LSAT 135 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q11

LR Question 11 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Rolanda: The house on Oak Avenue has a larger…

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

CONCLUSION: The house on Oak Avenue isn’t the best one to rent.

REASONING: The yard isn’t as big as it looks. Part of the yard is city property.

ANALYSIS: Tom correctly points out that the yard is smaller than it seems.

But Yolanda says that every yard it smaller than it seems – every yard has 20 ft of city property. So Tom is mistaken. The house on Oak Avenue does have the biggest yard of the houses they saw.

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1. If anything, this is an error Yolanda makes. She say the house on Oak Avenue is the best simply because it has the biggest yard. Tom attacks her by trying to prove that the yard isn’t big.
    
   But Tom could also have argued that a big yard doesn’t mean the house will be good.
2. Actually, Tom says that city property is not part of the yard. Presumably city property is not available for private use.
3. The house on Oak Avenue is in Prairieview, so Tom’s generalization is relevant in this case.
   Example of flaw: Property lines in Mongolia start 20 feet from the street. So this house in California doesn’t have a large yard.
4. CORRECT. Tom only applied the city property rule to the house on Oak Avenue. He should have also applied it to the other houses that he and Yolanda looked at, since they’re all in Prairieview. 
5. This is a different error.
   Example of flaw: “Because part of the yard is city property, the whole yard is city property.”