LSAT 146 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q1

LR Question 1 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Grecia: The survey that we are conducting needs to…

QUESTION TYPE: Principle – Justify

ARGUMENTS: Grecia says we should ask for people’s ages, because the survey needs to know how employment status changes with age.

Hidalgo says we only need to know age ranges, so we should ask for age ranges instead.

ANALYSIS: You might think that Hidalgo makes a good point. It’s true that age ranges would work. But….so would just asking for age itself. So it’s not clear why we ought to ask for age ranges instead of age itself.

The correct answer will have to give us a reason that age ranges are preferable to age itself, even though both would work. E.g. People are more likely to answer age ranges accurately, or some other reason.

___________

1. CORRECT. This supports Hidalgo. “Age” is more detailed than “age range”, and the survey only needs age range. So this principle tells us not to collect the more detailed information.
2. We have no idea whether people are more likely to answer “age range” than “age”.
    
   You might have picked this if you prephrased the answer having something to do with the accuracy of the answers. I had predicted something like that might be the right answer. But this answer only would have been correct had it said “people are less likely to answer accurately if asked their precise age, as compared to an age range.”
3. We have no idea what kind of storage the survey uses. And both “age” and “age range” are sensitive, so this answer doesn’t let us choose.
4. This suggests the survey might be allowed to gather age ranges, but it doesn’t say we should use age ranges over age.
5. The respondents could be told how the information would be used. In which case we’d have no reason to prefer age ranges over ages.