LSAT 146 | Section 1 | Logical Reasoning: Q12

LR Question 12 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Sartore is a better movie reviewer than Kelly. A movie…

QUESTION TYPE: Strengthen

CONCLUSION: Sartore is a better movie reviewer than Kelly.

REASONING: If someone is likely to enjoy a movie, then Sartore’s reviews are more likely to help a person decide whether they will like a movie.

ANALYSIS: This sounds like a good argument, but it makes a subtle switch. It only gives us information about people who are likely to like a movie. But that’s not everyone: what about the people who are likely to be neutral about a movie, or are likely to dislike it?

To be the best reviewer, Sartore must help all people decide whether they will like a film. To strengthen the argument, you should look for an answer that tells us Sartore’s reviews are also helpful for people who are not likely to enjoy a movie. (In which case, Sartore’s review could help those people decide to avoid the movie.)

Note that the section about Sartore giving unfavorable reviews is irrelevant.

“Even though” is a misleading LSAT word – it has no strict logical significance. Usually it indicates a factor that we think might work against an idea. But, in this case the proportion of negative reviews doesn’t tell us anything about the key factor: what about people who aren’t likely to like a movie?

___________

1. Technical knowledge is irrelevant. This answer is a form of argument from irrelevant authority. We only care about the results a movie reviewer gets. The knowledge they use to get those results doesn’t matter.
2. Unfavorable reviews are irrelevant. We might read a favorable review of a movie and decide we wouldn’t like it. This portion of the argument was a red herring.

3. CORRECT. This covers all groups. Now we know that Sartore’s reviews are good for people in the following groups:

   • People likely to enjoy a movie (from the stimulus)
   • People not likely to enjoy a movie (from this answer)
4. This doesn’t matter. The argument is about whether people will figure out if they will like a movie. If a reader decides they will hate a movie, then the review has done its job, assuming the reader would have indeed hated the movie.
   In other words, the argument is about correctly choosing which movies one will like – i.e. sorting the movies. The point of reviews isn’t to make people like all movies more.
5. This is actually irrelevant. “Being a good movie reviewer” is about how good someone is at writing reviews – the sheer quantity of reviews isn’t the central point. It likewise doesn’t matter whether the two reviewers review the same movies – what matters is their skill in writing the reviews they do write.