LSAT 136 – Section 4 – Question 21

LSAT 136 - Section 4 - Question 21

June 2012

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Question QuickView	Type	Tags	Answer Choices	Curve	Question Difficulty	Psg/Game/S Difficulty	Explanation
PT136 S4 Q21	+LR	Must be true +MBT Conditional Reasoning +CondR Net Effect +NetEff	A 1% 157 B 2% 159 C 14% 162 D 64% 166 E 19% 159	149 159 168	+Harder	146.121 +SubsectionMedium

If the city starts requiring residents to sort the materials that they put out for recycling, then many residents will put more recyclables in with their regular garbage. This will result in more recyclables being buried in the city’s landfill. However, because of the cost of having city workers do the sorting, the sanitation department will not stay within its budget unless the sorting requirement for residents is implemented.

Summary

The stimulus can be diagrammed as follows:

Notable Valid Inferences

If the sanitation department is to stay within its budget, some residents will put more recyclables in with their regular garbage.
If the city starts requiring residents to sort the materials that they put out for recycling, there will be more recyclables buried in the city’s landfill.
If the sanitation department is to stay within its budget, more recyclables will be buried in the city’s landfill.

Most of the city’s residents will continue to recycle even if a sorting requirement is implemented.

Could be false. The stimulus does nothing to rule out this possibility—maybe the residents that will put more recyclables in with their regular garbage will stop recycling altogether, and maybe these residents make up the majority!

If the city starts requiring residents to sort their recyclables, then all of the residents who continue to recycle will sort their recyclables.

Could be false. It’s quite possible that some residents might continue to recycle but ignore the sorting mandate.

Implementing the sorting requirement would not cause the city’s annual cost of sending garbage to its landfill to exceed its current annual cost of sorting recyclables.

Could be false. The stimulus doesn’t claim that sorting recyclables will keep the department in budget—staying in budget is not a necessary condition for recyclable sorting! Also, (C) references the city’s costs, but the stimulus discusses the sanitation department specifically.

The amount of recyclables going to the city’s landfill will increase if the sanitation department stays within its budget.

Must be true. By chaining the conditionals, we see that “more recyclables in landfill” is a necessary condition of the sanitation department staying within its budget.

If the city implements the sorting requirement, the sanitation department will stay within its budget.

Could be false. This answer choice is a necessary vs. sufficient condition confusion! “Require sorting” is a necessary condition of “stay within budget”, not the reverse. Requiring sorting does not guarantee that the sanitation department will stay within its budget.

LSAT 136 – Section 4 – Question 21

LSAT 136 - Section 4 - Question 21

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Review Results

LSAT PrepTest 136 Explanations

Section 1 - Reading Comprehension

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Reading Comprehension

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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