PrepTest 131

Incorrect. On the LSAT, we treat premises as true—there's no need to support every claim with statistics and citations. This is a common incorrect answer in Errors in Reasoning questions.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Errors in Reasoning

Stimulus Summary:
Ice cream sales are down and cheddar sales are up. Both are a good source of calcium, so people must have swapped to cheddar for their calcium needs.

Answer Anticipation:
"And during the same period" should have caused your correlation/causation sensor to perk up. Whenever an LSAT argument brings up two things that coincided in the same time period, there's a good chance that that's the direction the argument is headed in.

Here, it's buried under a lot of stuff about calcium intake, but the conclusion essentially states that ice cream sales are down because cheddar sales are up. That's a causal statement that's based on a correlation, so the correct answer should highlight that jump directly, or phrase it in other common language for this flaw—often discussing alternative causes that have been ignored.

Answer Explanation:
This answer highlights that, in jumping from a correlation to causation, the argument fails to consider other potential causes of the decline in ice cream sales (possibly causes that would also increase cheddar sales).

Key Takeaway:
Knowing causal language when you see it is important for the LSAT. Knowing correlative language when you see it is the sign of a true master. Be on the lookout for correlative phrases and keep a list of them so that you can start to think in the right direction earlier on in the stimulus. There's no better feeling on the LSAT than reading an opening sentence and knowing exactly where the argument is going.

Incorrect. First, the dairy farmers may have a stake in ice cream sales, but their reporting of sales numbers shouldn't be biased, as that doesn't particularly help them. Second, cheese is also a dairy product, so if people are switching from ice cream to cheese, that's no skin off their back.

Incorrect. The argument just assumes that people have made this switch—they could have done that despite cheese being a bad source of calcium.

Incorrect. If people shift their eating habits to include more cheese and less ice cream, the argument still holds even if they're still eating some of both.