LSAT 134 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q3

LR Question 3 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Whenever Joe’s car is vacuumed, the employees …

QUESTION TYPE: Parallel Reasoning

CONCLUSION: Joe took his car to K & L Auto to be fixed.

REASONING:

• Only K & L Auto employees ever vacuum Joe’s car.
• If they vacuumed his car, then he took it there to be fixed.
• Joe’s car was recently vacuumed.

ANALYSIS: This LR stimulus is kind of reminiscent of Logic Games. Anyways, let’s diagram it.

REASONING:

• Vacuumed → K&L employees vacuumed
• K&L employees vacuumed → Took car to K&L

We can chain it like this:

Vacuumed → K&L employees vacuumed → Took car to K&L

Then we find out Joe’s car was recently vacuumed. And the argument concludes he took his car to K&L to be fixed.

In other words: Vacuumed → Took car to K&L.

This is a clean inference. We’re looking for an answer that follows the same structure:

• A → B
• B → C
• A happened.
• So, we know C happened.

___________

1. CORRECT. This follows the same structure. We can diagram it:

   • Wet glass → Drank water
   • Drank water → Took medication
   • Emily’s glass is wet.
   • So, we know she took her medication.
2. This starts with an “either/or” statement that the stimulus never gave us. We’re looking for two clean conditionals that connect together. Already from the first premise, the pattern looks different.
3. There’s multiple differences here. First, there’s no conditional chain in this answer like there was in the stimulus. Second, the conclusion here introduces a new idea as an alternative explanation. The stimulus never introduces a new fact like that.
4. This is a flawed argument. If we diagram it, we get: Grumpy → No coffee and No coffee → Runs out. So far, this matches. But the conclusion differs in two ways. It’s an incorrect reversal (it says Runs out → Grumpy, when it should be the other way around). Also, our conclusion isn’t a conditional at all.
5. Like B, this also starts off with an either/or argument. The stimulus never uses alternatives.