Q6 - The student body at this university takes courses in a

[esnanees]

I am confused about why A is wrong- is it because "The student" is not quantified as the "The Student Body".
I did not choose ans B b'cos it did not mention that Louise is on the editorial Board of the law journal as in the 1st sentence.

Can you please help with differentiating this?

Thanks a lot.

[a3friedm]

I chose (B) because it paralleled the broadness of "wide range of disciplines" with "written on many legal issues".

(A) didn't seem to match with only putting the whole into the narrow category of mathematics. I also feel like their is ambiguity in the statement "The Students at this school take mathematics" that you dont have in the stimulus. Do all the students take mathematics? or some of the students take mathematics? where as in the stimulus you know the student body as a whole takes courses in a wide range of disciplines. In answer choice (B) The editorial board as a whole has written on many legal issues.

That's how I saw it, let me know what you think!

[esnanees]

I completely understand why the 1st part of the stimulus is a whole/part relationship which rules out ans choice A. I'm not sure whether the structure of the 2nd sentence of A makes a difference with the 2nd sentence of the stimulus aside the reasoning.
I understand now why A is incorrect per the 1st sentence.

thanks a lot.

[griffin.811]

I think it is safe to assume that "The students" refers to all the students.

That said, A does not seem to exhibit a Flaw at all. And I believe that is the main reason that choice is wrong since the questions asks for a flaw.

But the point made earlier is also true. Had A been a flaw, its use of "mathematics" is restrictive (although it could be argued that Mathematics covers a wide range of topics, Calc, algebra, div, mult etc...)

Either route will lead to the right answer. It doesn't have to be pretty, just needs to be correct.

[mjacob0511]

Student body --> Students = Whole to parts flaw

(A) Is not flawed. Student --> Math, (Miguel = Student ) Miguel takes math.

(B) Editorial board --> Louise specifically = Whole to parts

The editorial board wrote on many legal issues, but we have no idea how many people are on this board and whether louise herself ever wrote anything. Maybe she just shows up for meetings. Just because a group she is part of does something does not mean she herself does.

[ohthatpatrick]

Let me put up a complete explanation for this one.

Question type: Match the Flaw

Conclusion:
Miriam takes courses in a wide range of disciplines

Premises:
Miriam is a student at this university
+
The student body at this university takes courses in a wide range of disciplines

So, what’s the flaw? It almost seems like an airtight argument.

If we had said
"Every student at this univ. takes variety of courses"
+
"Miriam is a student at this univ."
then we COULD validly conclude that
"Miriam takes a variety of courses".

The problem is that the original argument didn’t say "every student takes a variety", it said "the student body takes a variety".

Just because the student body as a whole takes a variety of courses doesn’t mean that each part of the student body (each student) takes a variety.

This is a commonly recurring flaw on LSAT called WHOLE to PART (or PART to WHOLE).

It always involves taking a trait we know is true of the WHOLE and assigning it to each PART of the whole.

Or it involves taking a trait we know is true of each PART and assigning it to the WHOLE.

(For example, each employee selected to join the new committee is an efficient worker. Therefore, the new committee will be an efficient committee.)

So what do we want from our answer choice?
P1: The WHOLE has a certain trait.
P2: X is a part of that whole.
Conc: Thus, X has that certain trait.

(A) This looks similar to the original (so similar that you should beware the "˜Topic Trap’ ... if you’re doing a Match or Analogy problem, you’ll almost never see the correct answer use the same topic ... in this case, students/schools/classes). The problem is that (A) is actually an airtight argument. It’s not flawed. The first sentence is not describing a trait about the WHOLE student body. It’s saying that "students" (the PARTS) all have a certain trait.

(B) This looks good.
The WHOLE (the editorial board) has a certain trait (writes on many legal issues)
X (Louise) is a part of that whole (she’s on the editorial board).
Thus, X (Louise) has that trait (she’s written on many legal issues).

(C) This exhibits the PART to WHOLE fallacy. We wanted the WHOLE to PART fallacy.
This says "the parts are heavy", thus "the whole is heavy".

(D) This exhibits a different flaw, confusing Nec vs. Suff. (all that means is that the author messes up conditional logic)
We are given that All A’s are B, and then the author illegally concludes that anything that is NOT A will be NOT B.

(E) Just like (C), this is a PART to WHOLE flaw, not the WHOLE to PART flaw we wanted.

[WaltGrace1983]

Just wanted to add that just because something is plural does not mean that it is discussing a whole absent of each of its individual parts.

Giraffes are tall. I am a giraffe. Therefore, I am tall
Nothing flawed about this argument. While it is plural - just like we see in (A) - that doesn't mean it's not talking about each individual giraffe.

I think that we all got a bit hasty with assuming "students" means "student body." If that were the case, (A) would seem to match the original argument. However, that is not the case.

[pewals13]

The book says that answer choice (C)...

("The component parts of bulldozers are heavy. This machine is a bulldozer, so it is heavy.")

....while having reasoning that is typically fallacious, is not actually flawed because the conclusion would have to be true.

Can some comment on this? Is this a case where we can draw a valid conclusion about a quality of the whole from information about a quality of its parts?

[ohthatpatrick]

The correct answer is (B). If you can, let me know what book shows it written otherwise so that we can fix it (assuming it's one of our books).

(C) is not a flawed argument. There is another example of this somewhere in LSAT lore.

It was a "Match the Reasoning EXCEPT" question. The original argument was a PART to WHOLE flaw and so we were looking for four PART to WHOLE flaws in the answer.

The correct answer, the one that was not flawed, was something like "Every part of this table is metal. Therefore, this table is metal."

Physical properties such as type of metal and amount of mass are not things that disappear as you scale up. You're still made out of metal and still heavy.

So while this very rarely shows up, LSAT might throw this at you now and then: it has the part/whole or whole/part structure, but the property being discussed is one you can be confident applies to both part and whole.

Now notice that with the bulldozer example it wouldn't work going from Whole to Part. I could have a Whole that is heavy, but that doesn't mean each Part is heavy.

So just give it some common sense (like you did) and, in addition to noticing the Part/Whole structure, ask yourself, "Is this property guaranteed to be true as I move from Part to Whole or Whole to Part?"

[pewals13]

Thanks for the very helpful explanation. The answer key is correct, I was just curious about this particular choice.