diagramming question

jane1010

hi there,

i have a question about diagramming the following stimulus: "all too many weaklings are also cowards, and few cowards fail to be fools. thus there must be at least one person who is both a weakling and a fool." the question asks us to match the flaw and the correct answer is "some painters are dancers, since some painters are musicians, and some musicians are dancers."

i got this correct simply by process of elimination, but i wasn't 100% confident in my answer choice. i understand the first part: "all too many weaklings are also cowards" = "weaklings <--(some)--> cowards" since "all too many" = "many" = "some" on the LSAT.

the second part ("few cowards fail to be fools") is what confuses me, for two reasons:
(1) i took this to mean that "cowards <--(some)--> NOT fools," but the answer choice seems to suggest that this means "cowards <--(some)--> fools." i'm not sure if i'm overthinking it, but i just thought it was incorrect to assume "cowards <--(some)--> fools" since there is no contrapositive for "some"
(2) can we assume that "few cowards fail to be fools" to mean MOST cowards are fools (or is that too strong)?

thank you in advance!

iiiSpoon

Yes you can think of "few cowards fail to be fools" as some cowards are fools, and here is why.

If you have a bucket of A's, and you decide to take a scoop and scoop out some of them and say these are not A's, effectively what is left in the bucket are "some A's." That's what we have, except in some fools.

I usually use some translation but in the "Few meaning and translation," JYPing states that we can also translate it as "most are not." So "few cowards fail to be fools" would translate as "most cowards do not fail to be fools," which would mean "most cowards are fools." So yes, your second point is correct.

jrkovals

yes few is " some, not most." at least one is and and at least 51% are not.