linzru86
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Q18 - A person is more likely

by linzru86 Mon Jul 26, 2010 3:27 pm

I seem to have trouble with these "which one shows that the explanation is at best incomplete" question types. I don't see them a lot, but whenever I do, I get them wrong.
 
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Re: Q18 - A person is more likely

by giladedelman Mon Jul 26, 2010 10:38 pm

Thanks for the question! You're right that this is an unusually worded problem, but we can treat it as a weakening question: a statement that shows the explanation to be "at best incomplete" is akin to a statement that weakens it.

The argument introduces a discrepancy between the increasing likelihood of disability as a person ages and the decreasing likelihood of receiving disability benefits as one ages. (This is why I plan to retire in West Wendell.) It concludes that this discrepancy is due to a recent increase in the amount of jobs offering disability payments. The pretty big assumption is that people aged 55-64 are more likely to have jobs and therefore to receive the added benefits. We're looking for an answer choice that negates this assumption or offers an alternative explanation.

(E) is correct. It offers an alternative explanation: it's not just that people over 65 are less likely to have a job; it's also that those who do work are less likely to receive disability benefits than their younger colleagues.

(A) is out of scope. We don't care about the treatment of disabilities.

(B) is out of scope. Okay, some get benefits from work and some from the government, but what does this have to do with the age discrepancy?

(C) is out of scope. (I know, I'm a broken record.) Increased life span?

(D) is, you guessed it, out of scope. We're interested in the proportion of people who receive benefits, not how those benefits compare to their overall income.

I hope that cleared things up for you. Feel free to follow up if you're still having problems.
 
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Re: PT34, S3, Q18 - A person is more likely to become disabled

by linzru86 Tue Jul 27, 2010 5:54 pm

Ok I see now, just see these as a weaken question type. Thanks so much!
 
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Re: Q18 - A person is more likely to become disabled

by skapur777 Tue Apr 05, 2011 11:28 pm

Still a little confused. The proportion receiving disability benefit payments shrinks, and the explanation is that more jobs are offering disability payments? How does that make sense?
 
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Re: Q18 - A person is more likely to become disabled

by sheffieldjordan Wed Apr 06, 2011 1:48 am

[Skapur: I took this test yesterday and also missed more-than-average on the logical reasoning]

In initially posted reply, the poster states that (E) offers an "alternate explanation."

I read his explanation twice, and think I still don't get exactly what he's saying.

The way I justified choosing (E) is that it presents a scenario that the stimulus does not account for.

I understood the stimulus to be talking about government payments to the disabled, even though it doesn't explicitly say it.
More employers are offering disablity payments to their employees, and now a decreasing percentage of seniors collect from the government (if they're employed).

But, if an employer stops paying disability after age 65, the employee would have to collect from the government. If this were the case, why is the percentage only 1%? The stimulus doesn't account for this.

I don't know if this is what the test writers intended, but this is how I came to pick (E).
 
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Re: Q18 - A person is more likely to become disabled

by giladedelman Sat Apr 09, 2011 6:22 pm

Great posts!

Be careful about assuming anything that isn't explicitly stated. We don't know where benefits are coming from other than employers; if the argument doesn't say "government," then we can't assume that. Luckily, it doesn't really matter.

What my younger self was trying to say in my initial post is that often we weaken an argument on the LSAT by challenging the assumption through an alternative explanation -- in other words, as you put it, "a scenario that the stimulus does not account for." If I assume that the restaurant is crowded because the food is good, you could weaken my argument by pointing out that the restaurant recently got endorsed by Lebron James -- so maybe that's the reason, not the food. Alternative explanation.

In this case, the argument assumes that old people are less likely to have a job than younger people, and so if more jobs are offering benefits, then younger people will be more likely to receive them. (E) challenges this assumption by giving a different explanation: maybe old people actually do work as much as young people, but their jobs stop giving them benefits after age 65. In that case, the explanation for the statistics is not that more jobs give benefits, but that jobs stop giving benefits to older people.

Does that help, or am I still failing to explain this one?
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Re: Q18 - A person is more likely to become disabled

by geverett Sun Jun 12, 2011 6:02 pm

This is a peculiar question.

It tells us that the percentage of people receiving disability payments decreases incrementally - 4% for 55-64 year olds to 2% for 65-74 year olds to 1% for 75 or older - even though a person has a greater chance of becoming disabled as they grow older. Then the reason given for this discrepancy is that the proportion of jobs offering this disability benefit has increased in recent years.

If you were to read this sentence, and not look at the question stem afterwards at all then a proper response would be: "How does this resolve the discrepancy? If anything it makes things more confusing, because conventional wisdom/non-LSAT mode would lead one to believe that an increasing proportion of jobs offering benefits would lead to an increasing proportion of jobs paying benefits as the population gets older. Even if it did not lead to an increase the last thing you would expect would be for there to be a decrease." However, the percentage of people receiving the disability payments decreases incrementally from the age of 55 and up. We can infer from this information that if there is an increasing percentage of jobs offering disability benefits in the population as a whole, but a decreasing percentage receiving disability payments from age 64 and up that there must be: 1. an increasing proportion of people age 54 and under that are receiving disability benefits or 2. People age 55 and above are working the same or more proportion of jobs that are offering the disability benefits, but they are not receiving payment from those disability benefit, either by their own choosing or because they have been denied payment, even though they are more likely to become disabled. It could also be a combination of these two things.

One thing to note is that it doesn't say there has been an increase in the number of jobs w/ disability benefits just that the proportion or percentage of jobs offering the disability benefit has increased.

I think a clearer way to re-word this question stem would be "The last sentence gives you only a partial way to resolve the paradox. Which one of the following answer choices if added to the last sentence would provide for a more complete explanation of the paradox?"

So we are basically looking to resolve this paradox: even though the proportion of jobs paying disability benefits is increasing that the proportion of people 55 and up (all of whom are more likely to be disabled) receiving disability benefit payments is incrementally decreasing. It's a mouth full, and if you need any additional information on how I reached this I would be happy to provide it.

Prephrase: Okay so there must be a reason that those 55 and over are seeing an incremental decrease. Perhaps, the kind of job that people 55 and over work allows them to opt out of receiving disability payments in return for some other kind of financial compensation or perhaps one or both of the explanations offered above is occuring. Whatever it is there has to be some reason for an increase in the proportion of jobs offering such a disability benefit yet an incremental decrease in those 55 and over that receive payment on such a benefit. I go to the questions with this in mind.

(A) This is out of scope. We are concerned with resolving the paradox of increasing disability benefits offered for the population as a whole yet an incremental decrease in payment for those 55 and over. The effectiveness or ineffectiveness of medical treatments is of no concern to this argument. Get rid of it.
(B) This answer choice reeks of ambiguity. The use of some could be as little as 1% or as great as 100% of the population so it's impact on the conclusion cannot be known. We need to figure out why there is an increase in the proportion of jobs offering disabilities, yet the proportion of those most likely to be disabled who are receiving disability payments is incrementally decreasing.
(C) This also is out of scope, and does nothing to resolve the paradox. If anything, an average life span increasing would perhaps lead to more people working until an older age and the decreasing percentage of those being covered for disability benefits by their employers would make you think there might be some kind of age discrimination going on with disability benefits in the workplace. That is, however, way too much of an assumption. Not what we need. Get rid of it.
(D) This is a fancy way of saying that either 2 things have occurred: 1. People are making more money than they were 20 years ago on average, but the disability benefits they are receiving are staying the same or decreasing on average or 2. People are making the same amount of money as they were 20 years ago on average, but the amount of money they are receiving in disability payments is decreasing on average. However, none of this matters because we don't care about how much or how little they are receiving in disability payments. We care only to find a reason why the proportion of those 65 and over receiving disability payments are decreasing.
(E) This is what we've been looking for. It addresses the second explanation I gave up above for why there is a decrease in those 65 and over who are receiving disability benefit payments. Even though there is an increase in the proportion of jobs offering disability benefits, the benefit payments are decreasing incrementally for those 65 and over because most employers plans stop paying benefits when an employee turns 65.

Let me know if you need any further info. on this or if something in my explanation sucks. Thanks!
 
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Re: Q18 - A person is more likely to become disabled

by giladedelman Wed Jun 15, 2011 12:28 am

Thanks for weighing in! I think we pretty much agree here. Yours is one of the most detailed posts I've ever seen from a student -- we really appreciate your effort!!!
 
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Re: Q18 - A person is more likely to become disabled

by peg_city Tue Sep 06, 2011 2:04 pm

This seemed to boil down to C or E for me.

Unfortunately both looked right.

Why is C wrong?


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Re: Q18 - A person is more likely to become disabled

by giladedelman Wed Sep 07, 2011 5:50 pm

(C) tells us that people are living longer. Okay, but what does this have to do with whether they are receiving disability benefits or not? People could be living longer AND receiving the same level of benefits, or not; this fact does nothing to explain the decreased levels of benefits among the older segments of the population. (Notice that the statistics are about the PERCENT of older people who are getting benefits.)

Does that answer your question?
 
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Re: Q18 - A person is more likely

by gplaya123 Sat Jul 13, 2013 6:56 pm

I think understanding the intention of each of the answer choice would help out why it is wrong:

A) This is making us to think: ohh, if people are getting better treatments, it must mean that older people need less money on medical bills. But, this is all about frequency vs rate. Just because the rate of medical treatment has gone up, this does not mean people need less medical treatment.

B) SO wrong... Who cares who pays it?

C) This requires an assumption that prolonged life would make people healthier than those that are young than themselves. So, 75 years old is healthier than 65 due to this prolonged life thingy...
but so weird... what a illogical assumption it needs to make to be the answer.

D) Income has nothing to do with it.
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Re: Q18 - A person is more likely

by WaltGrace1983 Tue May 13, 2014 2:21 pm

The explanations above are all sufficient yet I had a tough time understanding the stimulus so I thought I'd chime in for only my own benefit and just give some more analyses. Can't hurt, right?

    Fact: The older one gets, the more likely one is to become disabled

    Paradox: As adults in E.Wendell get older, less are collecting disability benefit payments
      Ages 55-64: 4 out of every 100 collecting
      Ages 65-74: 2 out of every 100 collecting
      Ages 75-: 1 out of every 100 collecting

    Explanation: Higher % of jobs are offering disability benefit payments


We must weaken that explanation.

Assumptions/Ideas to Note:
    (1) The "fact" of the argument is about people being more likely to "become disabled;" this stimulus is focused on people "collecting disability payments." They are not the same thing. You could still be disabled and not collect disability payments or the other way around. Either way, this doesn't really seem to matter because an explanation is given for this paradox. Thus we should focus on the explanation's flaw, not the argument's flaw.

      Is there any correct answers that could deal with this issue? Could a correct answer weaken the explanation by giving an alternate explanation, such as "Most people who actually are disabled do not collect disability payments?" This would seem to provide a (much more realistic) explanation.


    (2) The explanation is assuming that people 55 and up are generally working. What if most people of East Wendell retire at 55?

      Possible correct answer: "Most people 55 and up are either not actually working or are working jobs that fail to provide disability payments."


    (3) The argument is completely centered around proportions: "more likely to become disabled" = proportion; percentages collecting = proportion; "proportion of jobs offering" = proportion. Perhaps there could be some messing around with the raw number/proportion flaws. Maybe while a higher proportion of jobs are offering disability, a smaller number of jobs that older individuals work are actually not offering disability.

      Possible correct answer: "There is an increasingly low total amount of jobs paying disability that people who are both disable and 55+ are working"


Answer Choices:

    (A) This, to me, actually seems to strengthen the explanation a tiny bit if we assume that these jobs offering disability are actually worked by people 55+. Why? Because it would explain why the percentages of disability claims are decreasing: the treatment is more successful! So - for example - when someone claims disability at age 55, they wont have to claim it at 65 again. Either way, this definitely fails to weaken and even strengthening the explanation would require a bunch of assumptions.

    (B) We don't care how they are receiving disability. The stimulus is talking about one general population of people: those receiving disability.

    (C) Even if this is true, this wouldn't do anything to the discrepancy. The stimulus says the OLDER you get, the MORE LIKELY you are to become disabled. No matter what, 65 is still older than 55 and 75 is still older than 65. In other words, the lifespan doesn't matter because older is a relative idea, not an absolute one.

    (D) This may have been supposed to try and trick people thinking too much about percentages and raw numbers. However, we don't care about what % of income disability payments take up! We care about who are receiving these disability payments and where they are receiving them.

    (E) Yes! If this is so, then we have less reason to believe that jobs have anything to do with people receiving less disability payments. Why? Because the explanation given by the stimulus would ultimately fail to show why there is a 3% decrease from people age (65-74) and (75-).
 
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Re: Q18 - A person is more likely

by btwalden Fri Apr 10, 2015 12:25 pm

giladedelman Wrote:(E) is correct. It offers an alternative explanation: it's not just that people over 65 are less likely to have a job; it's also that those who do work are less likely to receive disability benefits than their younger colleagues.


However, it continues to shrink at the same rate after 65, so this seemed kind of irrelevant to me.


giladedelman Wrote:(B) is out of scope. Okay, some get benefits from work and some from the government, but what does this have to do with the age discrepancy?


Well the initial explanation is specifically about proportion of jobs offering a benefit, and the question is about what shows this explanation is at best incomplete, so I would think this would show the incompleteness
 
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Re: Q18 - A person is more likely

by lissethbayona Mon Jun 01, 2015 2:59 pm

Like WaltGrace1983, I also thought that (A) may weaken the argument because it made me think that this was an alternative explanation. If treatment is more effective now than in the past then people won't have to claim disability for an extended period of time (into their mid 60s and beyond). So maybe this is why the proportion decreases in older age groups.

But now I realize that this doesn't make sense because the stimulus says that people are more likely to become injured as they get older. So even if my initial thinking was correct (treatment is more effective and people don't have to continue to claim disability into their mid 60s and beyond), it doesn't explain why even though people are more likely to become injured as they get older the proportion of those claiming disability is smaller among these groups. (Those more predisposed to injury!) These groups should still have a higher proportion claiming disability than the younger aged groups.

What do you guys think? I know I probably spent too much time thinking about why (A) is wrong!
 
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Re: Q18 - A person is more likely

by daijob Thu Jun 18, 2015 5:04 pm

I'm still not sure about E; how can it explain the proportion receiving disability benefit payments "shrink" if it says most plans "stop"?
If E includes "nowadays" or something, I can understand something changed and it "shrinks" (as the explanation in the stimuli says "in recent years"), but not sure how E provides another explanation.
Or is it due to the word "most emp. plans"?

Thank you
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Re: Q18 - A person is more likely

by maryadkins Fri Jun 26, 2015 5:11 pm

daijob Wrote:I'm still not sure about E; how can it explain the proportion receiving disability benefit payments "shrink" if it says most plans "stop"?
If E includes "nowadays" or something, I can understand something changed and it "shrinks" (as the explanation in the stimuli says "in recent years"), but not sure how E provides another explanation.
Or is it due to the word "most emp. plans"?

Thank you


Let's take a step back here—the correct answer doesn't need to explain why this is happening. The correct answer needs to show how THIS person's explanation is incomplete, i.e. doesn't work. (E) is saying that the explanation doesn't work by just calling it out on its face—it doesn't work because it doesn't EVEN HAPPEN. The plans aren't paying the benefits to the old people! In other words, there must be ANOTHER explanation for why the disability benefits are shrinking as people age. We don't know what that explanation is, and (E) doesn't provide it. But (E) DOES attack the explanation given, which is what we're asked for.

lissethbayona Wrote:But now I realize that this doesn't make sense because the stimulus says that people are more likely to become injured as they get older. So even if my initial thinking was correct (treatment is more effective and people don't have to continue to claim disability into their mid 60s and beyond), it doesn't explain why even though people are more likely to become injured as they get older the proportion of those claiming disability is smaller among these groups. (Those more predisposed to injury!) These groups should still have a higher proportion claiming disability than the younger aged groups.


Yes, good!!!