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Can anyone explain to me how the correct answer is (C) "having the last five budget proposals turned down affect the likelihood that the next budget proposal will be turned down"? Shouldn't it be phrased something like the following: "having the last five budget proposals turned down affect the likelihood that the next budget proposal will be turned up"?

http://lsathacks.com/explanations/lsat- ... ng-1/q-24/


I hope this helps, I also found that one a bit...confusing.

Tiwinkle12 wrote:Can anyone explain to me how the correct answer is (C) "having the last five budget proposals turned down affect the likelihood that the next budget proposal will be turned down"? Shouldn't it be phrased something like the following: "having the last five budget proposals turned down affect the likelihood that the next budget proposal will be turned up"?

In this case, it doesn't matter if the answer was phrased "turned up"/"approved" or "turned down." If it affects one, then it affects the other, as those are the only two possible outcomes. The supervisor's flaw was his belief that those recent occurrences would affect the outcome of the next budget proposal.

We know that "normally about half of all budget proposals are approved." We also know that the last 5 were turned down. However, these two facts together don't provide enough information to accurately guess the outcome of the next proposal. Maybe the VP sees 5000 proposals a year - in that case, 5 proposals is an incredibly small sample size, and is negligible.

To make an analogy, this stimulus reminds of the logic a lot of rookie gamblers make. I'm talking about the person who loses 4 rounds in a row, and says, "well, since I'm on a losing streak, I'm probably gonna win this next one. After all, I can't lose them all." In reality, the probability of this person winning the next round isn't affected by the outcome of those last rounds at all. But this person is looking on a larger scale - through that lens, it's very unlikely that the gambler will lose every round. But there's no particular reason why the next round should be the one where his luck changes.

Thank you! It makes more sense knowing that the phrasing does not matter. You have especially clarified this problem by stating that "if it affects one it affects the other."

Glad I could help!