Logical reasoning PrepTest 146 · Section 3 · Question 23

Incorrect. The argument is about timeliness and parking. Why the parking lot was closed is immaterial to what would have happened had it been open.

Incorrect. This answer speaks to what happened, not to what would have happened had the parking lot been open.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Argument Evaluation

Stimulus Summary:
BP: I was late because the parking lot was closed for maintenance and I had to look for 15 minutes for a spot. If it had been open, I would have been on time, not a few minutes late.

Answer Anticipation:
This stimulus brings up a feature that we see frequently on the LSAT, but much more commonly in incorrect answers (in Strengthen, Weaken, and Must Be True)—a hypothetical. In general, answers that bring up hypotheticals are wrong because they can't account for everything that would change in that hypothetical situation.

Here, the Businessperson argues that she wouldn't have been late had the lot not been closed for maintenance. And while that does establish that the spots in the parking lot weren't available, we don't know anything else about the area. Is there a nearby overflow lot that is the same size? Are people allowed to park on the street when the lot is closed? She claims that the lot being open would have allowed her to be on time, but we don't learn anything about that eventuality.

Since we don't learn anything about it, we can't analyze her argument—and any question that brings up a relevant piece of information about the hypothetical world where the lot is open (or, at least, what is generally true when the lot has been open) will serve to help us evaluate it.

Answer Explanation:
The Businessperson argues that she was late because the parking lot in front of the building was closed for maintenance, and if it hadn't been, she'd have been on time. However, that assumes that the parking lot would have had space for her when she showed up had it not been closed for maintenance. If we learned the parking patterns in the area—including that lot—we could determine if there would have, in fact, been available parking or if she similarly would have had to search for a chunk of time, making her late. Knowing this helps us evaluate what would have happened in the alternative she argues for, so this is our answer.

Key Takeaway:
Hypotheticals on the LSAT can be problematic because it's impossible to know that a single change won't have wider repercussions that an answer doesn't reflect. When an argument itself argues using a hypothetical, you can start to think along the same lines—what other effects might the change noted in the hypothetical have that the argument isn't considering?

Incorrect. Whether or not she has a tendency to be late doesn't speak to whether she would have been late if there had been spots available in the lot.

Incorrect. The importance of the meeting is out of scope of a question about whether she would have been on time with an open lot.