PT8.S4.Q12 - it is clear that none of the volleyball players

ncesomonu

Hey guys I have a question about this question beginning with, "it is clear that none of the volleyball players at yesterday's office."
Is A incorrect because goes from making a statement about all the employees at TRF who were offered the insurance to a conclusion about employees in general.

In short my first question is I see that the answer choice jumps from a statement about "everyone employed by TRF who was given the opportunity to purchase dental insurance" to all employees. The author is assuming that all employees at TRF were given the opportunity to purchase d.insurance. What if some workers had other insurance and chose to keep that insurance; and maybe those employees with the outside insurance chose not to go to the dentist. That could be true, but the choice doesn't leave room for the possibility. Is this why A is incorrect?

2) I am a little unclear on why D is correct. I didn't choose D because I was unsure if I could assume that taking time off= vacation time, (sometimes the LSAT gets you for shifts in phrasing and I didn't want to fall prey to this another time)

Help would be greatly appreciated

c.janson35

I think the reason A is incorrect is because the conclusion isn't valid due to the limited first premise. What I mean is, the fist sentence talks about everyone at TRF who was given the opportunity to purchase insurance did so, and the conclusion is about everyone employed by TRF. But this is an important distinction because the 2 groups are not necessarily the same if there were some employees, for example part time, that were not offered insurance and so did not buy it, but who still work at the company. This is why it doesn't not parallel the stimulus, there is not a valid transitive conclusion you can draw with the variables given:

GOPDI-->PDI (if given opp to purchase ins then purchased dent ins)
PDI-->SD
-------------------------------
Conclusion: /SD--->/ETRF
(If didn't see dentist, then not employed by TRF)

This last variable doesn't match up with the first.


I see what you're saying about D, but I think that July vacation can reasonably be interpreted as time off in July. You're right in that it's not exactly the same, but it's close enough that the answer parallels the stimulus. Contrast this with A that talks about two different groups of people. At least D is talking about the same thing, vacation, and is just describing it in two different ways.

NotMyName

Bumping this up because I have an additional question.

How does the logical structure in D match the stimulus?

Stimulus: Played volleyball --> badly sunburned, not badly sunburned, therefore not volleyball

2nd floor office --> work for president --> no vacation in july, therefore 2nd floor office --> no vacation in july.

These two use totally different logical arguments. I chose A because the logical structure matched. I saw in BR that "given the opportunity" made this an invalid argument. Maybe this is one of those "oh it's an old LSAT" moments?