Logical reasoning PrepTest 158 · Section 4 · Question 12

This makes the paradox worse! If fire departments receive less funding during a drought, they're probably less equipped to contain the fires — especially if there are many more fires than usual. We'd expect these fires to spread and cause more financial damage, not less financial damage.

This fact doesn't resolve the paradox because it doesn't tell us about areas experiencing a severe and protracted drought. Remember, the drought conditions are at the heart of this paradox. If this answer choice told us that areas experiencing an extended drought are less densely populated than areas experiencing normal rainfall, it might resolve the paradox. Fewer people would probably mean less property, and less property would probably mean less financial damage. But because this answer choice doesn't tell us anything about places during a prolonged drought, it does not affect the paradox.

Argument or Facts:
Facts

Question Type:
Paradox

Passage Summary:
Only rain stops grass and brush fires. If there's an extended drought, there are many grass and brush fires. But if there's an extended drought, grass and brush fires cause less damage.

Strategy Overview:

1. Argument or facts? Always a set of facts
2. Identify what is strange, discrepant, surprising, or paradoxical in the passage
3. Anticipate additional facts that could be added that could make the passage make more sense
4. Use anticipation to find the answer choice that, if added to the set of facts in the passage, would make the discrepancy/paradox make more sense

Answer Anticipation:
We want to find the answer choice on Paradox questions that would make the discrepant, surprising, or paradoxical situation make more sense. To that end, it helps to clarify why the situation is discrepant, surprising, or paradoxical in the first place. For this passage, it's surprising that there are more grass and brush fires during an extended drought, but the grass and brush fires cause less financial damage. Weird right? We'd expect more fires to result in more damage.

Once we've clarified why the situation is surprising, we can examine the answer choices. We're looking for an answer choice that shows why extended droughts cause more fires but less financial damage from those fires. If we can think of a few things that might resolve this paradox, that's great. Perhaps the fires are smaller or more easily contained during a drought. Or, maybe there is less property in areas experiencing extended droughts. But on Paradox questions, we want our anticipation to be super loose. We'll keep our minds open as we examine these answer choices, but at least we know the shape of what we're looking for.

Answer Choice Explanation:
As expected, this shows why extended periods of drought could produce more grass and brush fires but less financial damage. If grass and brush fires become uncontrollably large only when there's a lot of vegetation, we wouldn't expect grass and brush fires to cause a lot of damage during extended periods of drought. Common sense tells us there would not be much vegetation during an extended period of drought. So, during a prolonged drought, grass and brush fires wouldn't become uncontrollably large. Common sense also tells us that if these fires aren't uncontrollably large, they probably won't cause as much financial damage. (Yes, we're relying on common sense and outside knowledge, but that's OK on the LSAT — even if you may have heard otherwise. In fact, Paradox questions are basically impossible to answer if you dogmatically follow the bad advice to "not rely on outside information.") So, (C) resolves the paradox at hand, making it the correct answer.

Key Takeaway:
Even though Paradox questions are one of the less anticipatable questions on Logical Reasoning, we should still take the time up top to articulate why the situation described is paradoxical. On this question, if we didn't pause to articulate that we're resolving a paradox about periods of extended drought, we might select a popular wrong answer choice that has nothing to with a drought, like (B).

This doesn't affect the paradox. It doesn't matter what causes the grass or brush fires. We're just trying to figure out why the fires are more frequent but less damaging during periods of extended drought. Since this answer choice doesn't tell us why fires may be less damaging during these periods, it's incorrect.

This doesn't resolve the paradox. In fact, it might make the paradox worse. If there are more fires during periods of severe drought, the continuously destroyed vegetation would be replaced with progressively more flammable vegetation. With more flammable vegetation, we'd expect to see bigger, more damaging fires during periods of extended drought.