Q6 - University budget committee: Athletes

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Would anyone be able to explain numbers 6 & 23 on the LR section 2 from Preptest 46: June 2005?

Sure.

We're asked to resolve an apparent discrepancy. That means that the discrepancy isn't really there, it just appears to be there. So what's the apparent discrepancy?

The question is why would the committee overrule so many good reasons to keep the artificial turf. Well there are several positives associated with artificial turf, but that doesn't mean that the natural grass wasn't the right decision.

Maybe there were other considerations that the budget committee took into consideration that weren't mentioned. Anything positive regarding the natural grass or anything negative about the artificial turf would work. Answer choice (B) gives us exactly this!

(A) doesn't change the fact that natural grass fields are still more expensive to maintain, so how does this explain why the committee went with natural grass.
(C) is irrelevant. Even if the spectators did care if the field were natural grass or artificial turf, now the spectators cant tell whether the field is one or the other. They couldn't be said to have had an influence on the committee's decision.
(D) affects both groups negatively. We need to distinguish what makes natural grass so good, or what makes artificial turf so bad.
(E) is irrelevant, because the athletes at this university have played on artificial turf, not natural grass.

Does that help you with this one?

[rostov]

I understand why they are wrong, but I don't understand why B is not wrong either. lol

Maybe I'm assuming too much, but it could be that artificial fields reduce injuries that aren't really bad but both natural and artificial have the same number of bad injuries. Thus the artificial one has a higher proportion of bad injuries but could have an equal or lesser number of bad injuries as the natural one. It's just that "athletes experience fewer injuries on artificial-turf" but it could be that they reduce ones that aren't that bad.

Anyway, if that is not clear enough I can try to explain it a bit more. I just want to know how this possible counter-argument doesn't matter for this question.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Your question is a good one and reflects an issue that is really common. The issue is that your line of reasoning is great for an inference or necessary assumption question, but not so much for an explain question. Notice that the correct answer doesn't need to be true, nor does it need to actually resolve the issue. It just needs to be seen as something that could help to resolve the issue.

Think of answer choice (B) as something, if true, might be useful in resolving the apparent discrepancy. Instead of using hypotheticals to see if you could disconfirm the answer choice, try asking yourself whether the answer choice helps to make things more clear. Since the answer choice doesn't distinguish between "fewer injuries" and "fewer not so bad injuries" we wouldn't want to build that distinction into the answer choice - apparently the answer choice is simply discussing injuries in general without any distinctions.

Does that answer your question?

[rostov]

Thanks, I understand now.

BTW I was making the distinction between "not so bad injuries" and "injuries" because I didn't want to type "injuries that take longer to heal and require more expensive physical therapy" every time.