LSAT 135 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q17

LR Question 17 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Watching music videos from the 1970s would give the…

QUESTION TYPE: Parallel Reasoning

CONCLUSION: 1970’s music videos weren’t representative of the music at the time.

REASONING: 1970’s music videos mostly attracted cutting edge artists.

ANALYSIS: This is a good argument, assuming that most music in the 1970’s wasn’t cutting edge.

On parallel reasoning questions, you should always find an abstract way to describe the structure. An argument might not use formal logic, but it still has structure.

Here, the argument is that a thing (music videos) is not representative of a bigger thing (music) because the thing has a biased sample (cutting edge music).

I put the correct answer in the same form.

___________

1. This doesn’t show that the surviving literature was unrepresentative. It might be, but we don’t know for sure.
2. This is backwards. The argument said that music videos offer an inaccurate view. This answer says we can trust our view of 1960’s TV.
3. CORRECT. This shows that a thing (CD publishing) is unrepresentative of a larger thing (publishing) because the thing has a biased sample (game publishers).
4. There’s no bias in the sample here. This just tells us that we lost most silent films, because they disintegrated.
5. This shows that our knowledge is accurate, despite bias. The argument said our knowledge was inaccurate, because of bias.