LSAT 152 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q10

LR Question 10 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Godinez: In the past, land was sometimes measured by…

QUESTION TYPE: Identify the Conclusion

CONCLUSION: As land use moved beyond farming, we needed new ways to measure land that didn’t depend on plowing difficulty.

REASONING: Land size used to be based on how long it took to plow the land. A bigger plot that was hard to plow could be the same “size” as a smaller plot that was easy to plow.

Apartment size only depends on land area however, not plowing difficulty.

ANALYSIS: Identify the conclusion questions are often straightforward: look for the last sentence that uses a conclusion indicator. Here, the word “therefore” shows that the final sentence is the conclusion.

(The second sentence starts with “thus” and may seem like the conclusion. But the author adds contrast to this sentence by using “however” after it, so the second sentence isn’t the conclusion.)

However, because these questions are straightforward, LSAC has made the answers harder. To avoid traps, keep these two things in mind:

1. An answer that is true isn’t necessarily correct.
2. The elements of the conclusion were “new measures were necessary” and “land use diversified”.

Look for both of those elements in the answer and it gets easier to filter out the traps. And read all the answers before deciding on any.

___________

1. It’s not even clear that this is true. The stimulus never mentioned how easy it is to measure land area vs. plowing difficulty. In any case, we’re not looking for something merely true. But an unsupported answer is definitely wrong.
2. This is a trap; I thought it was correct at first glance. But the conclusion in the stimulus doesn’t talk about accuracy. It talks about it being necessary to find a new measure. This answer doesn’t mention necessity. Plowing time might have been highly accurate for its purpose! The issue is it is not useful for measuring apartments, and so we require a new method.
3. This is the second sentence. That sentence starts with “thus”, so it may seem like the conclusion. But, the next sentence starts with “however”, indicating that the second sentence is not the final conclusion; “however” is used to contrast the author’s opinion from the earlier sentence. Instead, the final sentence with “therefore” is the conclusion.
4. This is a trap. The conclusion talks about better measures being “necessary”. That’s not the same thing as being adopted. For instance, in 1933 the world needed to stand against Nazi Germany. But it didn’t do that until 1939 and then 1941. What’s needed isn’t necessarily what happens immediately: people could have continued using plowing time as a measure for a while even when it became irrelevant.
5. CORRECT. This is more or less the final sentence, except it reverses the word order: here, necessary comes at the end, and diversified comes at the start. But the meaning is the same. We can tell that the final sentence is the conclusion because it uses “therefore”, and it is the last sentence to have a conclusion indicator.

Recap: The question begins with “Godinez: In the past, land was sometimes measured by”. It is a Identify The Conclusion question. Learn more about LSAT Identify questions in our guide to LSAT Logical Reasoning question types.