LSAT 118 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q3

LR Question 3 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: A reason Larson cannot do the assignment is that she …

QUESTION TYPE: Necessary Assumption

CONCLUSION: The task must be assigned to Parker.

REASONING: Larson can’t do it, Franks also can’t do it, and Parker is the only other supervisor in the department.

ANALYSIS: The argument only tells us about three people in the shipping department. It never tells us whether the assignment could be given to:

• someone in another department
• a non-supervisor
• an outside contractor
• literally anyone else

For the conclusion to follow, we need to know that the pool of candidates is limited to these three supervisors.

A good negation test: Suppose the task could be assigned to someone other than a shipping department supervisor. Then eliminating Larson and Franks would not force us to choose Parker, so the conclusion wouldn’t follow.

___________

1. Whether Larson is assertive enough doesn’t matter because she’s already unavailable due to the scheduling conflict.
   Negation: Larson does not have the assertiveness the task requires.
2. CORRECT. This would mean that the candidate pool is only Larson, Franks, and Parker. Since the first two are out, we must choose Parker. If it could be assigned to anyone other than a shipping department supervisor, then we wouldn’t be able to conclude that we must choose Parker.
   Negation: The task CAN be assigned to anyone other than a supervisor in the shipping department.
3. The argument doesn’t care what would happen in a hypothetical world where Franks were more assertive. It only needs to eliminate Franks in the actual world.
   Negation: Franks would not be assigned the task if he was assertive enough.
4. Too strong. The argument only tells us Larson has an unavoidable scheduling conflict. It doesn’t need a universal rule about all scheduling conflicts.
   Negation: The task could be assigned to someone who has a scheduling conflict.
5. This is tempting because it restricts non-supervisors. But the task could potentially be assigned to someone outside the shipping department who is a supervisor. The conclusion requires ruling out everyone outside the shipping-department-supervisor pool, not just non-supervisors.
   Negation: Some non-supervisors do have the assertiveness this task requires.