2406

[zagreus77]

There is a problem with 2406 as neither answer choice can be validly inferred.


All successful people have experienced a life-changing event, and most people who have experienced a life-changing event are aware of its impact.

We can infer that...

Most people who have experienced a life-changing event are successful.

Some successful people are aware of having experienced a life-changing event.

Let's symbolize as follows:

All successful people have experienced a life changing event
= S ---->L

most people who have experienced a life-changing event are ware of its impact = L most A

There is no way to validly infer, as the purported answer does, that S some A. It could be the case that though the majority of L's are A, it just so happens that the S's never are. It's a classic invalid formulation.

[noah]

Bravo! I fixed the question.

This game has been up for at least 2 years, and you're the first person to figure that out--it seems like a good sign for you!

[zagreus77]

Cool. I just read the new version. You made it extra tricky.

[noah]

Cool. I just read the new version. You made it extra tricky.

Yes - I 100% broke the confines of the game and put in 3 facts -- I think I might have been lashing out

[ptraye]

Here's what I saw:

Most successful people have experienced a life-changing event and most successful people are lucky. Furthermore, all that have experienced a life-changing event are aware of its impact.

We can infer that...

1) Some people are aware of the impact of a life-changing event on their lives.

2) Not every lucky person is both successful and aware of the impact of a life-changing event on his or her life.

----------------------------------------------

1 is correct. does the answer come from the "all" clause in the last sentence? further, is it correct without specifying those people as "all that have experienced a life-changing event"?

and, why is 2 wrong?

thanks.

[christine.defenbaugh]

Interesting question, ptraye!

Yes, the answer hinges on the 'all' clause in the last sentence!

We know that all people that have experienced a life-changing event are aware of that impact. If All A are B, we can surely say that SOME A are B. So it's just as valid to say that SOME people are aware of the impact a life-changing event has had on their lives. We do not need to repeat the 'all' language for the statement to be valid!

As for #2, this statement is a little complicated, so let's focus on the beginning. "Not every lucky person blahblahblah" is essentially saying that SOME lucky people do NOT do blahblahblah. So, what do we know about lucky people? All we know is that most successful people are lucky. So, we know there are some lucky people that are successful. We could also figure out that there are some lucky people that have had a life changing event. We could even take it a little further and conclude that some lucky people are aware of the impact on their lives of a life-changing event.

But notice that all of these statements are POSITIVE things - we know there ARE some lucky people that do blah or bleh or bluh. We don't have ANY inferences that "some lucky people do NOT" do something. It is entirely possible that every lucky people on earth has all these characteristics.

Thus, there's no way we could support a statement that started with "Not every lucky person...", because we have no idea if there are some lucky people that *DON'T* do something!


Please let me know if this helps clear this up!

[ptraye]

thank you for your reply, Christine.

if we can infer from the most clause that, some lucky people are successful, doesn't that also mean that some are not.

if some students earn A's, doesn't that also mean that some students do not earn A's?

number 2 looks like it tries to combine the first two statements, somehow, and i don't understand it.

for me, it's easier to understand why 1 is correct than why 2 is incorrect. and, on the test, sometimes, i really need to understand the wrong answer choices more...

i still don't fully understand why 2 is incorrect. and, is it possible for you to rephrase 2 to make it correct?

thanks.

[christine.defenbaugh]

thank you for your reply, Christine.

if we can infer from the most clause that, some lucky people are successful, doesn't that also mean that some are not.

if some students earn A's, doesn't that also mean that some students do not earn A's?

ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!

If we know that some lucky people are successful, we absolutely CANNOT infer that some are NOT successful. It is *entirely* possible that "all lucky people are successful". We don't know either way!

The word "some" can be thought of as "at least one". So, if I say "some of the apples are red", that means that at least one apple is red. Maybe all the apples are red, and maybe there are some apples that aren't red - we have NO IDEA. We cannot infer either thing!

I strongly recommend that you re-read the quantity section in Chapter 8 of the Manhattan LSAT LR book. It goes over how to deal with "all", "most", and "some" - what they mean, what inferences we can draw from combinations of them, etc.

In this situation, we cannot infer anything at all about what some lucky people do not do. Answer #2 claims that we CAN infer something that some lucky people *don't* do. Since we can't possibly infer anything at all about what some lucky people don't do, there's no way this can ever be correct.

Now, if answer #2 had instead said "SOME lucky people ARE both successful and aware of the impact of a life-changing event on his or her life", that would have been correct. Work through the Quantity Words section in Chapter 8 of the LR book and see if you can explain why that rewrite WOULD be inferrable!