Q11 - Peter: Because the leaves of

[sumukh09]

Question 11: Strengthen the Argument Question

For this question we're asked to strengthen Peter's argument that in order to minimize damage to crops, farmers should water crops only just enough to ensure that there is no substantial threat, from a lack of water, to either the growth or the yield of crops.

We need to find an answer choice that provides support to Peter's proposal in undertaking the course of action outlined by him for the purpose of minimizing crop damage.

A) some crop plants are larger so they absorb more water. That's fine and all, but that does nothing to strengthen Peter's argument so we would eliminate this.

B) out of scoooooope -- industrialized nations? relativity of crops abundantly watered vs. not abundantly watered? We can eliminate this with supreme confidence

C) ah, there we go. If insect damage presents a greater threat to crop plants than mild drought stress, then it would probably be advisable to not water the plants more than they need to, otherwise insects would start feeding on plants that have been abundantly watered since they prefer the texture when crops are well watered. C) is therefore correct.

D) irrelevant and out of scope

E) this weakens the argument if anything and also it's much too narrow and specific

[ohthatpatrick]

Awesome explanation, including the emotional reactions we have to really unlikely answers, such as (B), and great looking answers, such as (C).

I think LSAT becomes more fun when you can laugh at terrible answers and get excited about correct ones.

Keep up the good work.

[WaltGrace1983]

(E) is obviously wrong. However, to nitpick and to potentially learn more, we cannot really say it weakens because we don't really know anything about these two types of beetles, right? Maybe the oak lace bugs never feed on abundantly watered soybeans and so if one Mexican been beetle feeds on a drought-stressed soybean this would still satisfying the Mexican been beetle being "more likely" to feed on drought-stressed soybeans while still not really posing any threat to the crops to thus not really weaken the argument.

The point I am trying to make is that these vague answers that discuss things we really don't know about in the stimulus are wrong because we could just as easily assume that it strengthens as we could that it weakens, right?

[ohthatpatrick]

Yeah, it doesn’t really weaken, but the original poster was saying if anything it weakens because even just reading it from a bird’s eye view you can see that it is a mismatch for the author we’re trying to strengthen.

The fuzzy gist of (E) is that an insect is more likely to eat the drought stressed leaf than the abundantly watered one.

Even though your question on this came from the spirit of wanting to "˜potentially learn more’, you may want to consider that there is such a thing as being TOO analytical. Since this is a timed test, we want the quickest legitimate reason we can come up with for getting rid of an answer.

There are lots of different reasons why an individual answer might be wrong, and one of them I definitely use a lot is similar to what you were saying: "it’s too vague to know whether it strengthens or weakens".

I wouldn’t personally put this answer choice in that category when reading it, because the fact that it seems to weaken is enough for me to discard it without digging in more deeply.