Sections 2

Sign up to star your favorites LSAT 119 - Section 2 - Question 16

April 21, 2012

The ability to access information via computer is a tremendous resource for visually impaired people. Only a limited amount of printed information is accessible in braille, large type, or audiotape. But a person with the right hardware and software can access a large quantity of information from libraries and museums around the world, and can have the computer read the information aloud, display it in large type, or produce a braille version. Thus, visually impaired people can now access information from computers more easily than they can from most traditional sources.

Summarize Argument

The author concludes that visually impaired people can more easily access information from computers than from traditional sources. This is because little printed information is visually accessible, whereas computer technologies can make a vast array of information visually accessible.

Notable Assumptions

For information to be “more easily accessible” to visually impaired people, the author assumes that visually impaired people have access to the right hardware and software. If this wasn’t the case, then such information wouldn’t be accessible to visually impaired people.

A

A computerized speech synthesizer is often less expensive than a complete library of audiotapes.

These are both visually accessible ways of consuming information. We don’t care which is the more expensive of these two.

B

Relatively easy-to-use computer systems that can read information aloud, display it in large type, or produce a braille version of it are widely available.

Hardware and software were potential barriers to access in the author’s argument, since it’s not a given visually impaired people have access to the right tools. This tells us they do have access to those tools.

C

Many visually impaired people prefer traditional sources of information to computers that can read information aloud, display it in large type, or produce a braille version of it.

We don’t care what they prefer. The author is simply stating the visually impaired people will have access to more information.

D

Most visually impaired people who have access to information via computer also have access to this same information via more traditional sources.

This weakens the author’s argument by stating that most visually impaired people will consume no new information on computers.

E

The rate at which printed information is converted into formats easily accessible to visually impaired people will increase.

At best, this leaves the author’s argument neutral. At worst, this weakens the author’s argument by showing that printed information is catching up to computer information.

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Sign up to star your favorites LSAT 119 - Section 2 - Question 17

April 21, 2012

Legislator: The recently released crime statistics clearly show that the new laws requiring stiffer punishments for violators have reduced the crime rate. In the areas covered by those laws, the incidence of crime has decreased by one-fourth over the four years since the legislation was enacted.

Analyst: The statistics are welcome news, but they do not provide strong evidence that the new laws caused the drop in crime. Many comparable areas that lack such legislation have reported a similar drop in the crime rate during the same period.

Summarize Argument: Counter-Position

The analyst concludes that the decrease in crime in areas covered by new, stricter punishment laws does not constitute strong evidence that those laws caused the decrease in crime. The analyst supports this conclusion with a comparison to areas that have experienced a similar decrease in crime, but without similar laws.

Describe Method of Reasoning

The analyst counters the legislator’s cause-and-effect argument by pointing out comparable cases that have shown the same “effect” but that have not experienced the proposed “cause.” This suggests that there is some alternative explanation that has given rise to the effect.

A

pointing out that the legislator has provided no evidence of the reliability of the statistics on which the legislator’s conclusion is based

The analyst doesn’t call the reliability or truth of the statistics into question, only arguing that they do not necessarily support the legislator’s conclusion.

B

arguing that the legislator has unreasonably concluded that one event has caused another without ruling out the possibility that both events are effects of a common cause

The analyst doesn’t argue that the reduction in crime and the introduction of stricter laws are caused by the same thing. The analyst instead points out that the laws simply may not be the cause of the reduction in crime.

C

objecting that the statistics on which the legislator is basing his conclusion are drawn from a time period that is too short to yield a meaningful data sample

The analyst doesn’t object to the statistics in any way and accepts the decrease in crime as real.

D

claiming that the legislator has attempted to establish a particular conclusion because doing so is in the legislator’s self-interest rather than because of any genuine concern for the truth of the matter

The analyst doesn’t address the legislator’s motivation for making the argument, only arguing against the content of the argument itself.

E

implying that the legislator has drawn a conclusion about cause and effect without considering how often the alleged effect has occurred in the absence of the alleged cause

The analyst points to cases where the same effect has occurred (a decrease in crime) but that have not been subject to the legislator’s assumed cause (the stricter laws). This is used to suggest that the cause-and-effect conclusion drawn by the legislator is unjustified.

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Sign up to star your favorites LSAT 119 - Section 2 - Question 18

April 21, 2012

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Sign up to star your favorites LSAT 119 - Section 2 - Question 19

April 21, 2012

In an experiment, researchers played a series of musical intervals—two-note sequences—to a large, diverse group of six-month-old babies. They found that the babies paid significantly more attention when the intervals were perfect octaves, fifths, or fourths than otherwise. These intervals are prevalent in the musical systems of most cultures around the world. Thus, humans probably have a biological predisposition to pay more attention to those intervals than to others.

Summarize Argument: Phenomenon-Hypothesis

The author concludes that humans likely have a biological predisposition to certain musical intervals. This is based on a study where babies paid more attention to certain intervals than others, and the fact certain intervals are prevalent around the world.

Notable Assumptions

In order for the study to signify a biological predisposition, the babies in the study can’t have any prior musical conditioning. Otherwise, we could conclude that the babies were simply more accustomed to those intervals and thus paid more attention. The author must also assume that many cultures around the world weren’t influenced by some single or small group of musical systems. If they were, then the presence of certain intervals would signify cultural influence rather than biological predisposition.

A

Several similar experiments using older children and adults found that these subjects, too, had a general tendency to pay more attention to octaves, fifths, and fourths than to other musical intervals.

We don’t care about older children. Older children have definitely already been exposed to music.

B

None of the babies in the experiment had previous exposure to music from any culture.

This defends against a potential weakener. If the babies in the study had already been exposed to music, then we could imagine their interest in certain intervals came from that exposure. But since they hadn’t been exposed to music, their interest was purely natural.

C

All of the babies in the experiment had been exposed to music drawn equally from a wide variety of cultures around the world.

This weakens the author’s argument. If the babies had already been exposed to music, then their interest in certain intervals likely came from that exposure.

D

In a second experiment, these same babies showed no clear tendency to notice primary colors more than other colors.

We don’t care about primary colors.

E

Octaves, fifths, and fourths were played more frequently during the experiment than other musical intervals were.

If anything, this weakens the author’s argument. Perhaps the babies paid attention to these intervals because they were played frequently, rather than because of some biological disposition towards these intervals.

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Sign up to star your favorites LSAT 119 - Section 2 - Question 20

April 21, 2012

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Sign up to star your favorites LSAT 119 - Section 2 - Question 21

April 21, 2012

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Sign up to star your favorites LSAT 119 - Section 2 - Question 22

April 21, 2012

Detective: Laser-printer drums are easily damaged, and any nick in a drum will produce a blemish of similar dimensions on each page produced by that printer. So in matching a blemish on a page with a nick on a drum, we can reliably trace a suspicious laser-printed document to the precise printer on which it was produced.

Summarize Argument

The detective concludes that he can connect a document to the laser-printer from which it was printed by matching a flaw on the document to the printer’s drum. This is because a flawed printer drum produces a similar flaw on the paper it prints.

Notable Assumptions

The detective assumes that the flaws on the drums are unique and, in extension, that several drums don’t have the same flaw. He also assumes that he can access the flawed drums to compare them with the flawed documents.

A

Criminals are unlikely to use their own laser printers to produce suspicious documents.

This does not affect the argument. The detective doesn’t claim this method will lead him to the criminal—the detective only claims that the method will lead him to the precise printer from which the blemished document was produced.

B

Drum nicks are usually so small that it requires skill to accurately determine their size and shape.

This does not affect the argument. The skill required to accurately identify drum nicks is not up for question; the usefulness of the method outlined by the detective is.

C

The manufacturing process often produces the same nick on several drums.

This weakens the argument. If several drums have the same nick, the detective would not be able to reliably determine which printer produced the blemished document using his method.

D

Blemishes on documents are sometimes totally concealed by characters that are printed over them.

This does not affect the argument. The detective only argues that a document can be traced when a blemish on a page can be matched with a nick on a drum—if the blemish can‘t be identified in the first place (and thus can’t be connected to a drum), the argument doesn’t apply.

E

Most suspicious documents are not produced on laser printers.

This does not affect the argument. The detective is only concerned with documents printed from laser-printers.

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Sign up to star your favorites LSAT 119 - Section 2 - Question 23

April 21, 2012

The question stem reads: The Conclusion follows logically if which one of the following is assumed? This is a Sufficient Assumption question.

Love is complicated in the real world, which is no different than love in the LSAT. It's possible to love someone and not be loved back. Unfortunately, love is not a biconditional. My previous relationships confirm that. While reading this stimulus, it is essential to see which "way" the love is going. Are you loving or being loved? The stimulus is short and conditional heavy, so let's break these down as we go. The stimulus starts with "whoever is kind is loved by somebody or another." This translates into the lawgic:

kind -> loved by someone

Next, the stimulus claims that "whoever loves anyone is happy." This translated into the lawgic:

Love anyone -> happy

The argument concludes, "Whoever is kind is happy." Translated:

Kind -> happy

Let's organize this argument into:

P1: Kind -> loved by someone

P2: Love anyone -> happy

______________________________________________

C: Kind -> happy

We can kick up the sufficient condition so we now have:

P3: Kind

P1: Kind -> loved by someone

P2: Love anyone -> happy

______________________________________________

C: Happy

We want to get to "happy," and P2 will get us there if we can satisfy "love anyone." Let's make that our necessary condition: (__) -> love anyone. Now we need to find a sufficient condition that will be satisfied by the argument. Notice how P3 satisfies the sufficient condition of P1, so we can infer that "loved by someone" occurs. Let's make "loved by someone" the sufficient condition of conditional: loved by someone -> love anyone. Now we have a valid argument:

P3: Kind

P1: Kind -> loved by someone

SA: Loved by someone -> love anyone

P2: Love anyone -> happy

______________________________________________

C: Happy

P3 will trigger P1, P1 triggers our SA, and our SA will trigger P2, which brings us to the desired conclusion of "happy." Happy is exactly what we are because we just solved this four-star problem. Let's move to the answer choices.

Answer Choice (A) is incorrect. If you picked (A), you likely misread P1 and thought that being kind meant you loved someone. You can rule out (A) quickly by seeing we are missing the concept of "loved by."

Answer Choice (B) is also out. You can rule out (B) because we are missing the concept of "loved by."

Answer Choice (C) is also out. We want to get to "happy," but (C) has "happy" in sufficient condition; we can rule (C) out.

Correct Answer Choice (D) is the contrapositive of our prephase. (D) translate to:

Loves no one -> loved by no one

We take the contrapositive:

/(loved by no one) -> /(loves no one)

Not being loved by no one means you are loved by someone. Not loving no one means you love someone. So we get our SA: "Loved by someone -> love anyone."

Answer Choice (E) is the most popular wrong answer. If you picked (E), you likely thought that (E) would let you infer "loves everyone." "Loves everyone" would satisfy "loves anyone" and deliver you to "happy." The problem with (E) is that it has "Kind" in the necessary. Remember, satisfying the necessary condition has no effect on the sufficient condition.

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Sign up to star your favorites LSAT 119 - Section 2 - Question 24

April 21, 2012

It is now clear that the ancient Egyptians were the first society to produce alcoholic beverages. It had been thought that the ancient Babylonians were the first; they had mastered the process of fermentation for making wine as early as 1500 B.C. However, archaeologists have discovered an Egyptian cup dating from 2000 B.C. whose sides depict what appears to be an Egyptian brewery, and whose chemical residue reveals that it contained a form of alcoholic beer.

Summarize Argument

The author concludes that the Egyptians must have produced alcohol before anyone else. His basis for doing so is that the oldest trace of alcoholic beverages yet discovered is Egyptian.

Identify and Describe Flaw

The author’s argument is vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that there could be currently undiscovered traces of alcohol that are older than the recently discovered Egyptian cup. An even older trace of alcohol from a different civilization could be discovered tomorrow, which would falsify his conclusion.

A

It makes a generalization about Egyptian society based on a sample so small that it is likely to be unrepresentative.

The author is not making a generalization about Egypt, he’s making an observation. (Namely, that the Egyptians were the first civilization to produce alcohol.) Having a sample representative of Egyptian society in general is irrelevant.

B

It uses the term “alcoholic beverage” in a different sense in the premises than in the conclusion.

This the cookie-cutter flaw of equivocation; it isn’t applicable here, because the author’s use of “alcohol” is consistent throughout the stimulus.

C

It presumes, without providing justification, that because one society developed a technology before another, the development in the latter was dependent on the development in the former.

The author does not presume that there was any relationship between the Egyptians’ and Babylonians’ respective development of alcoholic beverages.

D

It ignores the possibility that the first known instance of a kind is not the first instance of that kind.

The author fails to consider that our current knowledge could be limited. The oldest trace of alcohol yet discovered is Egyptian, but in the future we might discover an even older trace of alcohol from a different civilization.

E

It provides no evidence for the claim that the Babylonians produced wine as early as 1500 B.C.

This implies that the Babylonians may have produced wine later than the author thinks. Since the author’s argument is that the Egyptians produced wine before the Babylonians, this is irrelevant.

The question stem reads: The reasoning in the argument is most vulnerable to criticism on which one of the following grounds? This is a Flaw question.

The author begins by claiming that it is clear that Egyptians were the first society to produce alcoholic beverages. That sounds like a conclusion; let's see the author's evidence for that claim. The author then describes how it had been thought the Babylonians were first because they had a process for fermentation around 1500 BC. However, archaeologists have found an Egyptian cup from 2000 B.C. With chemical residue that indicates it contained an alcoholic form of beer. So the author's argument uses the premise that the Egyptian cup is the oldest evidence of alcohol to conclude that Egypt must have been the first society to produce alcohol. Immediately, we can see the author's line of reasoning as flawed. Let's go back in time to 5 seconds before the archaeologists found this Egyptian cup. Then, the oldest evidence we had of alcohol was from the Babylonians. Using the authors' line of reasoning, we conclude that the Babylonians were the first society to produce alcohol. We would be subsequently proven wrong when the archeologists find the Egyptian cup 5 seconds later. All that was needed to prove our argument wrong was finding new evidence that an older civilization had alcohol. Let's return to the present, where the author claims that Egyptians must have been the oldest society to produce alcohol. How do we know we won't find even earlier evidence of alcohol in the future? We can't. The author has made an error in assuming what is true of the past must be true in the future. This is the Problem of Induction.

However, there is an even more fundamental problem. What we humans know has no bearing on the actual truth of the matter. Even if we could see into the future and determine that this Egyptian cup would be the oldest evidence we find, we could not say that Egyptians were, in fact, the first society to produce alcohol. An earlier society could have created alcohol but left no evidence behind for us to find. The upshot is that a lack of evidence for a claim does not constitute evidence that the claim is false.

Answer Choice (A) is incorrect because the claim that Egypt was the first society to produce alcohol is not a generalization about Egyptian society. Either they were the first to produce alcohol, or they were not. A generalization would be that all Egyptians drank alcohol. If the author argued that all Egyptians drank alcohol because we found a single cup in a pharaoh's tomb, then (A) would look better.

Answer Choice (B) is wrong. The premises talk about two distinct types of alcoholic beverage (Egyptian beer vs. Babylonian wine). However, the conclusion talks about alcoholic beverages in general. Alcoholic beer counts as an alcoholic beverage.(B) would look better if the author used the old cup of Egyptian beer to conclude Egyptians were the first society to produce wine.

Answer Choice (C) is incorrect. If we mapped the stimulus onto (C), we would get the following: Because Egpyt developed fermentation before the Babylonians, the development of fermentation in Babylon depended on the development of fermentation in Egypt. Wildly off base from the argument, eliminate.

Correct Answer Choice (D) is what we prephased. The argument does ignore that the first known instance of alcohol (the Egyptian wine cup) is not the first instance of alcohol.

Answer Choice (E) is incorrect. While it is true that the author provides no evidence for the claim that they produced wine as early as 1500 BC, it is irrelevant. If it is true the Babylonians had wine as early as 1500 BC, the Egyptian cup is still older. If it is false, the Babylonians had wine as early as 1500 BC, and the Egyptian cup is still the oldest. Additionally, Even if the author provided evidence for the claim about Babylonian wine, we would still the argument would still be flawed due to the problem discussed in (D).

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Sign up to star your favorites LSAT 119 - Section 2 - Question 25

April 21, 2012

Studies have shown that specialty sports foods contain exactly the same nutrients in the same quantities as do common foods from the grocery store. Moreover, sports foods cost from two to three times more than regular foods. So very few athletes would buy sports foods were it not for expensive advertising campaigns.

Summarize Argument: Phenomenon-Hypothesis

The author hypothesizes that the factor driving athletes’ purchases of sports foods is expensive advertising campaigns. This is based on the phenomenon that sports food are nutritionally the same as normal foods, but cost two to three times more. From the stimulus alone, we can’t tell how many athletes are currently buying sports foods; we only have the author’s conclusion that without the expensive advertising campaigns, that number would be very low.

Notable Assumptions

The author assumes that there are no factors other than expensive advertisements that could make sports foods more attractive to athletes than regular foods.

A

Sports foods are occasionally used by world-famous athletes.

This does not affect the argument. World-famous athletes could be occasionally using sports foods in private and consequently having no impact on how regular athletes perceive these foods.

B

Many grocery stores carry sports foods alongside traditional inventories.

This does not affect the argument. It merely reinforces the idea that athletes can choose between sports foods and regular foods at the grocery store.

C

Sports foods are easier than regular foods to carry and consume during training and competition.

This weakens the argument. It offers another explanation for why athletes are purchasing sports foods, outside of the advertising campaigns: convenience. The greater convenience of sports foods makes them more attractive than regular foods, despite the price difference.

D

Regular foods contain vitamins and minerals that are essential to developing strength and endurance.

This does not affect the argument. Sports foods and regular foods have identical nutrients in the same quantities.

E

Sports foods can nutritionally substitute for regular meals.

This does not affect the argument. Sports foods and regular foods have identical nutrients in the same quantities, so them being able to nutritionally substitute for regular meals is not new or useful information.

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