LSAT 136 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q6

LR Question 6 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Patricia: During Japan’s Tokugawa period, martial arts…

QUESTION TYPE: Weaken

CONCLUSION: Tamara says that many people feared ninjas.

REASONING: Many wealthy Japanese installed squeaky floorboards to warn against Ninjas.

ANALYSIS: To weaken Tamara’s argument, we need to show that these wealthy Japanese were unrepresentative.

It’s unlikely people would have paid to use ninjas against peasants. Probably their main targets were wealthy elites, who are only a small part of any population.

___________

1. This would strengthen Tamara’s argument by showing that poor Japanese also feared ninjas.
2. This shows that ninjas avoided the squeaky floor defense. It doesn’t prove that few people feared ninjas.
3. CORRECT. This shows that the wealthy aren’t a great example. They were a very small part of the population. And everyone knows that wealthy people often have different habits from poor people. So the wealthy are unlikely to be representative of the population at large.
4. Irrelevant. The stimulus is talking about what people thought during the Tokugawa period.
5. Same as D.