LSAT 21, Logical Reasoning II, Q25, LSATHacks

QUESTION TEXT: At the company picnic, all of the employees who…

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Parallel Reasoning

CONCLUSION: Most of the employees must have been in fewer than four events.

REASONING: You could be in the raffle if and only if you had been in more than four scheduled events. Only a small percentage of the employees were eligible for the raffle.

ANALYSIS: The conclusion is wrong because it says fewer than four. But being in exactly four events wouldn’t have qualified you for the raffle either.A correct conclusion would have said four or fewer.

The error here is ignoring possible middle ground. The opposite of “more than four” is not “less than four.” It is “Four or less.”

Similarly, in the right answer, the opposite of decrease is not “increase.” The opposite of decrease is “stay the same or increase.”

The wrong answers are mostly bad arguments, but they don’t repeat this flaw.

___________

1. This is a bad argument because we don’t know whether there are more third or fourth year students. A smaller percentage of a greater number of students could still produce a larger number. But this argument doesn’t ignore middle ground.
2. This is a bad argument. There might have been other violin students who attended other sessions and simply weren’t selected.
3. This is a good argument. If the students were honored then they definitely made the list.
4. All of the volunteers are biology majors. But that doesn’t mean that all biology majors volunteered.
5. CORRECT. This is a bad argument. It’s only true that more than half of the swim team members didn’t decrease their swim times. But that doesn’t mean the swim times increased. This repeats the error of ignoring the middle ground.

Recap: The question begins with “At the company picnic, all of the employees who”. It is a Flawed Parallel Reasoning question. Learn how to master LSAT Flawed Parallel questions on the LSAT Logical Reasoning question types page.

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