QUESTION TEXT: Most of the members of the Bargaining…
QUESTION TYPE: Complete the Argument
CONCLUSION: Some of the government employees in the Hanson building are programmers.
REASONING: Most members of the government employees’ Bargaining Unit are programmers.
ANALYSIS: You may have learned you can’t combine “some” and “most” statements to form a deduction. There is one exception: you can combine two “most” statements with the same left hand side to form a “some” statement from the right hand sides.
Ok that probably sounded confusing. Let me give an example.
For instance, suppose I work most days of the week, and you work most days of the week. e.g.
- Days of week (MOST) —> worked by me and
- Days of week (MOST) —> worked by you
Let’s try not to overlap. I work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. You work Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Despite going to opposite ends of the week, we both work Wednesday! So we both work “some” days of the week together. This works for any two most statements with the same left hand side.
And this works no matter how large the groups are. Going back to the stimulus, let’s say there are three members of the bargaining unit: an LSAC employee, me, and you.
Now let’s say that we have the following two statements:
- Most members of bargaining unit are programmers.
- Most members of the bargaining unit are government employees in the Hanson building.
I bolded the left hand part to show that both statements share the same left hand side. If you were drawing it, this is the part before the most. (e.g. Bargaining Unit MOST—> Programmers)
Ok, now remember this bargaining unit is just three people. Let’s divide us into two groups and try not to have overlap:
- Programmer: LSAC Employee, you
- Govt employee in Hanson building: Me, you
“Most” of three people is two people, so there are two people in each group. And there has to be overlap. In this case, you are in both groups. There is no way to form two groups of two people out a three person group not have overlap.
Ok, but what about a larger group? This bargaining unit might have 11 people, or even 1000 people. What happens then, does this relationship really apply? Let’s look at a group with 11 people. There are eight other people. For simplicity, I’ll just call them one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Now let’s try to make the groups with no overlap. Most of eleven is six, so we need six people in each group:
- Programmer: LSAT Employee, you, one, two, three, four
- Govt employee in Hanson building: Me, you, five, six, seven, eight
The math is exactly the same, regardless of group size. There will always be overlap of at least one person when you have two groups, each made out of “most” of a larger group. The group could be 1,000 or 1,000,000 people and the math would be the same.
So, you can exactly predict the right answer to this question. It has to be talking about “Most members of the bargaining unit” and end with “are government employees in the Hanson building.” That’s the only way to get to the conclusion:
Bargaining Unit MOST—> Programmers
Bargaining Unit MOST—> govt employees in Hanson
Conclusion: Programmers SOME govt employees in Hanson
Notice that the right hand sides of both “most” statements are the two parts of the “some” statements in the stimulus’ conclusion.
This question is basically a math problem! So don’t sweat if you found it hard. But, going forward you need to know this deduction, so review this question often until everything clicks.
___________
- We don’t care about people who aren’t programmers. They’re completely irrelevant. This answer doesn’t disprove that the computer programmers also work in the Hanson building. For example, let’s make up some numbers.
* Members of Bargaining Unit: 100
* Members who are programmers: 97
* Members who aren’t: 3
* Programmers who work in Hanson building: 97 (most)
* non-programmers who work in Hanson building: 2 (most)What on earth does this prove? Why do we care that two non programmers are in the building?
- Executive committee? What is that? It’s irrelevant, so eliminate. This would have be the right answer if it didn’t say executive committee and just referred to the whole unit.
But the answer limited itself to the executive committee, which could be like 5 people out of a 10,000 member union, and maybe none of the five executives are programmers. So who cares if three of them (most) work in the Hanson building? - This is a reversal of the correct answer. Let’s look at some numbers:
Govt employees in Hanson building: 51
Govt employees who are members of bargaining unit: 26
Total members of bargaining unit (including outside Hanson building): 1,000,000
Members who are programmers: 500,001
Members who are not programmers: 499,999It is possible that all 26 of the bargaining unit members in the Hanson building are part of the 499,999 members who are not programmers. Even though 499,999 is “not most” of the members, it is a very large group and dwarfs the population of the Hanson building in this example.
- CORRECT. This answer choice gives us an overlap between the government employees who work in the Hanson Buildings, and the programers. See the analysis above for the math of how combining two most statements works.
- We don’t care about people about government employees in general. We care about government employees who are members of bargaining unit 17. Other government employees are irrelevant.
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