LSAT 146 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q14

LR Question 14 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: A study at a company found that most meetings showed…

QUESTION TYPE: Identify the Conclusion

CONCLUSION: The most productive meetings will have a clear time frame, no more than 30 minutes long.

REASONING: A study found two things:

• Meetings are most productive under 30 minutes, and past 60 minutes nothing useful happens.
• The most productive meetings have a clear time frame.

ANALYSIS: To identify conclusions, you should look for structural words. This argument has two:

1. Moreover: this word indicates that the sentences before it and it starts with it are premises. E.g. Ants are small. Moreover, there are many of them. So, a yard with ants will have many small things. [final sentence is conclusion]
2. For….then: This generally indicates a conclusion. Note that “then” could have been taken out and I think the final sentence would have the same meaning. The “then” just makes doubly clear that this is the conclusion.

This second term is a somewhat rare conclusion structure. This shows that the LSAT is testing broad understanding of the English language. If you have a longer study period, it is helpful to make a habit of reading books, and look up anything you don’t know in a dictionary. You may not see “for….then” in any LSAT study guides, but it will show up eventually in books and articles, as will other rarer English forms that LSAC may pick from.

___________

1. This gets the conclusion backwards. The conclusion said “max productivity ➞ less than 30 AND clear timeframe.” This says “less than 30 AND clear timeframe ➞ max productivity”
    
   ….a short meeting with a clear timeframe on the topic of “funny cat videos” may not be all that productive.
2. This answer was just a fact in the argument. The word “moreover” comes after this sentence, which indicates it was evidence.
3. CORRECT. This paraphrases the conclusion. “For….then” is a sufficient indicator for the words that come in between, so the conclusion is: max productivity ➞ clear time frame AND no more than 30 min
4. This answer is from a sentence that starts with “moreover”. That word indicates that the sentence was reasoning.
5. Same as B, this was just evidence from the argument. The word “moreover” comes after this sentence, which indicates the sentence was evidence.