PT 57 Section 2 No. 25 Forum

[mz253]

felt it should be the right answer. but i'm still confused...

it seems the stimulus says

>100 + nonresedent who were not resident befoer ->register

the campaign complies with the rule.. donors are residents or former residents (so the sufficient condition is destroyed), but why they all don't need to register?

The whole arguement sounds like

A - >B
not A -> ??

Thanks!

[lsatextreme]

what you said is actually answer choice E I believe. E says they absolutely didn't register at all as a result, which would follow your logic but it's the wrong answer because just because none of the contributions they received needed to be registered, doesn't mean that he didn't just register any or even all of them anyways.

so I believe C is just simply stating that according to the rules, no one NEEDED to be registered, but unlike E, it's not saying that he absolutely didn't register anyone at all.

[mz253]

hey thanks for your reply. i guess what i'm asking is why according to the rule, these residents or former residents DON'T NEED to register?

[lsatextreme]

I think the confusion is stemming from the fact that "not B" is really "to not register period", and that's different from "not NEEDing to register." They still could have registered with the city council but the stimulus doesn't specify that, so we can't establish that they didn't register AT ALL, which is what choice E is saying. C just says that they didn't NEED to, but that leaves room for the fact that they actually did or did not register in the end.

so they didn't do the whole "A -> B, not A -> not B" type of thing that you might have thought they were doing.

[mz253]

thanks so much for your reply! i am completely fine with E, i have eliminated when i was doing the question.

my problem is that i don't understand C. probably i didn't explain myself clearly. this is how i read the argument:

rule: if somebody donates 100+, is a nonresident that is not a former resident, then he/she has to register.
facts: every donor is a resident or former resident (so the "if" is not satisfied)
conclusion: the campaign complies to the rule.

what i am confused here is that why "nobody needs to register" is absolutely true? because that "some donors need to register and they registered their donation" will be consistent with the stimulus as well.

or does "accept" means "take in the money without registration"?

[zworykin]

The stimulus here isn't an argument. There isn't a conclusion. It's just a set of statements. We can treat them as premises which we know to be true because of the question.

Premise 1: The ENTIRE LAW is stated in Premise 2:
Premise 2: Contributions over 100 from nonresident, non-former-residents must be registered.
Inference 1: Contributions under 100 and/or from residents and former residents do not need to be registered since the law does not mention them.
Premise 3: The campaign complied with the rule since it only accepted contributions from residents and former residents.

The question tells us that all of the above is true, including the "since" clause in Premise 3. The campaign complied because it only accepted contributions from residents and former residents. This means, logically, none of the contributions had to be registered because none of them fulfilled the conditions laid out in Premise 2.

Now, if Premise 3 had simply been "The campaign complied with the rules," we would not be able to choose Response C, because they could have complied by making sure to register all contributions which needed to be registered; as written, however, we know that they did not need to register any of them because they were all from residents and former residents.


Does that help?

[lsatextreme]

thanks so much for your reply! i am completely fine with E, i have eliminated when i was doing the question.

my problem is that i don't understand C. probably i didn't explain myself clearly. this is how i read the argument:

rule: if somebody donates 100+, is a nonresident that is not a former resident, then he/she has to register.
facts: every donor is a resident or former resident (so the "if" is not satisfied)
conclusion: the campaign complies to the rule.

what i am confused here is that why "nobody needs to register" is absolutely true? because that "some donors need to register and they registered their donation" will be consistent with the stimulus as well.

or does "accept" means "take in the money without registration"?

C says "No contributions to BRIMLEY'S CAMPAIGN needed to be registered with the city council." Sure, there's probably some donors who had to register, but according to the stimulus, none from what Brimley received NEEDED to be registered.

[nonamebreakdown]

I was kinda thrown off by this, too, but ultimately chose C. What we're told is that there is ONE law in Weston: "THE law of the city...is as follows..." Since there is only one set of conditions under which contributions need to be registered with the city council, we can view the conditional as an "if and only if" statement. Since Brimley doesn't satisfy the sufficient condition, then, it doesn't satisfy the necessary condition, either, i.e., it doesn't need to register its contributions with the city council. But just because it didn't NEED to, doesn't mean it didn't. For this reason E is incorrect. This all goes back to there only being one law. Had it read "one of the laws of the city is as follows," we would not be able to conclude anything from the fact that Brimley doesn't satisfy the sufficient condition. But because there is only one law, we know that answer choice C has to be true.

[mz253]

Thank you very much! I guess I didn't get that "the law" means there's only one law ;-(
If it is "if and only if", then the question is much easier.

I was kinda thrown off by this, too, but ultimately chose C. What we're told is that there is ONE law in Weston: "THE law of the city...is as follows..." Since there is only one set of conditions under which contributions need to be registered with the city council, we can view the conditional as an "if and only if" statement. Since Brimley doesn't satisfy the sufficient condition, then, it doesn't satisfy the necessary condition, either, i.e., it doesn't need to register its contributions with the city council. But just because it didn't NEED to, doesn't mean it didn't. For this reason E is incorrect. This all goes back to there only being one law. Had it read "one of the laws of the city is as follows," we would not be able to conclude anything from the fact that Brimley doesn't satisfy the sufficient condition. But because there is only one law, we know that answer choice C has to be true.