PrepTest 157, Section 3, Question 16
Future overall demand for professors can be predicted(28 more words not shown)
The situation described above best(7 more words not shown)
- AThe more detailed(13 more words not shown)
- BThe more general(10 more words not shown)
- CPredicting future trends(13 more words not shown)
- DThe more detailed(16 more words not shown)
- EPredictions based only(8 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Knowing roughly how many students will need professors doesn't tell us what they'll want to study.
Birth rates give us a way to estimate the size of a future college-age population. That can support a reasonably accurate prediction about professors overall. But how many of those students will choose music rather than history? And among the music students, how many will study jazz? Their interests could shift, even if the overall population estimate stays useful.
What we’re looking for
The prediction gets narrower each time: all professors, then music professors, then jazz studies professors. Accuracy falls as we move down that sequence. For the principle question, I'd look for that contrast between a useful big-picture prediction and less accurate predictions about its smaller parts.
Working the answers
- A
The passage doesn't compare detailed evidence with incomplete evidence. It starts with birth rates and changes what we're trying to predict from them. This answer changes the quality of the evidence rather than the generality of the prediction.
- BCorrect
The most general prediction—overall demand for professors—is the most accurate. Music is narrower and less accurate; jazz studies is narrower still and less accurate still. B describes exactly how the level of detail in the prediction relates to its accuracy in this example.
- C
“Temporally remote” means farther away in time. This would compare, for example, forecasting twenty years ahead with forecasting fifty years ahead. Our passage changes the subject's level of detail, not the number of years into the future. All three forecasts could concern the same year.
- D
Like A, this compares the detail and completeness of the evidence. We aren't given a more complete set of birth data for one prediction and a less complete set for another. Nor does the passage focus on people's confidence. It compares the accuracy of broad and narrow forecasts.
- E
The passage explicitly says the broad prediction based on birth rates is reasonably accurate. So it doesn't illustrate a general failure of predictions based on broad trends. The difficulty arises as the prediction becomes more specific.
More Strategy of Argument questions
Learn the LSAT our way
Our platform drills Strategy of Argument questions at your level and adjusts as you improve.