PrepTest 159, Section 3, Question 23
Principal: All of our school's rural students participate(72 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the principal's(6 more words not shown)
- Atakes for granted(20 more words not shown)
- Btakes for granted(14 more words not shown)
- Cignores the possibility(21 more words not shown)
- Dignores the possibility(17 more words not shown)
- Eat first uses(15 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
The lunch group is mixed. Is the extracurricular group mixed too?
All the rural students and about half the urban students eat through the lunch program. Some lunch participants also do extracurricular activities. But that smaller group could consist entirely of rural students, or entirely of urban students. Picture a lunchroom with students from both groups, then a drama club made up only of the urban students in that room. If the rural students do no extracurricular activities, the premises can still hold while the principal's conclusion fails. Having both groups in the larger lunch program doesn't ensure that both appear in the smaller group doing activities.
What we’re looking for
That's the flaw I'd look for: assuming that a subgroup must contain both kinds of student just because the larger group does. Mentioning strong academic achievers doesn't supply the missing information about where the students live.
Working the answers
- A
The conclusion concerns rural and urban students, not the balance of stronger and weaker academic achievers. We know some strong achievers participate, but the principal doesn't rely on their outnumbering anyone. This adds a comparison unrelated to the inference about where participants live.
- B
The principal claims that some extracurricular participants are rural and some are urban. That doesn't compare their numbers. The argument could make its claim with two rural participants and twenty urban participants, so it doesn't take a greater number of rural participants for granted.
- CCorrect
The lunch participants who also do activities might all come from just one of the two groups. Knowing that both rural and urban students use the lunch program doesn't tell us that both are represented in its extracurricular subset. That missing distribution is exactly what the principal assumes when concluding that both groups participate in activities.
- D
Students may have plenty of other ways to spend their time. That doesn't resolve whether both rural and urban students are represented among extracurricular participants. The problem is the unsupported claim about the group's makeup, not a failure to list every activity available to students.
- E
“Participate” consistently means take part. The students take part in a lunch program and in extracurricular activities; the activities change, but the meaning of the word doesn't. The reasoning goes wrong in moving from a mixed larger group to a supposedly mixed subgroup.
More Flaw questions
Learn the LSAT our way
Our platform drills Flaw questions at your level and adjusts as you improve.