QUESTION TEXT: Manager: The only employees who should receive…
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.
___________
- 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.
- 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.
- 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. - 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.
- 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.
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