LSAT 131 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q8

LR Question 8 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Though ice cream is an excellent source of calcium

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

CONCLUSION: People must have decided to get their calcium from cheddar cheese instead of ice cream.

REASONING: Ice cream sales have greatly declined, and cheddar cheese sales have practically doubled. Both have calcium. (The author doesn’t say cheddar cheese has calcium, but from common knowledge we know it is dairy.)

ANALYSIS: What a silly argument. There are many reasons people buy ice cream and cheddar cheese. Calcium usually isn’t at the top of the list. (Ah, ice cream, the original health food.)

The author should have dismissed other possibilities, or shown actual evidence people were mainly thinking of calcium.

___________

1. This is almost never a flaw. What do you want, the LSAT to attach an 80-page statistical table of dairy sales over the past decade?
2. CORRECT. This is a huge flaw. Maybe people stopped eating ice cream because they wanted to lose weight, or because it was expensive, or because…etc.
3. We have no reason to believe the dairy farmers are lying about their sales reports: why would they? They’re not calling for a cheddar cheese ban. As far as we know the cheddar cheese theory is entirely the author’s.
4. The author didn’t say ice cream was a better source of calcium. They just said it was an excellent one. Excellent doesn’t mean better – the latter is a relative term, the former an absolute term.
5. The author didn’t say this. You can eat less ice cream while still eating some ice cream.