Q12 - Melinda: Hazard insurance decreases

[ohthatpatrick]

What does the Question Stem tell us?
Flaw (weird question stem, but it's saying that Jack's response "trades on an ambiguity", which is the famous flaw of Equivocation)

Break down the Stimulus:
Conclusion: Hazard insurance doesn't decrease risk by spreading risk among the pool of policyholders.
Evidence: Buying fire insurance for my house don't decrease the chance that my house will burn down.

Any prephrase?
Jack is saying "buying insurance won't lessen the RISK of my house burning down". Melinda was saying that buying insurance lessens "the RISK that you'll have to pay a ton of money to fix something that got broken". Paying for car insurance obviously doesn't affect your likelihood of getting into an accident, but it decreases the risk that you'll all of a sudden have to pay $3000 to fix your car.

Correct answer:
C

Answer choice analysis:
A) There's no match for this in Jack's argument.

B) No match.

C) Decreases the risk = lessens the chance. Melinda was using "risk" to mean "money you'd pay out in the event of a calamity". Jack is using "risk" to mean "actual probability of that calamity occurring".

D) Decreases = lessens, but these consistently mean "to make lower".

E) Consistently used.

Takeaway/Pattern: This is an odd question. It involves a Flaw mindset, because we're evaluating why the 2nd person's response is faulty, but I've never seen another question like it, in which we're told in advance of the flaw and simply need to pick the equivocal word.

#officialexplanation

[zhanga]

Can someone explain this question for me please? I'm not sure how to approach these types of questions in general. Is there some kind of strategy for them?

[LSAT-Chang]

Sure! I'll try my best to help you out.

As to your question of whether there is an approach to these types of questions, I'm not too sure since this was the first time I've encountered this type, so I personally wouldn't worry too much about it.

Okay so in the stimulus, Melinda basically says that the hazard insurance decreases one's risk by spreading the risk among many policyholders. When I first read this, I wasn't sure what was meant by her definition of "risk" -- monetary risk? Anyways, so with that in mind I read Jack's argument and he confidently says "I don't see how buying hazard insurance lessens the chances that my house will burn down", so clearly he interpreted Melinda's "risk" to mean the likelihood of his house burning down because Melinda says "hazard insurance decreaes one's risk" and from THIS, Jack claims that "hazard insurance doesn't lessen the chance of my house burning down." Do you see how he interpreted "risk" to mean something that we are not 100% sure of from Melinda's statement? So (C) is our correct answer since Jack's response trades on an ambiguity in the word "risk" used by Melinda (ambiguous because we don't know exactly what Melinda is referring to when she uses the word "risk").

I hope this helped out a little!

[kyuya]

If you drill from Cambridge's packages extensively, you've ran across a few of these. They seem to be relegated to the earlier tests, but here is an exception to the rule. This question is still a bit awkward though, and it's probably best to use process of elimination.

Melinda: hazard insurance spreads risk

Jack: How does hazard insurance lessen the chance my house will burn down?

But wait, Jack.. we didn't say hazard insurance would lessen the chance your house would burn down. We said it would spread risk among policy holders. Did you think Melinda said getting hazard insurance would lessen your chance of getting a house fire.. or in other words, the RISK associated with you getting a house fire? seems like it.

(A) Jack is confused about how hazard insurance lessens the CHANCES or RISK associated with his house being burned down. He doesn't seem confused about judicious spreading.

(B) Doesn't mention a thing about policy holders.

(D) He seems to understand the term decrease, but just not how the decrease actually applies to his situation. The spread of risk is interpreted as being a decrease in risk for him, but the term decrease is not what causes the confusion. Its the risk he is confused about.

(E) He misinterprets the supposed effect of hazard insurance (RISK reduction), and not the term itself.

The right answer is (C) because he states he doesn't know how it "lessens the chance of", which is another way of saying reduces the risk. How, he asks does it reduce the risk? Well it does not. You've misinterpreted what was said Jack.