LSAT 106 | Section 3 | Logical Reasoning: Q20

LR Question 20 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Game show host: Humans are no better than apes at…

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning – Exception

CONCLUSION: Apes are just as good at investing as humans are.

REASONING: Five stock analysts and one chimp were given money to invest. After one month, the chimp was ahead.

ANALYSIS: There are many, many flaws. The main problems are that the sample is small, and the experiment is too short-term (one month long). You can’t prove such a general conclusion with a one month study of five men and a monkey.

The wrong answer talks about how the chimps make decisions. That doesn’t matter. I don’t care how my stock analyst makes decisions, if he gets consistently good results.

___________

1. This could be an exceptionally smart chimpanzee. Or maybe he just got lucky.
2. CORRECT. It doesn’t matter why the chimp won. In fact, since the chimp won, we don’t have very much evidence that stock reports are much use.
3. Millions of humans invest in stocks. Five stock analysts aren’t a large enough sample for us to draw a conclusion about investors in general.
4. The chimp might have picked risky, high return stocks. Sure, they look good after a month, but maybe in a year the chimp will be broke.
5. Same as D.