LSAT 134 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q14

LR Question 14 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: For one academic year all the students at a high school …

QUESTION TYPE: Paradox

PARADOX:

• The researchers wanted to test out whether more studying → higher grades.
• The results show that students who studied the most did not get the highest grades.
• Yet the researchers still said the results supported the hypothesis.

ANALYSIS: Everyone has that one genius in class who always gets a great grade even without studying. And sometimes you study a lot, and still don’t do that well. Those cases will always exist. But generally, you’d say that studying does help you improve your performance.

That’s the key distinction here. You should recognize that the researchers were testing whether studying more improves performance, not whether the students who study the most always have the highest grades.

A student’s overall grade can be affected by many factors besides studying time (difficulty of courses, prior ability, etc.). So the researchers may have looked at the relationship between studying and grades within individual courses, rather than just comparing all students together.

If studying more consistently led to better grades when controlling for the course, that would support the hypothesis even if heavy studiers had lower overall averages.

___________

1. This only shows that some heavy studiers did better than some lighter studiers. It doesn’t explain the overall pattern or show that studying more generally leads to higher grades.
2. So that would affect all students, which doesn’t explain why studying more would be linked to higher grades.
3. CORRECT. This explains the results. Even though students who studied the most overall didn’t have the highest grades, studying more within each course was still associated with better performance. The overall comparison may have been distorted by other factors, but the course-by-course results support the hypothesis.
4. We don’t care what they do in extracurriculars. This doesn’t explain why studying more would lead to higher grades.
5. If anything, this makes things more confusing. If students who studied more understand the material better, then why did they still earn lower grades?