6)which one of the following, if true, would account for the statistic above without supporting the authors conclusion?
12)The socialist's statements imply a conflict with the conservatives view of history if the conservatives also holds that?
help with actual problem, how i could have diagrammed better:
9) dont know if i can post the actual question or not but its the one concerning the new tax plan...i got this wrong and its bugging me, i have a feeling its the one i went about diagramming it
All came from:
Preptest 14, Section 4 (using kaplans books, dont know if it matches actual test)
thanks so much!
help with question type and question Forum
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Addicted to LSAT
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Re: help with question type and question
I'll take the hard one for you. #9. If no one posts the other's let me know and I'll get back to them.
#9
Let's start with drawing out our basic if-then statements (glossary at the bottom)
Great conditional reasoning question btw, if you're struggling with these or the Contra-Postives mentioned below Alpha-Score has some good lesson's on this in the free resources section.
The first two lines give us our premises:
IF STP --> ~ E
IF UE --> ~ STP
These are our premises and are known to be true. We then have our conclusion which is suspect as it makes a conclusion that cannot be drawn on the basis of the two premises provided.
Our conclusion is a bit tricky as it's an "ONLY IF" statement. The easy trick for these statements is to remember that you reverse the order of the statement when you turn it into a basic IF-Then statement. e.g. ONLY IF A THEN B becomes
IF B THEN A or IF B --> A
So our conclusion can be expressed as:
IF E --> UE
or the contra positive:
IF ~ UE --> ~ E
So far we have:
Now let's add in the contra-positive's of the premises:
IF STP --> ~ E
IF E --> ~ STP
IF UE --> ~ STP
IF STP --> ~ UE
And on this basis we conclude:
IF ~ UE --> ~ E
The flaw here is apparent because we don't have anything in our premises that tells us about someone who doesn't understand economics (~ UE) as it only appears at the end or the right side of the IF-THEN statements so nothing follows it. So we can't conclude then that someone who doesn't understand economics will not be elected meaning we can't say:
IF ~ UE --> ~ E
We are concluding that someone will not be elected (through our ONLY IF statement). The only thing that gets us to having no chance of election ( ~ E) is supporting the tax plan (STP). From our first premise. So the error here is that they are assuming that someone who ~ UE will STP and therefore will ~ E.
But what if that person who ~ UE actually did not support the tax plan (~ STP) then they still have a chance at being elected. And that is what the author overlooked. They forgot the possibility that someone could not support the tax plan and not truly understand economics. Correct answer (D).
There's another way of solving it using the conclusion of IF E --> UE that uses the same principles. But basically we know that if you are E then you ~ STP (contra positive of premise #1) but it's possible that despite ~ STP you ~ UE in fact we are told nothing about someone who ~ STP so you could UE or ~ UE. So The author then assumes that someone who is E also UE despite there being no support for this in the premises.
If you're looking for why the other answers are wrong, let me know and I can put something together for you.
Glossary:
STP = Support the tax plan
--> = THEN
~ = not
E = Elected
UE = Understands Economics
#9
Let's start with drawing out our basic if-then statements (glossary at the bottom)
Great conditional reasoning question btw, if you're struggling with these or the Contra-Postives mentioned below Alpha-Score has some good lesson's on this in the free resources section.
The first two lines give us our premises:
IF STP --> ~ E
IF UE --> ~ STP
These are our premises and are known to be true. We then have our conclusion which is suspect as it makes a conclusion that cannot be drawn on the basis of the two premises provided.
Our conclusion is a bit tricky as it's an "ONLY IF" statement. The easy trick for these statements is to remember that you reverse the order of the statement when you turn it into a basic IF-Then statement. e.g. ONLY IF A THEN B becomes
IF B THEN A or IF B --> A
So our conclusion can be expressed as:
IF E --> UE
or the contra positive:
IF ~ UE --> ~ E
So far we have:
Now let's add in the contra-positive's of the premises:
IF STP --> ~ E
IF E --> ~ STP
IF UE --> ~ STP
IF STP --> ~ UE
And on this basis we conclude:
IF ~ UE --> ~ E
The flaw here is apparent because we don't have anything in our premises that tells us about someone who doesn't understand economics (~ UE) as it only appears at the end or the right side of the IF-THEN statements so nothing follows it. So we can't conclude then that someone who doesn't understand economics will not be elected meaning we can't say:
IF ~ UE --> ~ E
We are concluding that someone will not be elected (through our ONLY IF statement). The only thing that gets us to having no chance of election ( ~ E) is supporting the tax plan (STP). From our first premise. So the error here is that they are assuming that someone who ~ UE will STP and therefore will ~ E.
But what if that person who ~ UE actually did not support the tax plan (~ STP) then they still have a chance at being elected. And that is what the author overlooked. They forgot the possibility that someone could not support the tax plan and not truly understand economics. Correct answer (D).
There's another way of solving it using the conclusion of IF E --> UE that uses the same principles. But basically we know that if you are E then you ~ STP (contra positive of premise #1) but it's possible that despite ~ STP you ~ UE in fact we are told nothing about someone who ~ STP so you could UE or ~ UE. So The author then assumes that someone who is E also UE despite there being no support for this in the premises.
If you're looking for why the other answers are wrong, let me know and I can put something together for you.
Glossary:
STP = Support the tax plan
--> = THEN
~ = not
E = Elected
UE = Understands Economics
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Audio Technica Guy
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- Joined: Tue Jun 29, 2010 5:21 pm
Re: help with question type and question
6 is simply a weaken question. It sounds like it's different, but what are you essentially doing on weaken questions that use statistics as their support? Explaining the support away without reaching the author's conclusion.hopefor170 wrote: 6)which one of the following, if true, would account for the statistic above without supporting the authors conclusion?
12)The socialist's statements imply a conflict with the conservatives view of history if the conservatives also holds that?
(I'm assuming that this is one of those two-people arguments)
12 is a twist on what Princeton Review calls a point-at-issue question. It's kind of a weird hybrid of a point at issue and a necessary assumption. Assume they disagree and then figure out what is required of the conservative for that to happen. However, this question type hasn't shown up in a really long time and is considered extinct. Even when it was showing up, it wasn't common.
