Q21 - Curator: A magazine recently ran

by **dsorchestra90** Wed Jul 21, 2010 8:07 am

This question asks, what principle would help justify the curator's argument. I eliminated A and B because they seemed out of scope of the conclusion. I eliminated D becasuse I don't th ink the conclusion is implying that friends must agree with each other. Rather I think the conclusion is attempting to say something along the lines of, since they are friends and agree with each other a lot, these 3 peolpe may not be representative of "local public opinion." So that leaves me with C and E. In the end I chose E for two reasons. First, the "potentially nonrepresentative" because it is possible that 3 people is a large amount of the local population. Second because C says "unless the opinions they express are widely held" This part of the answer really left me confused, but I didn't see anything strikingly similar in the stimulus so my scope radar kind of moved be to cross out choice C. Is E TCR, and is my logic for each choice correct, or flawed? Thanks in advance, because I know your explanations are awesome. =)

by **aileenann** Fri Jul 23, 2010 5:09 am

Thanks for posting! I'm glad you like our forum

I'm also really impressed that you posted your own explanation - this is exactly the sort of thing you want to do to be achieving mastery.

I'll take the time to go through each answer choice as you describe it and thresh it out a bit more for posterity/other users of the forum.

First, just to label it, I'd say that the conclusion of this argument is not necessarily spelled out. Tell me if you disagree, but I think the conclusion is really the implied one that the magazine's message that most local residents opposed the exhibit was not necessarily correct.

(A) You said this answer seemed out of scope given the conclusion, and I agree. "Special expertise" knocks this one out.

(B) You also said this answer seemed out of scope, and I agree too. We don't know anything about whether the population is "likely to be evenly divided."

(C) I would say that this answer has a scope problem just like (A) & (B). There's nothing wrong with sometimes including an "unless" even if there isn't one in the passage (such an answer wouldn't be likely to be the anwer, but could be...), but here it's also the condition the "unless" introduces - that the opinions they express are widely held - that we know nothing about. It's just as much out of scope as (A) or (B) because we know nothing about whether people agree with these 3 friends. In fact, that brings us back to the central problem the argumetn is pointing out!

(D) You said the argument does not imply that the friends must agree with each other, and you are dead on. This again is close, but no cigar. I'd mention as an aside that C and D were probably the smart ones to save for last other than...

(E) Here too you were dead on. The issue is that these three friends are potentially non-representative of the group - they seem to be a cluster of friends, so they would be presumptively unrepresentative unless they are an unusually diverse group of friends or it is an unusually homogenous local population.

I am not sure what you meant by TCR, so let me know if there was an additional question. Otherwise great job! I'd love to see more of your explanations if you feel like writing them up

by **dsorchestra90** Fri Jul 23, 2010 9:06 am

Hey thanks so much for your response. TCR means The Credited Response. Sorry I type in Lingo=Too much LSAT I guess. Messed up pretty badly in June so I need to get my LR/RC together for Oct 9. I post here whenever I have a doubt abt my answer or feel <90% sure. Thanks for responding so quickly, it's really good to have my suspicions confirmed or undone and explained.

by **aileenann** Fri Jul 23, 2010 9:27 am

My pleasure! And thanks for teaching me that bit of lingo.

by **mgalligan04** Thu Mar 29, 2012 6:44 pm

Hey I'm not fully understanding why (E) is correct and why (D) is wrong. I eliminated A,B,C for the reasons you mentioned previously. When I was considering D vs. E, I went back to the core (or what I thought was the core, please correct me if I am wrong). The core to me was, Prem: the three local residents that expressed local outrage are close friends; Conclusion: the story is very misleading. I compared D & E to the core and saw that D mentioned the friendship factor and E did not. I also felt that we knew too little to conclude the possibility stated in E. We don't know if this community is really small. Maybe it's a community made up of 5 or 4 people? If that was the case, the three local friends would constitute "most local residents." So I eliminated E and chose D.

Did I over think it? - - HELP.

by **demetri.blaisdell** Sat Mar 31, 2012 12:43 pm

Thanks for posting, mgalligan04.

It's easy to think yourself into a box on a question like this. The number of residents isn't really important to the question.

(D) says that the problem with the article is that they implied that the friends agree with each other. That is attacking the premise! The stimulus already says that the three friends expressed a sense of moral outrage about the exhibit. It then says that the three quotations all were intended to prove the same thing (that local residents oppose the exhibit). There's nothing wrong with the three friends agreeing with each other. The issue is that they agree with each other but they are just a few friends who think one way. The rest of the community might feel differently about the exhibit.

(E) fits in with the idea of the author of the article using the quotations to show that public opinion was against the exhibit. That's only OK if the views of these three friends are representative. (E) tells us the article misleading if their views aren't representative.

I hope this helps clear this up. Let me know if you have any more questions.

Demetri

by **bbirdwell** Thu May 03, 2012 4:20 pm

Since this type of principle question is in the Assumption Family, let's start with the core.

Conclusion:
The story was misleading.

Premise(s):
the three people quoted were all friends.

So what's the big gap here? Notably, the connection between "they were friends" to "misleading." Is it really misleading just because they were friends? When we get to the choices, we'll eliminate anything that doesn't connect this gap with a general rule of some kind.

(A) Close, but no -- as far as we know, the paper didn't present the friends as experts.

(B) Again, close, but not a good match -- we have no evidence to suggest that the population would be evenly divided on this issue.

(C) Again, not a good match -- we don't know whether those opinions are widely held or not.

(D) Very close, but not what we need -- the paper didn't imply that the friends MUST agree with each other, the friends simply DID agree with each other.

(E) Ah. This is our answer. While it doesn't say "friends," the phrase "potentially nonrepresentative" is a good match. Yes, as close friends, those three are potentially not representative of the local area.

by **tzyc** Mon Jul 30, 2012 7:13 pm

I thought the curator mentions "all close frineds" because s/he thinks close frineds would share similar thoughts and do not represent the majority's opinion or public opinion. I think both (C) and (E) make reference to the point, and chose (C) in the end...but the answer was (E). Why (E) is correct instead of (C)?

Thank you.

by **timmydoeslsat** Mon Jul 30, 2012 9:57 pm

You are exactly right about how the argument uses evidence that these three are close friends to generate a conclusion about the article being misleading.

We are hunting for a principle that we could place into the argument and have it follow logically or close to following logically. You can think of these as sufficient principle question stems, but realize that some may fall just a bit short of making it a perfect fit.

When we look at C: ~misleading to present opinions of a few ---> opinion expressed is widely held.

For this principle to work, we would need to know whether the opinion expressed is widely held. We do not know this. We know the quotes were intended to suggest that most oppose, but we do not know what the real opinion is.

A far more clean cut answer is E. Look at how it supports the argument. We know that the quotes of these three close friends were intended to represent that most local residents opposed the exhibit. And we know that three close friends is a sample that is potentially nonrepresentative.