Q10 - The government of Penglai

[wayne_palmer10]

I didn't notice the assumption flaw in the stimulus, so I was surprised that (B) was the correct answer. Any advice? Thanks.

[dan]

Hey Wayne. Yeah, this is a tough assumption to spot right away. Let me say first that, in general, it's okay if you don't spot the assumption before going to the answer choices. In fact, often you won't be able to. If you have a strong sense for the argument core (primary premise ---> main conclusion), this will give you a good sense for the scope of the assumption you're looking for in the choices. 95% of the time, the assumption will fit somewhere between the primary premise and the main conclusion. So, when the assumption doesn't occur to you immediately, focus on finding the core, and then go to the choices.

Let's look at the core of this argument:
Businesses that use outdoor advertising have larger market shares than those that don't.
So, eliminating outdoor advertising would reduce overall volume of business.

It would make more sense to conclude that eliminating outdoor advertising would negatively impact the business of those companies that currently use it, but does it make sense to say that it would reduce the overall volume of business? Maybe the elimination of outdoor advertising will simply redistribute the business more evenly across all businesses.

In other words, the author assumes that the outdoor advertising doesn't simply "move" some of the business from those who don't advertise to those who do.

Make sense?

dan

[ebrickm2]

Not sure what the stimulus was saying. I got the answer choice right, but I felt dirty for not understanding the stimulus...help!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT2]

Here's an analogy that might help clear up the issue --

A similar argument could be...

Evidence: Fruit stands at the farmer's market that have signs always sell better than the ones that don't.

Conclusion: Allowing signs means the that the farmer's market makes more money overall.

The "overall" is the big issue here -- couldn't it be that the same amount of money is spent at the farmer's market whether there are signs or not, it's just, when there do happen to be signs, that people buy more at the places with signs and less at the places without signs?

That's the same issue that's in this argument.

[perng.yan]

i saw the hole in this one.. because the merchant talks about two different things:

1) overall volume of business
with
2) larger market share

but i'm confused about the wording of the answer choice (B).

i chose answer choice (D) because the the merchant's protest says industries that used outdoor advertising had a larger market share...
but.. the government's proposal is not to eliminate outdoor advertising.. because it leaves a small sign that they can use. Therefore, a small sign could be just as effective as the outdoor advertising.

thanks.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT2]

I can see why (D) was tempting, but I think what gives it away it's precision --

(D) is saying that the argument is flawed because they can't come up proof about the benefit of outdoor advertising was precisely proportionate to the amount of advertising.

How would one measure that, exactly? By creating a ratio of revenue to sign size? Or do you compare it to the number of people who see the sign, or the amount spent on advertising? When you think about it in those terms, it doesn't seem like something the merchants had to prove in order to make their point.

This precision is not necessary for the argument to be reasonable, and therefore the argument is not flawed for not having it.

I hope that is helpful! Please follow up if that doesn't make sense or if you want an alternate explanation.

[perng.yan]

mm.. think i get it... thanks!

[WaltGrace1983]

Penglai businesses without signs had a smaller market share
→
Restricting signs would reduce overall volume of business in Penglai

So what exactly is (B) saying? Is it saying the argument assumes that these businesses with signs did more than just divert business from other businesses? After all, merely diverting business between businesses in Penglai wouldn't equal any more or less overall business in Penglai. Is this right?

[sumukh09]

Penglai businesses without signs had a smaller market share
→
Restricting signs would reduce overall volume of business in Penglai

So what exactly is (B) saying? Is it saying the argument assumes that these businesses with signs did more than just divert business from other businesses? After all, merely diverting business between businesses in Penglai wouldn't equal any more or less overall business in Penglai. Is this right?

Is it saying the argument assumes that these businesses with signs did more than just [b]divert business from other businesses?[/b]

Yeah, pretty much!

B) simply says, in a convoluted way, that the argument assumes it was because of the signs that these businesses had a larger market share. There could have been other reasons that the merchant has failed to consider.

[WaltGrace1983]

^ Thanks! I am going to return to this question and do a full write-up as my understanding of this question has grown tremendously since I first saw it.

Proposal: Eliminate outdoor advertising

Report says that businesses with signs had a larger market share than business without signs
→
Proposal to eliminate signs would reduce overall volume of business in Penglai

This is perhaps one of the most common flaws on the LSAT, in disguise of course. The flaw here is the age-old percentage/overall number flaw. Without additional supporting evidence, it is never okay to conclude something about a number from a premise about a percentage. On the flip side, it is never okay to conclude something about a percentage from merely a premise about a number.

Market share is just a percentage while "overall volume" of business is more like a raw number. So just because the signed businesses attract more business in comparison to the other businesses, it doesn't mean that eliminating signage will mean less business overall. I hope this makes sense as its a tricky concept to communicate on an internet forum. Ask if you are unsure.

(A) We don't care about the reasons for restricting outdoor advertising. We have one question and one question only, "will this new law reduce overall volume of business?"

(C) Tricky answer choice because it hinges on that idea of a flawed survey. One may ask, "well perhaps the survey is flawed?" I think this is a reasonable question to ask. However, I do believe one of the geeks told us not to question a survey unless there is some reason that it may not be representative. In this case, we don't have too much of a reason to suppose that it is unrepresentative. In addition, we still have a bigger flaw to look out for (percentage vs. whole number)

(D) How do we measure "the amount of advertising" quantitively? In addition, without any extra information, we don't really care WHY the market-share was the way it was. This could have been right had it said something like this: "failing to establish whether the market-share advantage enjoyed by businesses employing outdoor advertising was due to attracting more cliental who were only there because of the amount of advertising." Once you see the explanation for (B), you might understand more about why this answer is much better.

(E) Who cares if they are unconstitutional? This is very similar to (A).

(B) is right here because it points of the percentage/absolute number flaw. Because (B) starts with the word "assuming," we can treat it like a necessary assumption and check it through negation.

If it is true that the "outdoor advertising increased market share only by diverting trade from competing businesses," then the conclusion cannot logically follow from the premises because, while the market share of certain businesses may decrease, the overall volume will stay the same.

What (B) is saying, in a difficult way, is that the businesses with signs attracted customers that would otherwise not shop in Penglai. In other words, it is saying that there are some customers that shop ONLY BECAUSE of the signs and, if you take away those signs, they won't shop in Penglai - period - thus reducing the overall volume.

Hope that helps! Let me know if this isn't easy to understand.

[melfq]

I wanted to address an alternative way to eliminate (D): failing to establish the proportion between amount of outdoor advertising by a business & that business's market share within Penglai is irrelevant because lessening market share (represented as a %) for some businesses will not reduce the overall volume of business in Penglai.

Instead, (B) is correct because all of the reasons given above.

[zen]

I figured writing this out would help solidify my own understanding.

The argument can be boiled down to:


Conclusion
If outdoor advertising is reduced, then the overall volume of business is reduced.

Premises:
Businesses that utilized outdoor advertising have a larger market share than those who do not use outdoor advertising.

The author is assuming that the increased market share of the businesses is due to their utilization of outdoor advertising.

Furthermore, the largest problem is the way the premise is used to justify the conclusion. Even if we assume that the increased market share is due to outdoor advertising, it would not be correct to also assume that a decrease in market share of these certain business will also lead to a decrease in the overall volume of business.

Market share is just a percentage of the pie; overall volume of business is a real number. One should not assume they are in a direct relationship.

Only if the businesses utilizing outdoor advertising have gained their market share by attracting customers who would not have otherwise contributed to the overall volume of business would this argument be correct. The Merchants' argument assumes,without giving any justification, that this has to be the case. It could be the case that the businesses utilizing outdoor advertising are merely attracting customers who had already decided to buy something(i.e. contribute to the overall volume of business), and just choose the store with the outdoor advertising because of the greater amount of advertising. If this were the case, then the overall volume of business would not change due to an elimination of outdoor advertising, merely a decrease in market share; these businesses would just have more competition but the overall volume of business on the island would be the same.

A. The author does not presuppose there are no good reasons. He just argues against it.

B. Correct; it fits with the analysis above. If the author did justify this, it would give support to the idea that decreasing the market share of the businesses using outdoor advertising would then lead to decreased volume of business on the island.

D. Out of Scope. There is no mention of a survey in the Stimulus, just a report; and, we have no reason to doubt the survey, it's not the flaw we are looking for.

D. Tempting but it does not get to the heart of the issue which is: decreased market share does not = decreased overall volume of business. If the author did establish this, this would only strengthen the premise(assuming amount of advertising is largely made up of outdoor advertising); it would not strengthen the conclusion.


E. Constitutional issues are out of scope.


Hope that was ok. My first write-up. I hope that helps someone someday. Sorry it was so long!

[halflate37s]

B) assuming without giving justification that the outdoor advertising increased market share by some other means than by diverting trade from competing businesses.

by some other means.....e.g. INCREASING DEMAND


What slowed me down was the fact that in one kind of market, the invisible assumption made by those against the proposition might be extremely natural (or even logically deduced) while in another market, it could be silly (at least in comparison). Think of the differences between how we consume pop music and how we consume potatoes. In the pop music industry, if your face is on a billboard, you're going to sell more songs than other pop artists and without any advertisements, demand in pop music as a whole could go down. The billboards, commercials, movies etc. increase demand.

At the farmers market, what do potato sellers do? They improve their baskets, bags, graphic design etc. and if one vendor leaves, people buy their potatoes from another. The demand for potatoes probably does not fluctuate very much.


Maybe those against the proposal believed this "other means" could be more or less deduced depending on the market, and adversely affecting those markets adversely affects the market as a whole.

The problem here, the bad tooth, is not that their conclusion is more than likely wrong or that the evidence - the market share study - is or is not useful. The problem is that they pointed to that piece of evidence and, as far as we know, did not bolster it with necessary further explanation.

[VendelaG465]

in the LR strategy guide there were several flaws mentioned for this argument such as corr./causation, percent/amount & term shift. Which would I be keeping in mind when eliminating answer choices?

[ohthatpatrick]

You'd keep all of them in mind!

That's sometimes the challenge in really difficult Flaw questions:
there can be more than one thing wrong with an argument, so a correct answer choice could be written in a lot of different ways.

As (almost) always, we're best working Wrong to Right. Figure out why four of these answers are wrong. You'll always either be killing an answer on Flaw because it's

- inaccurate ("That's not true!")
or
- unimportant ("Yes, but that doesn't matter to the logic")

The only somewhat helpful tendency I can warn you about is that if you're dealing with both Corr/Caus AND a Term Shift, the correct answer is way more likely to deal with the former.