LSAT 123 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q21

LR Question 21 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Driver: My friends say I will one day have an accident…

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

CONCLUSION: I will have a lower chance of an accident in a minivan.

REASONING: Minivans have a lower accident rate than sports cars.

ANALYSIS: The driver has made a correlation/ causation flaw. They see minivans and safety are associated, and so they think minivans cause safety. But it could go either way. Either:

1. Minivans are easier to drive, and so have fewer accidents, or
2. Safer drivers buy minivans, and this is why the accident rate is low, or

The fact that two things are correlated doesn’t mean we know which one causes the other (or even whether there is a causal relationship)

___________

1. CORRECT. See the analysis above. Minivans are correlated with a lower accident rate, but we don’t know if they cause fewer accidents. It could be that people who buy minivans are safe drivers, and that is the cause of the lower average accident rate.
2. The sample is “all minivans and larger sedans”, as far as we know. Sample error will never be the flaw unless you see actual numbers, like “my two friends have minivans and haven’t had an accident”. There isn’t space on LSAT questions to exhaustively list sample sizes, so by default they’re reasonable.
3. This is a different error.
    
   Example of flaw: I might win the lottery, so I already bought a luxury car. There’s no doubt I’ll win the lottery!
4. This is a different error.
    
   Example of flaw: I can’t have a car accident if I’m not in a car. So I will always have a car accident if I am in a car.
    
   e.g. Accident ➞ in car
    
   Mistaken reversal: in car ➞ accident
5. We’re not even told the source. The driver said they did research. Using the principle of charity, we should assume they accurately researched accident rates.
    
   (The principle of charity is explicitly used by the LSAC in making questions. Basically it means not interpreting someone’s remarks in an insane way i.e. “This driver is an idiot, so they must have done idiot, wrong research” Don’t make assumptions like that: be charitable.