Logical reasoning PrepTest 131 · Section 1 · Question 18

Incorrect. The conclusion is what "most residents of that province" prefer, so residents of other places are out of scope.

Incorrect. Since the conclusion limits itself to discussing the residents of this province, those who live in other provinces are out of scope.

Incorrect. The results of the poll are noted as being about where the best place to live is. If anything, the argument is assuming that the best place to live reflects people's preferences, which is the reverse of this answer. And even then, it's hard to see how that's an assumption instead of just two ways of saying the same thing.

Incorrect. This answer gets at the correlation/causation flaw, but it talks about the minority group that didn't want to live in big cities, whereas the assumption is that the city size was the reasoning behind why the one group did want to live there. In talking about the wrong group, this answer doesn't describe a flaw in the argument.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Errors in Reasoning

Stimulus Summary:
Poll results - The capital city was chosen most office as the best place to live
The capital is the largest city
Therefore - Most resident prefer to live in a big city than a small one

Answer Anticipation:
There are two elements in this stimulus that suggest specific flaws.

The first element is that a poll was done. Whenever there's a poll, you should start by considering a sampling flaw, and a correlation/causation flaw.

The stimulus notes that the sample was "representative," so it's unlikely that there is a sampling flaw here. While the results are based on self-reported information, there's not really a reason to lie about where one prefers to live, so we shouldn't expect that type of sampling flaw answer, either.

For the correlation/causation flaw, the argument isn't as clearly causal as some, but there is an element of causality to it—the conclusion assumes that something about big city life causes people to prefer living there. That's based on a correlation between the capital city—where people said is the best place to live—and the size of it. There could be other reasons people think it's the best place to live, such as access to culture, or having more people around, or just that there's more money invested there as the capital. Since this argument ignores alternative causes, it features a correlation/causation flaw that could show up in the answer choices.

The second element that suggests a certain flaw is that quantifier language—"most." While that language is often associated with overlapping set flaws, there's another type of flaw that is associated with it—jumping from relative to nonrelative language. Here, the poll results showed that the city selected "most often" was the capital city, but the conclusion says that "most" residents prefer to live in big cities like the capital. That's a jump. If there were, say, 50 cities on the list, then the city selected most often might have only been selected 20% of the time. In shifting from a discussion of the most common response to a conclusion about what most people said, this argument is flawed.

Either flaw (correlation/causation; plurality/majority) could be featured in the correct answer.

Answer Explanation:
This answer highlights the second flaw. While the capital may have received the most votes, that doesn't mean it received over 50% of the vote. That leaves room for over 50% of people to have selected small cities, while a plurality selected that capital as the best place to live, and a minority overall selected big cities generally.

Key Takeaway:
Be careful with "most" as a quantifier. The LSAT will frequently jump between what has happened most often/is most likely (a plurality) and what happened most of the time/is likely (a probability).