LR Question 19 Explanation, by LSATHacks
QUESTION TEXT: If the jury did not return a verdict, there would…
QUESTION TYPE: Parallel Reasoning
CONCLUSION: The jury must have returned a verdict.
REASONING: Verdict ➞ Media Trucks, Media Trucks ➞ Verdict
‘There are no media trucks.’
ANALYSIS: This is a good argument. It gives a conditional statement as evidence, and one fact (‘there are no media trucks’).
This fact is used with the contrapositive of the conditional statement to draw a conclusion.
Some answers have good arguments, but they don’t use the contrapositive. You should always pick the answer that most mirrors the stimulus.
___________
- This is a bad argument. It incorrectly assumes that negating the sufficient condition negates the necessary conditions. There could be other reasons that tourism is low.
H ➞T
‘There will be no hurricane.’ - CORRECT. This argument combines a fact with the contrapositive of the conditional statement.
H➞ A,A➞ H
‘Peter did not rent an apartment’ - This is almost a good argument, but we don’t know whether Renate always keeps her promises. Also, this argument doesn’t use the contrapositive. It just uses the conditional statement as it is.
W➞ D (Renate promised this)
‘Linus’ car isn’t working’ - From the way this is phrased, it’s actually not clear that ‘last week’ includes ‘last night’. It might mean every day of the week leading up to last night.
In any case, this argument doesn’t use the contrapositive. It just uses the conditional statement as is. - This isn’t a good argument. Maybe Manuela is the only person who could solve the problem.
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