LSAT 133 | Section 3 | Logical Reasoning: Q20

LR Question 20 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: To date, most of the proposals that have been endorsed…

QUESTION TYPE: Parallel Reasoning

CONCLUSION: Any future proposal by the citizen’s league will probably be passed as well.

REASONING: Most of the proposals to date have been passed.

ANALYSIS: This is not really a good argument. It’s true that most past proposals were successful. But the argument gives us no reason to assume this trend will continue in the future.

If the argument had said all past proposals were successful, therefore future proposals probably will be passed, it would be a better argument. “Probably” technically only means “greater than 50% chance of occurring.”

So the structure is: something was likely, so it will continue to be likely. The reason this is weak is because “most” could be as low as 50.1%, and it’s hard to guarantee that the percent of proposals won’t drop to “not most” in the future (50%).

___________

1. This changes the structure. The argument should have said “thus, in future years most of the awards will continue to go to academic biologists.”
2. Trees and tree species are different things. There could be thousands of tree species with a handful of trees, and then one extremely common deciduous species with 95% of the trees. That way most species wouldn’t be deciduous even if most trees were. Either way, this doesn’t match the structure of the stimulus.
3. We have no idea. Maybe “sympathy for the local farmers” is pretty low down the list of issues the newspaper cares about in an editor and the candidate will be hired anyway. 
4. Who knows? Maybe the people who resend entries are simply idiots and they’ll send in their applications late again. 
5. CORRECT. This has the same flawed structure. It’s true that most stone artifacts have been domestic tools. But that doesn’t mean most of the remaining artifacts are domestic stone tools. (Probably = most).