LSAT 144 – Section 2 – Question 16

LSAT 144 - Section 2 - Question 16

October 2015

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT144 S2 Q16
+LR
Flaw or descriptive weakening +Flaw
Sampling +Smpl
Part v. Whole +PvW
A
3%
160
B
9%
157
C
73%
166
D
3%
159
E
13%
160
144
154
164
 +Harder 148.975 +SubsectionMedium

When surveyed about which party they would like to see in the legislature, 40 percent of respondents said Conservative, 20 percent said Moderate, and 40 percent said Liberal. If the survey results are reliable, we can conclude that most citizens would like to see a legislature that is roughly 40 percent Conservative, 20 percent Moderate, and 40 percent Liberal.

Summarize Argument
In a survey asking which party they want in the legislature, 40% said C, 20% said M, and 40% said L.

The author concludes that if the survey results are reliable, then most citizens would like to see a legislature that is roughly 40% C, 20% M, and 40% L.

Identify and Describe Flaw
The survey asked which party respondents would like to see in the legislature. It didn’t ask what % of the legislature should belong to each party. The author interprets the proportions that said they wanted to see a particular party in the legislature as relevant to the distribution of each party in the legislature.

Another framing of the flaw is that the author mistakenly thinks the overall breakdown of preferences for Conservative, Moderate, and Liberal legislatures is something that applies to most citizens’ individual preferences for the makeup of the legislature.

A
The argument uses premises about the actual state of affairs to draw a conclusion about how matters should be.
The conclusion isn’t about what “should” be the case. The conclusion is simply a statement about the preferences of most citizens.
B
The argument draws a conclusion that merely restates a premise presented in favor of it.
(B) describes circular reasoning. The conclusion is not a restatement of the premise, because the premise is a statement describing the results of a survey. The conclusion is not a description of the results of a survey.
C
The argument takes for granted that the preferences of a group as a whole are the preferences of most individual members of the group.
The 40/20/40 preference in the survey is the preference of the group of survey participants. But the author mistakenly thinks this 40/20/40 preference applies to individual participants in the survey.
D
The argument fails to consider that the survey results might have been influenced by the political biases of the researchers who conducted the survey.
The conclusion starts with “if the survey results are reliable” — this means the conclusion doesn’t assume the results are reliable. It makes a statement about what would be the case IF the results are reliable.
E
The argument uses evidence that supports only rough estimates to draw a precisely quantified conclusion.
The conclusion uses the word “roughly” when describing the 40/20/40 breakdown. So the argument doesn’ draw a “precisely quantified” conclusion. A statement of “rough” numbers is not precise.

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LSAT PrepTest 144 Explanations

Section 1 - Reading Comprehension

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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