PT50.S4.Q19 - recent studies have demonstrated

Mo Zubair

This question gave me a lot of problems. I am still not sure how A described the flaw.

For a correlation to be positive, shouldn’t it be smokers who drink caffeinated beverages are more likely to develop HD as compared to smokers who don’t drink caffeinated beverages.

Like really confused here. Can someone clarify?

https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-50-section-4-question-19/

akistotle

https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-50-section-4-question-19/

P1: Smokers ==correlation+-== Heart disease
P2: Smokers ==correlation+-== Caffeine
——————————————————————–
C: Caffeine ==correlation+-== Heart disease

@"Mo Zubair" said:
For a correlation to be positive, shouldn’t it be smokers who drink caffeinated beverages are more likely to develop HD as compared to smokers who don’t drink caffeinated beverages.

It is not necessarily the case.

10% of smokers have heart disease and 1% non-smokers have heart disease
Smokers ==correlation+-== Heart disease

10% of smokers drink caffeinated drinks and 1% non-smokers caffeinated drinks
Smokers ==correlation+-== Caffeine

10% of people in both cases could totally be non-overlapping. There could be negative or no correlation between caffeine and heart disease.

In order to find out whether or not there is a positive correlation between caffeine and hear disease, we need to compare people who take caffeine with people who do not take caffeine.

(A) says the argument overlooks the possibility that
Likelihood of HD: Smokers + Caffeine < Smokers + /Caffeine

There could be a negative correlation between caffeine and hear disease