive of either the first or the second sentence, we know that no cattle ranchers are ski resort owners, because cattle ranchers dislike long winters, and no ski resort owners dislike long winters:
cattle rancher → /like long winter → /ski resort owner
This tells us that some lawyers are not ski resort owners, because some lawyers are cattle ranchers:
lawyers ←s→ cattle ranchers → /ski resort owner
The statement we're trying to support is that no ski resort owners are lawyers:
ski resort owner → /lawyer
By the contrapositive: lawyer → /ski resort owner
The easiest way to get there would be if we knew that all lawyers disliked long winters, since that's something we know all ski resort owners like. That would guarantee that no ski resort owners were lawyers, and vice-versa. But since this question is framed as "Most Strongly Supported" rather than "Must Be True," we might also be told something about lawyers not being interested in increased profits or something like that, since we also know that the reason ski resort owners like long winters is the increased profits, though the conditional relationship there is less clear.
2.
Which one of the following ███████████ ██ ████ ███ █████ ██ █████ ██████ ████ ████████ ███ ██████████ ████ ██ ███ ██████ ██████ ███ ████████
a
Some cattle ranchers ███ ████████
Incorrect. We can already infer this from the stimulus. This helps us get to the inference we also already drew, that some lawyers are not ski resort owners. But it doesn't help us get any closer to the statement "no ski resort owners are lawyers."
b
Some people who ███████ ████ ███████ ███ ███ ██████ █████████
Incorrect. This just tells us that "some people" who are not cattle ranchers dislike long winters, and therefore must not be ski resort owners. (B) doesn't help us get to the conclusion that no ski resort owners are lawyers.
c
All lawyers are ██████ █████████
Correct. If all (not just "some") lawyers are cattle ranchers, then, by the inference we drew in our analysis, we can conclude that no lawyers are ski resort owners, since no cattle ranchers are ski resort owners.
lawyer → cattle rancher→ /ski resort owner
As we saw in our analysis, if no lawyers are ski resort owners, then by the contrapositive, no ski resort owners are lawyers. This is the conclusion we wanted to support.
d
All people who ███████ ████ ███████ ███ ██████ █████████
Incorrect. This tells us that if someone dislikes long winters, they must be a cattle rancher. But that doesn't help us get any closer to the statement that no ski resort owners are lawyers.
e
All people with ██████████ ███████ ███ ███ ████████
Incorrect. There's no way to connect lawyers or cattle ranchers to this with the information we've been given. So this doesn't help us come to a conclusion about no ski resort owners being lawyers.