LSAT 146 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q8

LR Question 8 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Manager: The only employees who should receive bonuses…

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

CONCLUSION: We shouldn’t give Liang a bonus

REASONING:

• We should only give bonuses to people who were really productive.
• Liang’s department didn’t meet productivity goals.

ANALYSIS: This argument makes a whole to part flaw. An individual person can be exceptionally productive even if their department is not.

You might have also spotted a second potential flaw: It’s possible the department had excessively high productivity goals. So they could have been extremely productive, but also failed to meet their goal. LSAT questions may have more than one flaw.

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1. I think this was a trap for people who prephrased the second flaw I listed above. The issue is that “vary” doesn’t tell us much. It could be a 1% variance in standards. That doesn’t distinguish Liang or her department. You need answers which have a higher minimum threshold.
2. The stimulus didn’t mention “profitable”. Profitable is related to productive, but not the same: this answer is trying to confuse you with an outside concept. This is a dangerous answer, because it describes a whole to part flaw. It shows why you must at least skim all the answers, and not just pick the first one that seems related to your prephrase.
3. This didn’t happen in the argument.
    
   Example of flaw: The marketing division was unproductive this year. So the technical support division must have had poor performance too.
4. CORRECT. One member = Liang. The group as a whole = Liang’s division. So, the argument reached a conclusion about Liang based only on her division’s performance. But it’s possible for an individual to outperform her division.
5. The argument didn’t claim Liang will be unproductive in a future year! The conclusion was only about whether Liang should get a bonus now. And the rule is clear that bonuses should be based on the past year’s performance. Potential future performance is irrelevant.