Q26 - When the manufacturers

[ebrickm2]

This seems like a formal logic question that is a bit too lengthy for me to get, but I would appreciate an explanation.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT2]

You are right to see this as a problem that involves conditional logic --

Here's a basic map of the statements given:

If a country's M (manufacturers) are slower to adopt new tech -- > Then it's production costs will fall more slowly.

If production costs fall more slowly -- > then it will not be able to lower prices as rapidly.

If it cannot lower prices as rapidly -- > will get squeezed out of the global market.

Notice that all the conditional statements fit nicely into a chain (this is NOT usually the case) and so they can all be connected to one another --

(paraphrasing a bit)
slower to adopt tech -- > slower to lower production costs -- > slower to lower prices -- > will get squeezed out of global market.

Hopefully that makes sense in terms of the conditional logic in the argument.

Having said all that, your goal for these types of problems is NOT to link all the parts of the argument together (you generally won't have time for this) -- rather, it's to figure out which one of the answers is provable based on the text. Ideally, you want to spend the majority of your time checking the answers against the argument to see which answer is provable.

The only answer that is provable is (E).

The reason is because we know that...

If they adopt tech more slowly, it is guaranteed that they will lower prices more slowly.

Therefore, if they didn't lower prices more slowly, they must not have adopted tech more slowly.

Hope that helps. I'll leave it up to you to figure out why the wrong answers are not provable, but feel free to ask additional q's if you have them!

[pretty_shy96]

HELP.......... I believe my thought process is incomplete when approached by these questions. I eliminated (E) because the stimulus only talks about country's manufacturers that lower their prices slowly and this choice talks about country manufacturers who lower prices as fast as their counterparts. But wouldn't it be out of scope or an opposite answer such it is talking about something that was not discussed in the stimulus. Can someone explain please?
Your help is greatly appreciated.

[jackiefielding]

slower to adopt tech -- > slower to lower production costs -- > slower to lower prices -- > will get squeezed out of global market.

So the contrapositive would be:

not squeezed out of global market --> not slower to lower prices --> not slower to lower production costs --> not slower to adopt tech

Answer choice (E) says that if a country's manufacturer is not slower to lower their prices, then they are not slower to adopt technology. Remember, the original statement and the contrapoisitive are both valid, and you always go left to right to form "if/then" statements using the chain. I hope that helps!