LSAT 126 – Section 1 – Question 21

LSAT 126 - Section 1 - Question 21

October 2008

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT126 S1 Q21
+LR
PSA - Find or complete the application +PSAa
Conditional Reasoning +CondR
Rule-Application +RuleApp
Link Assumption +LinkA
A
31%
161
B
49%
165
C
4%
155
D
13%
160
E
4%
156
151
164
176
 +Hardest 146.126 +SubsectionMedium

Really tough question. Reading only the question stem, it's not clear what type of question it is. Some general "principle" type, I suppose. So, you read the stimulus and then glance at the answers again. Notice there's an argument in the stimulus. Notice the answers are all conditionals. We're looking for a PSA answer choice. We can get away with fudging some ideas because the question stem has the word "most" in it.

So let's lay the argument out.

Sentence 1 zooms into the subset of "Most TV shows". What about them? They depend on advertising funding.
show alive --> funding
contrapositive
/funding --> /show alive (think canceled show)

Sentence 2 tells us a necessary condition of advertising funding.
funding --> many people buy product

Now we get to chain up:
show alive --> funding --> many people buy product

Sentence 3 runs the contrapositive on the whole chain.
/many people buy product --> /funding --> /show alive

[I think we really could have done without sentence 3 since it's not adding anything new. We could have chained up sentences 1 and 2 on our own and also ran the contrapositive on our own. Sentence 3 feels redundant to me.]

Now, sentence 4, the conclusion.
feel show worth preserving --> buy product

All together now:

[P] show alive --> funding --> many people buy product
__________________
[C] feel show worth preserving --> buy product

What's our most standard, cookie cutter formulation of a PSA or SA answer choice that we are trained to anticipate and look for?
IF P, THEN C

With some cleverly crafted referential phrasing, that's precisely what (B) is saying:

IF [a TV show would be canceled unless many people took certain actions], THEN [everyone who feels that the show is worth preserving out to take those actions]. IF [P], THEN [C]

Try to figure it out before reading on.

IF [P], THEN [C]
[P] is [a TV show would be canceled unless many people took certain actions]
[C] is [everyone who feels that the show is worth preserving out to take those actions]

[P] first. "unless" is group 3, negate sufficient. "not a TV show would be canceled --> many people took certain actions" =
"show alive --> many people took certain actions"
What could those actions possibly be referring to? Buy product.
"show alive --> many people buy product"

Now [C]. "everyone" is group 1, sufficient. "feel show worth preserving --> take those actions" Again, what could those actions possibly be referring to? Again, buy product.
"feel show worth preserving --> buy product"

The problem with answer choice (A) is that it's not describing the same shows that the stimulus is describing. The shows in the stimulus depended for their survival on MANY people buying a product. This conforms to our common sense expectations of TV shows. I would expect that the real life TV shows that depend on advertising funding would depend for their survival on MANY people buying whatever products they're meant to be buying.

(A) however talks about a set of TV shows whose survival depends on ONE single person buying a product. "would be canceled unless one took certain actions" What show in the world's survival is dependent on a single person taking some action? I have no idea. But whatever the TV shows (A)'s talking about, they're not the same TV shows that the stimulus talked about.

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LSAT PrepTest 126 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Reading Comprehension

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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