LSAT 133 – Section 1 – Question 20

LSAT 133 - Section 1 - Question 20

June 2011

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT133 S1 Q20
+LR
Must be true +MBT
Conditional Reasoning +CondR
A
11%
157
B
70%
165
C
3%
156
D
10%
160
E
7%
159
146
155
164
 +Harder 146.357 +SubsectionMedium

Council member: The profits of downtown businesses will increase if more consumers live in the downtown area, and a decrease in the cost of living in the downtown area will guarantee that the number of consumers living there will increase. However, the profits of downtown businesses will not increase unless downtown traffic congestion decreases.

Summary

The stimulus can be diagrammed as follows:

Notable Valid Inferences

If cost of living in the downtown area decreases, the profits of downtown businesses will increase.

If cost of living in the downtown area decreases, traffic congestion will decrease.

If more consumers live in the downtown area, traffic congestion will decrease.

A
If downtown traffic congestion decreases, the number of consumers living in the downtown area will increase.

Could be false. “Congestion decrease” is not a sufficient condition for “consumers increase”, so there’s no reason to believe that a congestion decrease would cause an increase in the number of consumers in the area. Maybe people like sitting in traffic!

B
If the cost of living in the downtown area decreases, the profits of downtown businesses will increase.

Must be true. As shown below, by chaining the conditional claims, we see that “cost of living decreases” is a sufficient condition of “profits increase.”

C
If downtown traffic congestion decreases, the cost of living in the downtown area will increase.

Could be false. “Congestion decrease” is not a sufficient condition for “cost of living increase”, so there’s no reason to believe that a congestion decrease would cause an increase in the cost of living in the area.

D
If downtown traffic congestion decreases, the cost of living in the downtown area will decrease.

Could be false. “Congestion decrease” is not a sufficient condition for “cost of living decrease”, so there’s no reason to believe that a congestion decrease would cause a decrease in the cost of living in the area.

E
If the profits of downtown businesses increase, the number of consumers living in the downtown area will increase.

Could be false. “Profits increase” is not a sufficient condition for “more consumers”, so there’s no reason to believe that a profit increase would cause an increase in the number of consumers living in the area.

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LSAT PrepTest 133 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Reading Comprehension

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