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I looked this up on Manhattan but wasnt satisfied with the response.

My issue with this question is this: from my understanding, mundane ideas = boring ideas. The issue in the stimulus is that some writers use elaborate language to describe BORING ideas - which impresses some, but some see how much of a douche the original writer is actually being by doing this. So therefore a good principle is _________________...

My issue with the CR (D) is this; why is it saying that the style shouldnt be more complex than the ideas expressed? Unless I'm missing something, it never called the ideas discussed in the stimulus previously as "simple" but only "mundane". Boring doesnt equal simple right? But at the same time, I realize this isn't a principle question, but figuring out how it logically follows. Still, I think (A) makes more sense, because they are bashing overly complicated writing for no reason as being bad or worse. To me, it would make more senses that simpler idea = better writing.

Can some one please explain the flaw in my reasoning above and give an explanation for why (D) is actually correct and (A) is incorrect? I got down to between these two pretty quickly and struggled to differentiate between the two, but overall thought (A) was a better answer for a logical completion.

Thanks in advance guys!

I think your primary difficulty here is in your definition of mundane. While mundane does generally have a connotation of "boring", it's also a word used to refer to "simple" ideas just as often. Merriam-Webster online lists two definitions:

• : dull and ordinary
  
  : relating to ordinary life on earth rather than to spiritual things

I would absolutely describe ideas "relating to ordinary life" as simple as compared to complex philosophical or mathematical concepts, for instance.

You have to be careful with words like mundane on the LSAT - it's not explicitly testing your understanding of every connotation of the word, but if the LSAT uses a reasonable connotation of the word, you will be expected to recognize and accept it. Your best bet is to be open to a thought process that is something like this:

• Okay, we're talking about boring ideas, blah blah blah, oh wait, (D) is talking about complex vs SIMPLE ideas, not "boring" ideas. Hmmmm. Could "mundane" possibly mean "simple" instead of just 'boring"? It's not how I would use the word, but yes, I suppose "mundane" could be "simple". If that's how the LSAT is using it, then (D) would be a rockstar answer, and a MUCH tighter fit than (A).

(A) just goes way too far. This author isn't slamming ALL complex writing, for every subject - just complex writing for "mundane" subjects - however we define that. Remember that "completes the passage most logically" type questions are essentially inference questions. You can't wildly stray from the text, or make claims that are significantly broader than the support you've been given.

So, (A) should have been concerning to you in its breadth, regardless of how you were defining "mundane". That concern should have led you back to (D) to examine it more closely, since it is clearly advocating simple writing only in certain contexts.




PS - Just FYI, I looked this up on the Manhattan LSAT forums as well, and it looks like we haven't yet had an instructor weigh in on this particular question, so the thread is just a few students responding to each other.

Edit: scooped so hard.

So we're looking at a Complete the Passage question, which means we have to infer something based upon facts that link in the stimulus. Nice, first let's find some facts that connect (tip---look for pronouns or the same condition/event used again) and then make an inference.

(1) Sometimes writers use elaborate language to express simple ideas
(2) Readers will either see through the language (recognize that the idea is simple) or be impressed but probably misunderstand the idea.
___________________________________________________________________________

Inference: In the scenario where poor writers express simple ideas with complex language, readers will likely either recognize that the idea is simple, or misunderstand the idea.

That's what we can infer, and it seems pretty basic, but that inference represents the "scope" of our analysis as well as our prephrase. We want to stay as close as possible to the inference we made above while still accounting for what the stem wants us to do (infer a principle based on these facts).

Now let's skim through the answers..... A couple things should stick out here. First, answers (B), (C), and (E) are all wrong because they're unsupported by the facts in the stimulus, they also have the absolute language buzzwords we like to look for. And second, answers (A) and (D) are contenders.

So we're down to two answers, what do we do here? Well, since only one answer satisfies the question stem, and since the other answers don't do that, we know that only one of (A) and (D) has the right effect. When you narrow a question down to two answers, look for the difference between the answers because if one is correct, they have to have different effects. Let's look at how they are different:

Answer choice (A) is broader is scope than answer choice (D) because one is talking about the quality of writing as a whole, and the other is talking about a limit on a part of writing.

Let me blow that up a bit---can we infer that as the simplicity of style increases, so too does the quality of writing? Which facts could lead us to this inference? We only know about the bad habits of poor writers. Now you may be thinking, "Well there it is! We have an ornate style and poor writing!" True, but this answer encompasses other situations as well; it says that relationship between style and quality holds true for all writers. But, I don't see any facts about other types of writers. Perhaps the opposite holds true for good writers? We don't know. And because we don't know, this answer must be unsupported by the facts above.

Now let's come back to answer choice (D). Can we infer that some limit should be placed upon the style of writing based upon the complexity of the ideas within the writing? This answer should set of a bunch of checkmarks in your head----limit on style? Check, that's because in some cases readers don't use the style (see through it), and in other cases it tends to cloud the reader's interpretation. So the claim that there should be a limit is supported by the facts because if there's not a limit then the style will be irrelevant or lead to misinterpretation. Complexity of the ideas within the writing? Check, we know that there is a relationship between these two things because of the first and second sentences.

Again, the main difference between these two answers is one establishes a limit on style, while the other claims that simplicity determines the quality of writing. We can infer the first, because that limit only relates to when the complexity of the expressed ideas is greater than the complexity of the language. Take a look at this graph:

Complexity of Ideas:
-------X-----------------Y-----------------Z-------


Complexity of Style:
-------A-----------------B-----------------C-------


Under answer choice (D), where the complexity of ideas equals X, the complexity of the style should not be B or C. But where the complexity of the ideas equals Z, the style should not exceed C; it could be less, but it cannot be greater. So this answer says that we can infer an upper boundary of style based upon the complexity of the ideas expressed. It leaves us some wiggle room because it only applies to situations where ideas > style.

But answer choice (A), in contrast has no wiggle room. Instead it is a very strong statement that requires information we don't have.

WHAT YOU SHOULD TAKE AWAY FROM THIS QUESTION
When you're down to two answers, look at the effects of each one. Then ask yourself which effect is most likely to satisfy the question stem? In inference questions, an effect that is absolute tends to be produced by an incorrect answer choice. In the future, look out for these---broad answers should set an alarm off in your head. They're not necessarily incorrect, but it's a common pattern of wrong answer choices that you should anticipate and recognize.

Hey Christine,

Thanks a lot for this. If I knew mundane = simple, I think I would have gotten this one right. I need to not be so rigid. I keep finding that since I've moved to drilling LR sections, the questions that I get wrong are the "easier" ones. For example, I got 4 wrong on this section, all of which were according to the 7sage scorer, easier questions (2,3 6, 13) if you were wondering. Not really sure why I keep having this happen and generally have greater success on the "tougher" questions.

Oh and by the way, I realized I came off as a douche a bit in my original post - I appreciate your help and the help of the Manhattan forums a lot!

Take care.

Edit -- lol thanks a lot too DD. Appreciate all of the pro's coming to my rescue here.

flash21 wrote:Hey Christine,

Thanks a lot for this. If I knew mundane = simple, I think I would have gotten this one right. I need to not be so rigid. I keep finding that since I've moved to drilling LR sections, the questions that I get wrong are the "easier" ones. For example, I got 4 wrong on this section, all of which were according to the 7sage scorer, easier questions (2,3 6, 13) if you were wondering. Not really sure why I keep having this happen and generally have greater success on the "tougher" questions.

Oh and by the way, I realized I came off as a douche a bit in my original post - I appreciate your help and the help of the Manhattan forums a lot!

Take care.

Edit -- lol thanks a lot too DD. Appreciate all of the pro's coming to my rescue here.

Oh hon, you did not come off a douche! :p Look, if you go look up a thread on our forum and 5 different instructors explain something in graphic detail, but it still doesn't gel for you, you should absolutely say so! That's a completely legit experience and I definitely wasn't trying to take you to task for noting that the thread didn't help you!

Sometimes people don't realize that our forums have a lot of students responding to students, as well as instructor 'official' responses. As a result, there are occasionally misunderstandings - someone might look at a thread that is only student responses to one another and walk away thinking "hmph, that explanation wasn't super comprehensive" - and sometimes they'd be totally right, since an instructor hadn't weighed in yet!

So, mostly I was just trying to remind folks that our forums are greatly student driven, and while we instructors tackle as much as we can, and many student explanations are **stellar** (see, e.g., our current crazed explainer WaltGrace1983), sometimes certain threads won't have been fully explored for a variety of reasons.

As for your odd tendency to miss easier questions, I've actually seen that happen a lot. Your comment that you need to be less 'rigid' is totally spot on. Generally, when people are getting tougher questions and missing easier ones, they are engaging in a high level of nit-picking and hairsplitting on correct answers, instead of accepting that certain words are totally reasonable synonyms of one another (and therefore not a term shift), or accepting an answer that's not phrased precisely how they predicted it would be, or something similar.

The good news is that you've noticed the tendency - now you need to unpack it. My colleague Brian sometimes refers to this as "letting the easy questions be easy". Sometimes that requires a bit of strategic thinking: if you're reading "mundane" as "boring", and you get down to (A) and (D), they both seem problematic. (A) is problematic for being overbroad (a true structural deficiency) while (D) is problematic for equating "boring" with "simple".

At this point, you've got to engage in some LSAT-tendency thinking. Either the LSAT wants you to accept a clearly overbroad answer choice as correct, or your understanding of the definitions of "mundane", "boring" and/or "simple" might not be perfect. Which is more likely? Faced with this split, I would always choose to assume that perhaps my precise definitions were imperfect, or too rigid rather than assume that the LSAT wanted me to accept an answer choice that was so clearly overbroad.

There's no way to save (A) from its structural defect. But if our definitions are not quite right, then that would fix all the apparent issues with (D). Then the final question: is it possible that "mundane" could in fact mean "simple" as well as "boring". Unless you are damn sure that there's absolutely no way in seven hells that it could, you should be open to the possibility at this point.

I think that knowing "mundane" could mean "simple" would have saved you here, but it's not the only thing that would have - if you'd been more sensitive to the structural defect in (A), that would still have potentially given you a path out of your quicksand. Remember, answering a question incorrectly requires two separate mistakes: rejecting the correct answer and also accepting a flawed answer. Sometimes the error on one side of that is easier to see than the other!

Christine, thanks a lot.

Firstly, "letting the easy questions be easy" it actually a great idea to use. I honestly find the first half of an LR question to be the hardest sometimes, which is quite odd. I'll think to myself during the next section, "let the easy questions be easy"!. As great as cambridge packages are, the fact you KNOW you are doing a level 1 opposed to a level 4 can sometimes be a bit of a mental game. More specifically, I've became pretty good at being sensitive to particular words and flaws, but at the same time, when a question seems to easy I am super sceptical due to the fact the level fours often SEEM to have a correct answer that is EASY but its actually a trap answer! The fact LR sections don't have the difficulty level displayed of each individual question is something I need to get used to during my transition from drilling to full sections, which sounds pretty weird, but its a legitimate small issue for myself, as I've noticed in the trends from the sections I've done thus far. You think that could be party of the issue, or am I reaching here?

I guess you're right also, that I did accept the flawed answer AND rejected the correct response. I think now I was letting myself off the hook a bit for picking the wrong answer. There is a few LR questions that I sometimes get wrong because of misinterpretation of the English language, such as this question with Mundane = simple, when I know it to be boring, which can be pretty frustrating although not all that common.

Thanks a lot for the replies on my numerous threads. I always enjoy reading your responses and appreciate everyone weighing into help me.

Take care!