PT70.S4.Q22 - if the budget does not allow

julsnet2

On the LR question boxed below, JY did not give an explanation as to why answer E was wrong. Please take a look at it real quick and then read my take below after.

https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-70-section-4-question-22/


My take: Answer D (the correct answer) is the exact same as answer E (if you switch positioning of the "if/then"), except that answer E says if NONE of the dairies meets federal standards whereas answer D says MOST dont meet them. How is E wrong? If most of the dairies dont meet federal standards and that results in pollution of the water, then of course we can say that if NONE of them meet federal standards then the water will get polluted. If anything, we can be more sure from none of them meeting standards that the water will be polluted rather than most.

An analogy of my reasoning: If in a city, most of the power plants dont work, than the whole city will not have power. Answer D is saying most of the power plants dont work, so there will not be power. Answer E is saying NONE of the power plants work, so we can definitely be sure there will be no power!

What am I missing?

inactive

Hey, please make sure you're using our formatting so questions are properly organized and people can better assist you:
https://7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/15/forum-rules

Not Ralph Nader

@julsnet2 in the stimulus there is a conditional reasoning chain which is triggered by the fact that budget does not allow for more diary inspector to be hired. From this and based on the stimulus, we can infer that Most of large dairies in the central valley do not meet the federal standards for the disposal of natural wastes. From core curriculum we know that we cannot infer a none statement from the most statement. Therefore we cannot trigger sufficient condition in answer choice "E" which makes the answer choice useless.

Look at it this way, let's say we have only 100 large dairies in the valley. Based on the stimulus we know for a fact 51 of large dairies in the central valley do not meet the federal standards for the disposal of natural wastes and sufficient condition in answer choice "D" needs only 51 one of them to not meet the standards to be triggered. However, for answer choice "E" to work we need to know that all 100 of large dairies in the central valley do not meet the federal standards for the disposal of natural wastes. But we do not know anything about the other 49 large dairies, they may or may not meet the federal standards for the disposal of natural wastes.

I hope this helps.