PrepTest 112

[lcid:3544] Prep Test 112 LSAT — Logical Reasoning — S1 Logical reasoning

Question prompt

Columnist: George Orwell's book Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: B

The notes below walk through why it fits the stem and how to eliminate the rest.

Argument or Facts

Argument

Valid or Flawed

Flawed

Question Type

Argument Evaluation Questions

Stimulus Summary

Survey - We asked 1000 of our readers what book influenced their lives most, and 1984 was second on the list.
Conclusion - 1984 has influenced a great number of our readers

Answer Anticipation

In order to support the conclusion that a great number of readers were influenced by 1984, we’d need to know that the number who responded with that book was, well, a great number! Instead, we learn that it was ranked second on a list.
While it seems as if #2 on a list generated from 1000 responses should be a great number, there’s no way to know that! It could be that the Bible - #1 on the list - had 990 responses listing that book, and only 10 people said 1984. 10 wouldn’t be a great number!
Let’s find an answer that asks a question (what is this, Jeopardy!?) that will let us figure out how many people said 1984.

Answer choices

  1. A
    How many books had Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A is not credited
    It doesn’t matter how many books each respondent read, just how many of them listed 1984 as #1.
  2. B
    How many people chose Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B matches the stem
    Subtract this number from 1000 and we’ll know how many people responded with 1984, and thus whether it truly was a great number. This question will give us the information we need to evaluate the argument, so it’s the correct answer.
  3. C
    How many people read Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited
    The number of readers of the Columnist’s column won’t tell us how many responded to the survey with 1984.
  4. D
    How many books by Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D is not credited
    If the conclusion were about a large number of readers citing George Orwell as an influential author, then this answer might be correct. However, it’s specifically about 1984, so other Orwell books are out of scope.
  5. E
    How many of those Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited
    This answer can be tempting since it seems as if someone would need to read a book in order to be influenced by it. Even if we accept that as true (which is questionable - maybe the movie influenced them!), then this still wouldn’t tell us how many of the people who said 1984 actually read it - just the overall number who had read it! And it still wouldn’t tell us how many said 1984 in the first place.

What this tests

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