PrepTest 142

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Facts

Question Type:
Must Be True

Stimulus Summary:
A professor lectured sometimes after pulling an all-nighter. She felt run down and that the lectures were a mess, but the students couldn't tell which lectures she gave after the all-nighters.

Answer Anticipation:
This question is very similar to a Paradox question, in that a weird situation is described in the stimulus. However, we can't forget that it's a Must Be True question, so we're not looking for a resolution to this paradox but rather something that is strongly supported by the statements provided.

And the stimulus essentially brings up two viewpoints—the professor's and the students's. We get a subjective assessment of how both experienced certain lectures. When sleep-deprived, the professor's subjective assessment was that she was doing a poor job—humorless, lack of concentration, stumbling over words. The students, on the other hand, couldn't' tell the difference.

That provides a good amount of evidence that the all-nighters had a larger effect on the professor's impression of her teaching than it did on her actual teaching, or at least on the elements of it that could be perceived by the students. Let's find an answer that draws this comparison.

Answer Explanation:
The subjective effects of sleep deprivation here were experienced by the professor; the effects on overt behavior would be experienced by the students. Since the professor's assessment of her teaching had more pronounced effects than the students', this comparison is supported by the stimulus. Note that the comparative language here is pretty weak—"more pronounced." That could be only slightly more pronounced, which would require only a slight difference to support. We have at least that in the stimulus.

Key Takeaway:
While the LSAT has trends as to what concepts it tests in each question type (conditional logic; causality; etc . . . ), those aren't hard and fast rules. Any concept is fair game in essentially any question type. Subjective vs. objective is more common in flaw-based questions, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't pay attention to these concepts when it shows up in a Must Be True question.

Incorrect. This answer is too extreme in saying that "[n]o one" can assess these effects better than the sleep-deprived person just based on one example. In fact, it's possible here that the students were better at assessing the effects than the teacher—the sleep deprivation may have made her feel the effects were more pronounced than they actually were.

Incorrect. Other jobs are completely out of scope of this stimulus.

Incorrect. There's no discussion of extended sleep deprivation, so this comparison is out of scope.

Incorrect. If anything, the students were shown not to be all that observant, as they couldn't tell when the professor was sleep deprived.