LR Question 15 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: If the glee club pays cash today to rent the equipment…
QUESTION TYPE: Necessary Assumption
CONCLUSION: The glee club party committee cares little about saving money.
REASONING: Paying cash today to rent equipment needed for next Saturday’s party will be cheaper than renting on the day of the party, but the committee will wait to pay anyway.
ANALYSIS: When writing necessary assumption questions, try to think about the exceptions that would make the argument fail to be compelling. In this case, what would be some good reasons for the party committee to ignore the lower price? If the everyone on the committee was busy, then that would be a good reason not to go today. So one of our necessary assumptions, if we want our argument to be successful, will be that somebody from the committee is free to go rent the equipment today, but chooses not to. Remember, we ultimately want the party committee to be intentionally ignoring the lower prices to be guilty of caring little about saving money.
___________
- This isn’t a necessary assumption because the committee can not care about saving money even if this is false. If nobody is interested in the savings, then our conclusion can be true anyways.
Negation: No influential member of the committee is interested in the savings available. - This answer doesn’t tell us what it means when it says “financial situation”. It’s also unclear what knowing about the financial situation means in terms of the decision to rent today or next Saturday. This answer introduces too much uncertainty.
Negation: Less than half of the committee are aware of the clubs financial situation. - This answer says that there is a rental agency that will not give us a lower price today. But this is irrelevant, because we already know that the glee club’s usual agency is willing to give the lower price. We don’t really care about any other agencies.
Negation: All rental agencies will accept a lower rental price today than next Saturday. - This doesn’t have to be true. The committee can care little about saving money even if they have no other responsibilities. They could just be incompetent!
Negation: The party committee has no responsibilities that take priority over saving money. - CORRECT. The party committee isn’t at fault for not taking the lower prices if they simply don’t have the funds today! Maybe they plan on getting the equipment money between now and next Saturday. Therefore, in order for them to be guilty of not caring about saving money, it is a necessary assumption that they have enough money right now to rent the equipment.
Negation: There isn’t enough cash available to the glee club today to pay for the equipment rental at today’s lower price.
Recap: The question begins with “If the glee club pays cash today to rent the equipment”. It is a Necessary Assumption question. Learn how to master LSAT Necessary questions on the LSAT Logical Reasoning question types page.
Why is the negation of C what is listed instead of “no rental place accepts a lower price today than on
Sat”? Is the negation of “at least one” not “none”?
C says “at least one rental agency will NOT accept”. You’re right that the negation of at least one is none, so the negation of this is “no rental agency will NOT accept”. Since double negatives aren’t necessarily intuitive, Graeme has translated this to an easier sentence to digest which is “all rental agencies WILL ACCEPT”. Those two are exactly equivalent: “none will not” and “all will” are the same. Hope that makes sense!