LSAT 134 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q21

LR Question 21 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Game show winners choosing between two equally…

QUESTION TYPE: Parallel Reasoning

CONCLUSION: Ed will choose the expensive prize

REASONING: If two prizes are just as good, people will choose based on familiarity or price. These two equally good prizes are equally familiar to Ed.

ANALYSIS: This argument only gives us two factors, and it eliminates one of them. So Ed must choose based on the other factor.

It’s important to note that the stimulus describes how someone will behave, in the future. Not all answer choices talk about future behavior.

You might have noticed that I described the prizes as “equally familiar” instead of unfamiliar. This was intentional. “Equally unfamiliar” could mean “not at all unfamiliar”, as in: “My mother and father are equally unfamiliar to me”. The LSAT is agonizingly precise, and you must learn to think in these terms. “Equally familiar” and “equally unfamiliar” mean the same thing, on the LSAT.

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1. This doesn’t predict future behavior. The stimulus told us how Ed would choose between two things. In this answer, the choice has already been made: The professor will get an advance.
   It’s a good argument, but the structure is different.
2. This is a bad argument. Maybe the Rocket and the Mouse are right beside each other, at the entrance to the park.
3. Another bad argument. Asteroid X might be affected by another planet’s gravity. So asteroid X could also have a highly elliptical orbit.
4. This is a bad argument. Maybe Miyoko really wants to be a physicist. So she enters the program, even though she doesn’t want to take classes, because she knows it will let her work as a physicist.
5. CORRECT. This makes a prediction about the rabbit’s future behavior. This answer also says that rabbits do one of two things. This answer eliminates one of the possibilities, so the rabbit must do the other.