Q12 - Worldwide, more books were sold

[layamaheshwari]

Can someone explain why A is the correct answer and why D is wrong? Thank you!

[rohanw2000]

Can someone explain why A is the correct answer and why D is wrong? Thank you!

I have the same question.
And also, is there any reason for mentioning 'Problem-Free Cooking' in the question or is it simply irrelevant?

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

This is a tough question and would need a bit extra time to work through carefully.

We're told a number of things about the book market and in particular cookbooks within that market. Each sentence is different and doesn't seem to chain together in meaning.

Answer choice (A) follows from the third sentence. If for the first time, most of the cookbooks sold were not intended for beginners, than we know that last year, there wasn't yet a majority of books not intended for beginners. So they went up!

Incorrect Answers
(B) is out of scope. Best-selling?
(C) could be false. We know the percentage of cookbooks intended for beginners went down, but the number of them could have gone up.
(D) contains an unsupported comparison. We know that the number of cookbooks purchased by professionals went up, but that doesn't mean they purchase more than half of all cookbooks.
(E) twists the meaning of the last sentence (so that part about Problem-Free Cooking is not irrelevant, it sets up a trap answer). Available on every continent, is not the same as most copies sold.

[fadams]

Last year, there were more books sold than any. Specifically, more cookbooks than ever.
For the first time, most cookbooks were not intended for beginners, but were bought by professionals.
However, one of the few books available is a cookbook written for beginners, called PFC.

Absolute amount of cookbooks more than ever. Ie. larger circle.
Before in the circle, 2:2 ratio of beginner to professional
Now in a larger circle, 2:4 ration of beginner to professional.

A. Last year, there were more cookbooks sold that were not intended for beginners than in any previous year. Seems to be a direct quote from above and see ratio change from 2 to 4.
B. The best-selling? We don’t know anything about that
C. Sales of cookbooks intended for beginner were lower than in previous years. See ratio, the 2 can actually remain the same!
D. Most cookbooks purchased last year that weren’t intended for beginners were bought by professional cooks. Don’t know that clear of a distinction
E. PFC sold more copies last year than any year. Not inferable.

[JorieB701]

I just want to make sure I'm understanding this properly because it's a proportion/math-ish question and I tend to get these wrong.

So they sold more books than ever last year-- the circle that represents the amount of books sold got bigger.
Same can be said of cookbooks-- the circle that represents cookbooks sold also got bigger.
Then they tell us about what's happening inside the cookbook circle; for every year prior, the proportion of cookbooks sold intended for beginners has always been larger than that of books not intended for beginners-- so, inside the bigger cookbooks circle, the proportion has changed, cookbooks intended for beginners no longer has the majority amount of the circle.
The rest is kind of extra support.

I had actually pre-phrased my answer to look something like, "Last year, sales for Problem-Free Cooking did not account for the majority of cookbook sales worldwide," or something like that, which clearly isn't here. I'm wondering if it would have been correct if it had been an option?

I ended up choosing C but a little drawing of what I described above shows me this doesn't necessarily have to be the case. However, that drawing does show that the piece of the pie represented by books not sold for beginners must have gotten bigger. So, it's A.

Why, oh why, do I always get these wrong? Is there some kind of mental formula I can learn? Like, pie gets bigger + what used to be the small piece of the pie is now the bigger piece of the pie = the new majority of the pie's absolute amount must have gone up as well?

[ohthatpatrick]

Inference can test us as much on what we CAN derive as on what we CAN'T derive.

We want to read these with an eye/ear for "what can be combined or derived", but when you read the last sentence, it isn't telling us anything particularly usable.

When I read the last sentence, I thought, "Well, I can't really infer anything about that. It seems like they're baiting me into over-inferring."

However, given that PFC is for beginners, your inference that "sales of PFC do not account for the majority of last year's sales of cookbooks" is wonderful and true!

Just because they rewarded a different possible inference shouldn't dishearten you. Inference answers can often be hard / impossible to predict.

This problem doesn't demonstrate a formula I've seen more than once, so it might not be useful to memorize, but here's what I would call it.

X can be divided up into A and B
(cookbooks can be divided up into for beginners and for not-beginners)

It's always been the case that most of X is A (51%),
a minority of X is B (49%).

This year, X is bigger than ever.
This year, a majority of X is B.

(A) is asking us compare this year's number of B to all previous years, so it's a fight between

49% of (smaller X's) vs. 51% of (biggest X ever)

That's how we know the right side wins.

A different, but somewhat related formula, that they test is this:

Most X's are Y.
Most Y's are ~X.
------------------------------
Thus, Y is bigger than X.

f.e.
Most painters are poets.
Most poets are not-painters.
-------------------------------------
Thus, there are more poets than painters.

The idea here is that some people in the world are both poets and painters.

Those poet-painters are A MAJORITY of painters.
Those poet-painters are A MINORITY of poets.

If the same group is 51% of Painters, but 49% of poets,
then poets has to be a bigger number than painters.

[JorieB701]

A different, but somewhat related formula, that they test is this:

Most X's are Y.
Most Y's are ~X.
------------------------------
Thus, Y is bigger than X.

=.

This is awesome, thank you!

Is there a place in the curriculum where I might have missed formulas like that? I see some in the conditional logic chapter, are they elsewhere as well?

[can_I_ever_reach_a_170?]

Hello Manhattan LSAT masters!
I need help with this problem.

I don’t like answer choice A for how it compares the number of cookbooks sold not inteded for beginners last year to that in any previous year.

More books were sold last year than in any previous year.
More cookbooks were sold last year.
For the first time ever, most cookbooks sold were not intended for beginners.
The 2nd line doesn’t mention “previous year.” So I assume that line is relavant only to last year.

My example doesn’t allow me to choose A.
In 2010, 80 books were sold. In 2017, 100 books were sold.
In 2010, 60 books sold were cookbooks. In 2017, 40 books sold were cookbooks, 30 fictions and 30 textbooks.
In 2010, 29 cookbooks not intended for beginners and 31 intended for beginners. In 2017, 25 cookbooks not intended for beginners and 15 intended for beginners.

I interpreted the second sentence as saying more cookbooks “than other genres of books” were sold last year.
I guess in order to make A valid, I should have understood it as saying more cookbooks were sold last year “than in any previous year”?
Can you help me see what I’ve missed or overlooked or understood wrong?

[Jay11]

In 2010, 60 books sold were cookbooks. In 2017, 40 books sold were cookbooks, 30 fictions and 30 textbooks.

I'm not a Manhattan Master, but I think I can help.

This contradicts the 2nd sentence. I think you misunderstood. They’re telling us there were a greater number of cookbooks sold last year than in any previous year. Your example shows fewer cookbooks being purchased last year than in previous years.

D is not supported. It’s possible that most of the cookbooks for non-beginners were purchased by amateurs (wannabe Gordon Ramseys that only cook for themselves). The argument doesn’t tell us what kind of cookbooks the professional cooks bought. We only know that more cookbooks were purchased by professionals than in previous years.