Q25 - It is difficult to grow cacti

[rbolden]

I am having problems seeing why D is incorrect and why A is correct.

I justified D using the text that says "in most parts of the country, it is either easy to grow cacti or easy to raise oranges." So why is it too much of leap to say that D (it is not possible to raise cacti in the country) is false? Also, what type of incorrect answer choice is D?

For A, if HALF of the country is both humid and cold then this would prevent "MOST parts of the country from growing either cacti or raising orange trees" which is why A must be false. Is this reasoning correct?

[ManhattanPrepLSAT2]

Hi Robyn! --

It's easy to get turned around on a must be false question -- I'll try to be as clear as possible --

And (D) is a super-tempting answer, so I totally understand --

(D) could be false based on the information in the argument, but MUST it be false? No.

Just because it's difficult to do something doesn't mean it's impossible. So, (D) could definitely be false -- perhaps there are cacti raised in the country.

But could (D) be true? It's possible. We do not have the evidence to say it is not true. Nothing in the argument tells us definitely that it is possible to raise cacti -- "easy" is very close to "possible," but not the same -- Perhaps the parts where it is easy to grow cacti it happens to be illegal to grow cacti.

Your reasoning for (A) is right on, I think, but I'd approach it in a slightly different order --

From the argument, we know that --
A.Most parts of the country are not humid
B. Most parts of the country are not cold.

Therefore, it's impossible for (A) to be true -- it's impossible for half to the country to be either humid or cold, let alone both of these things.

Good work on this q, and I hope that further explanation helps!

[gotomedschool]

"From the argument, we know that --
A.Most parts of the country are not humid
B. Most parts of the country are not cold."

I was with you until this statement. I was under the impression that we either A or B can occur but not both. It says, Most parts of the country you can EITHER grow cacti(not humid) OR most parts of the country you can grow orange trees(not cold).

I was a little amibvalent about A at first so I reverse engineered the answer by process of elimination.

B) Could be true. 98% of the country is hot but dry(aka not humid). So cacti could be grown in most parts of a certain country but orange trees couldn't.

C) Could be true. 2% of the country is neither cold nor humid(you could grow both oranges and cacti there) Still allows for 51% of the country to be not cold/not humid and cacti/oranges to be grown there.

D) Could be true. 100% of the country is humid but hot. So cacti could not be grown but you could raise orange trees in most(all) parts of a certain country.

E) I had the same basically the same logic as I did in B except reversed.


I figured A must be false because if HALF(50%) of the country is both humid and cold(no cacti and no orange trees) then the statement above(Most[51%] parts of a certain country it is either easy to grow cacti or easy to raise orange trees wouldn't be true.)

Sorry for the long reply, my words get twisted with my logic for questions sometimes.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT2]

You are absolutely right, and I was incorrect in my explanation of that. Thanks for catching it!

The fact that in most of the country it is either easy to grow cacti or oranges means that in most of the country it is either not humid or not cold.

It is incorrect to assume that most of the country is not humid, and it is incorrect to assume that most of the country is not cold.

[robowarren]

Is it correct to diagram the premises of this question like this:
HC --> -C
CC --> -O

?

Thanks!

[timmydoeslsat]

In the heat of the test you could I suppose. However, be wary of the test writers here. What a perfect opportunity to capitalize on the mistakes of someone going from difficult to grow cacti or difficult to raise oranges and labeling it as a cannot happen situation.

I did this:

Humid Climate difficult to grow cacti

Cold climate difficult to raise oranges

Country MOST ~Diff GC or ~Diff RO

So I know that a majority of this country is either ~Humid Climate or ~ Cold Climate.

A) Half of the country is both cold and hot.

Must be false. We can infer from this answer choice that ~majority of the country could you easily do either activity. And since we know that we can easily do either activity in a majority of the country, this cannot be true, and this is our answer.

[hayleychen12]

Hi!

I'm not a native speaker, and I'm confused with the either or statement here.

From posts above, it seems like "either or "should be interpreted as " either ....or...., but not both" While in doing Logic Games, I was told that the word "or" does not exclude the possibility of both.

Any help!!!Thx!!

[ohthatpatrick]

Hey-o.

I think you're getting that impression just because people are talking about how to diagram this argument, but we're still using the same (inclusive) sense of "or" we use in Games.

In order for LSAT to mean "only one of the two may apply", they have to say something like "but not both".

You can understand why (A) is correct using your "at least one is true" understanding of "or".

(A) says that 50% of the country is humid and cold.
We know that in humid climates, it's difficult to grow cacti.
In cold climates, it's difficult to grow oranges.

So in 50% of the country, it's difficult to grow cacti and it's difficult to grow oranges.

That means that AT MOST the remaining 50% of the country would be an area where it's easy to grow cacti or oranges.

This contradicts the final sentence, that says "in 51% or more of the country, it's easy to grow at least one of cacti/oranges."