QUESTION TEXT: People are usually interested in, and often even…
QUESTION TYPE: Paradox
PARADOX: People are interested in anecdotes, not statistics. Anecdotes are inaccurate. Yet people’s statistical beliefs are usually accurate.
ANALYSIS: The questions says that we like anecdotes. However, the question doesn’t say that we change our beliefs based on anecdotes.
We might just like listening to anecdotes, and being emotionally moved by them. But that doesn’t mean they’re how we form beliefs about society. Small distinctions like this are crucial on the LSAT.
This is a hard question. The right answer doesn’t fully resolve the paradox: we still don’t know how people form accurate beliefs about society if they rarely pay attention to statistics.
___________
- This statement is often true, but you’re not looking for an answer that’s true. You want something that resolves the paradox above.
- CORRECT. The stimulus said that we’re moved by anecdotes, but it didn’t actually say that we change our beliefs based on them. This answer suggests people don’t use anecdotes to determine their beliefs. So this reduces the chance we use misleading anecdotes to form our beliefs about society.
- This doesn’t explain anything. If an anecdote is both compelling and misleading, then people would get the wrong beliefs. But the stimulus says that people largely have correct beliefs.
- This doesn’t tell us that statistics actually influence us. Whether or not statistics are comprehensible, the stimulus said we ignore them.
- This doesn’t tell us anything about statistics or anecdotes. It’s just a statement about how people react to other people. That doesn’t help – we’re trying to find out how people form beliefs about society.
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Matt says
What I struggle with often is getting lulled in by the ‘most’, ‘more’, ‘few’ kind of qualifying responses. This question exemplifies that as it asserts a qualifying response in answer B (“Most people…”) and I find nothing in the stimulus that comments on or refers to how “most” people invest themselves towards anecdotes. Rather, it is just speaking in general terms. Admittedly, answer B would seem most obvious to me if it were not for its qualifier. Any suggestions to better arm myself with regards to these sort of traps?
FounderGraeme Blake says
Good question. Usually is in the stimulus, and usually is a synonym for most. Other synonyms are likely, generally, probably, typically, the majority of the time, etc.
Note: This is an old comment but I wanted to clarify the point.
MB says
Let me take one more crack at what’s bothering me about this question, this time in fewer words
Is information about whether a sample is representative statistical information? If it is, then (b) is incompatible with the claim that people usually don’t pay attention to statistical information, much less respond to it. If it’s not, then the creators of the LSAT have wild ideas about what statistical information is.
TutorLucas (LSAT Hacks) says
“Is information about whether a sample is representative statistical information?” Not necessarily. That information might just be a series of claims undermining the idea that a sample is representative, e.g. there was a biased selection process of the sample.
“Statistics” is defined in Merriam-Webster as:
(1) a branch of mathematics dealing with the collection, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of masses of numerical data
(2) a collection of quantitative data
Statistical information is quantitative in nature. So, I think it’d be a stretch to say that “unrepresentative cases” are in themselves statistical information. It’d be statistical if we were given numbers or data to indicate that the sample is unrepresentative.
However, what’s most relevant here is that the “most people” in this answer choice are responding to the anecdotes in this answer choice. That’s still consistent with the content of the stimulus.