LSAT 156 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q13

LR Question 13 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: If the natural history museum stays within this …

QUESTION TYPE: Sufficient Assumption

CONCLUSION: If the museum meets this year’s budget, it won’t stay within budget next year.

REASONING:

1. Renovating next year means the museum will not stay within its budget next year.
2. The museum will have to renovate this year or the next year.

ANALYSIS: The argument is trying to say: staying within this year’s budget leads to going over next year’s budget. But that only works if staying within this year’s budget means not renovating this year.

Why? Because the whole chain depends on postponing renovation until next year. If the museum could renovate this year and still stay within this year’s budget, then the conclusion would not follow. It could stay within this year’s budget and avoid the problem next year.

So the needed assumption is that renovating this year would make the museum exceed this year’s budget. That way, if it stays within this year’s budget, it must be because it did not renovate, which triggers the whole argument.

___________

1. This tells us the museum will stay within this year’s budget, but the argument is not trying to prove that. It needs a link between staying within budget and delaying renovation.
2. This compares the size of the budgets, but the argument does not depend on which budget is larger overall. It depends on when renovation happens.
3. This directly conflicts with part of the reasoning. The argument says the museum will have to renovate next year if it does not do so this year.
4. CORRECT. If renovating this year would make the museum exceed this year’s budget, then staying within this year’s budget means not renovating now, which makes the conclusion follow.
5. This says not renovating this year is enough to stay within budget, but that is not enough. The argument needs the stronger claim that staying within budget rules out renovating this year.