LR Question 22 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Riverdale’s Modem Party Chairperson: Maples, the Modem…
QUESTION TYPE: Must Be False
CONCLUSION: Maples would be a better mayor than Tannett.
REASONING: Maples is the mayoral candidate for the Modern Party. All Modern Party members are better qualified than any Traditionalist Party members. Tannett is in the Traditionalist Party.
ANALYSIS: On a must be false question, you must focus on the facts. All we know is that modern is better than traditional.
So what must be false? A Traditionalist Party member being a better mayor than a Modern Party member.
The wrong answers will all be things that could be true, so don’t waste much time thinking about them. They’re talking about things we don’t have information about.
___________
- Seniority isn’t mentioned. So this could be true.
- Who knows? The argument doesn’t compare Traditionalist Party members against each other.
- The chairperson doesn’t mention what people believe. So anything could be true.
- Same as B. We have no idea how members of the modern party rank against each other.
- CORRECT. See the analysis above: this contradicts the only fact we know. You might have noticed that the chairman didn’t technically say that Maples is a member of the Modern Party. So you have to make the assumption that Maples is a member of the party he is a candidate for. But that’s an incredibly reasonable assumption. Increasingly, the LSAT requires you to make these common sense assumptions.
I agree that answer E is correct, but the required assumption is not that Maples is a member of the Modern Party. That is directly implied by the claim that he is the modern party candidate. The required assumption is that the Chairperson themself is a member of the party, which is a more tenuous, albeit acceptable, required assumption.
Oh you’re right, thank you. E is about the Chairperson vs. Tannett, whereas I wrote about Maples vs. Tannett. I DO think it is a very small assumption that the candidate and the chairperson are party members, I could conceive of that being untrue. But, both assumptions are extremely reasonable, and if you assume a Chairperson must be a member, then E can’t be true.
I will edit the explanation.