LSAT 139 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q4

LR Question 4 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Chemical-company employee: A conservation group’s study of…

QUESTION TYPE: Necessary Assumption

CONCLUSION: Our company pollutes more than other companies our size do.

REASONING: Our company, and four other companies, release 60% of pollutants.

ANALYSIS: You, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg are together worth $100 billion dollars. You must be rich, right?

This is a whole to part flaw. This argument tells us about a group, then makes a claim about one member of the group. But individual members of a group don’t always have the same properties the group as a whole has.

It could be that the other four companies release 59.8% of pollutants, and the employee’s company only releases 0.2%.

___________

1. This is just an ad hominem attack. You can never reject an argument because of who someone is, or because of what they believe.
2. The employee is arguing that his company produces a lot of pollution. So his argument would be stronger if this answer isn’t true. If processing did produce chemicals, his company would produce even more pollution.
3. The conclusion is only about this group of small chemical companies. Large companies are irrelevant.
4. CORRECT. If the four other companies account for 59.8% of pollution, then the employee’s company would only produce a small amount of pollution.
5. The conclusion is that the employee’s company produces more pollution than ‘most’ small chemical companies. So it doesn’t matter if a few of the other 25 companies produce larger amounts of pollution. The rest would produce small amounts. There’s only 40% of the pollution to go amongst those 25 companies.