LSAT 143 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q19

LR Question 19 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Principle: When none of the fully qualified candidates…

QUESTION TYPE: Principle – Application

PRINCIPLE: If no fully qualified candidates work for Arvue ➞ they should pick the most productive candidates.

SITUATION: Arvue should not hire Krall because Delacruz is a fully qualified candidate.

ANALYSIS: Generally, on principle application questions, you know one thing. It’s tempting to let your mind wander, but stick to the principle. Here it is:

None of fully qualified work Arvue ➞ Hire most productive

That’s the one principle we have to decide the situation. Notice what it says: it provides a way to hire someone. And yet, we’re trying to prove we should not hire Krall. So that must mean we should hire someone else: Delacruz.

How to prove we should hire Delacruz? You must trigger the sufficient condition: “None of the fully qualified candidates work at Arvue”. And then you should show that the necessary condition applies to Delacruz: “Delacruz is the most productive”.

Adding the sufficient condition tells us to hire the most productive, and if we assume Delacruz is the most productive, then we can conclude we shouldn’t hire Krall.

And only then. That’s how sufficient and necessary conditions work. If you don’t trigger them precisely, then we know nothing about what happens.

Train yourself not to even consider an answer if it clearly doesn’t match the conditions. They’re stupid answers.

___________

1. This meets the sufficient condition: it tells us to hire the most productive person. But this doesn’t tell us not to hire Krall: maybe Krall is the most productive.
2. This doesn’t trigger the sufficient condition of the principle. The sufficient condition was “none of the fully qualified work at Arvue”. This answer leaves open the possibility that a fully qualified candidate works at Arvue.
3. Exactly the same as B. Despite the difference in words, this answer fails to trigger the sufficient condition. We need to know that no fully qualified candidates work at Arvue, and this answer doesn’t tell us that.
4. This fails to meet the sufficient condition. We need something that says “none of the fully qualified candidates work at Arvue”.
5. CORRECT. This meets the sufficient condition, which lets us conclude that we should hire the most productive person.
   And if Delacruz is the most productive, that means we should hire them and not Krall.