LR Question 15 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: One should only buy a frying pan that has a manufacturer’s…
QUESTION TYPE: Strengthen
CONCLUSION: You should only buy a frying pan if it has a warranty.
REASONING: Warranties aren’t offered for a product if the manufacturer would have to reimburse many people if the product didn’t work well or last long.
ANALYSIS: This is an unusual strengthen question, it has elements of sufficient assumption questions and also of necessary assumption questions. The argument seems good on its face, so you have to ask yourself: what’s the problem with the argument?
We know warranties are only offered if people won’t seek reimbursement from a product. The author implies that lack of reimbursement means the product was good. But this is the error: there are actually two reasons people might not seek reimbursement from a product:
- The product works well and lasts long, so no need.
- The product is junk, but people are lazy, so no one bothers to see reimbursement
If people are lazy, buying a product with a warranty won’t help guarantee product quality. So we can strengthen the argument by showing that if a product fails, then people do in fact seek reimbursement. If this is true then manufacturers really only would offer a warranty for good products.
(The sufficient assumption element on this question is that if the correct answer is true, it mostly proves the conclusion. The necessary assumption element is that if the correct answer is completely or mostly false, then the argument falls apart. Note that I don’t mean negating the right answer: it says “most” and if you negated that you get “half”. The right answer would still work with “half”. But if you reduced it to “few”, the argument would fall apart)
___________
- CORRECT. See the analysis above. There are two reasons a warranty would be profitable for a manufacturer: if the product works (and few seek reimbursement) or if people are lazy (and few seek reimbursement). This answer eliminates the second possibility, and shows that the presence of a warranty strongly suggests the product itself is good. Therefore, you would benefit from buying a product with a warranty even if you would not seek reimbursement yourself.
- This is tempting. But this answer choice has a very narrow scope by saying “at the time of purchase”. This could mean the pan works well for a week! We want to know that the pans will last longer than one without a warranty.
- We don’t care if something is “more likely” to be covered by a warranty. We only care about pans that have a warranty and what effect that has.
- This doesn’t even mention a warranty! I am personally disappointed in this answer. This question is only about the effect of warranties.
- Full customer satisfaction is great: if you actually use the warranty. But the conclusion here is that buying a pan with a warranty is a good idea even if you would never use the warranty. If you wouldn’t use the warranty yourself, you are depending on other people to use it. Answer A directly says other people will seek reimbursement, forcing manufacturers to be careful about only offering warranties for good products.
Whereas “offering full satisfaction” only tells you what happens if someone uses the warranty. This doesn’t tell us that the pan works well or lasts a long time, which is what we care about. Also, it still allows the possibility that people are lazy.
Recap: The question begins with “One should only buy a frying pan that has a manufacturer’s”. It is a Strengthen question. Learn how to master LSAT Strengthen questions on the LSAT Logical Reasoning question types page.
More Resources for Strengthen Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Strengthen questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers strengthen questions.
(P1) WARRANTY -> Not (POOR QUALITY => HAVE TO REIMBURSE)
(MC) Therefore, BUY PAN -> WARRANTY
This argument tries to show that warranties indicate high quality pans, so that you should only buy pans with warranties, even if you never plan to actually use these warranties. To establish this conclusion, the author asserts that pan manufacturers would not offer warranties if that meant that they would have to reimburse a lot of people due to poor quality products. In other words, the author presumes that pans have warranties only if it is not the case that the pans’ poor quality causes the manufacturers to have to issue many reimbursements.
To get a better sense of what is weak about this argument, it is helpful to think of a possible objection. Perhaps you could have WARRANTY, POOR QUALITY, and not HAVE TO REIMBURSE all at once? That is, perhaps you could have a situation where the manufacturers produce poor quality pans and offer warranties, but where this nevertheless does not mean that they have to reimburse a lot of people. For example, perhaps people just won’t bother to actually use the warranty; they might just get a new pan. Alternatively, the warranties might be subject to some sort of restriction that prevents people from actually using them (e.g. the warranties expire super quickly).
(A) gets at this possible gap and explicitly asserts that if there in fact was a poor quality pan with a warranty, this would indeed cause the manufacturers to have to issue many reimbursements. In other words, (A) blocks an objection along the above-stated lines and thus strengthens the argument.
(A)’s main competitor is (E), which asserts that warranties provide for full satisfaction. This also seems to strengthen a bit, but the author wants to argue that you should only buy warrantied pans, EVEN IF YOU NEVER WILL ACTUALLY USE THESE WARRANTIES. (E) gives us no reason to accept such an extreme view and instead only establishes that IF you actually use the warranty, then you will be satisfied. This is weaker than what the author is trying to argue, and thus (E) ends up a worse answer choice than (A).
Takeaways: This is an unusual question that combines conditional with causal reasoning, and that also involves a hypothetical case that is supposed to lead to a prescriptive conclusion. Formalizing here was not super useful to get to the right answer; process of elimination was more helpful for me, and it also helps to anticipate a possible objection to the argument in the stimulus.
Finally, be careful with the question stem here; notice that this is a strengthening question, not an NA, SA, or MSS.