LSAT 155 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q1

LR Question 1 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: CEO: While we only have the sales reports for the first …

QUESTION TYPE: Strengthen

CONCLUSION: This will be a good year for sales.

REASONING: The first 9 months have had significantly higher sales on average than the same months in previous years.

ANALYSIS: The clear problem with this argument is that we don’t know that the sales for the next three months will be. It could be a bad year, if the last three months are horrendous.

To strengthen the argument, it would probably help to have some evidence showing that it’s safe to assume the later months will also be good.

___________

1. CORRECT. This tells us that the later months are likely to be even higher! If this is true, then the argument is certainly stronger.
2. Knowing the quality is considered relatively high doesn’t mean anything to us. In fact, if it’s always been considered relatively high, even before sales went up, then it’s completely irrelevant.
3. This doesn’t strengthen the argument. In fact, it gives a reason to be somewhat doubtful of his claim. If he has incentive to downplay bad news, there might be more to the story here.
4. Getting an explanation for why sales are high doesn’t tell us that they’ll stay high for the rest of the year.
5. This doesn’t tell us that the overall sales for the year will stay high. It just tells us that other companies are seeing the same levels.

Recap: The question begins with “CEO: While we only have the sales reports for the first “. It is a Strengthen question. Learn how to master LSAT Strengthen questions on the LSAT Logical Reasoning question types page.