Q9 - During the three months

[romanmuffin]

I narrowed it down to A, C, E. B and D were slashed because they appear to irrelevant. Although I chose E (because I believed the students in Ontario actually felt the earthquake), I now know timing is irrelevant as well; Can someone help me with this problem?

[timmydoeslsat]

A pretty difficult problem to be #9.

This is a strengthen problem, so we know there will be a gap.

We know that this is a correlation to causation issue.

Three months before an earthquake and three months after an earthquake.

Earthquake happens in California, then we have a situation where students in California report dreaming about earthquakes in the three months after this happened. In Ontario, where no student had experienced an earthquake, thus not the California one that happened, almost none reported dreaming about earthquakes.

The author concludes that the experiencing the earthquake CAUSED that! We have a correlation, but we cannot attribute cause at this point! Perhaps a popular movie that was out at the time, "Tremors out to kill" was responsible?

We need to strengthen the holes that are in this argument.

What are the holes? The failure of taking into account other possible causes for half of the students to report dreaming about earthquakes after the earthquake.

Guess what? What if PRIOR to the earthquake, the same half of students were dreaming about earthquakes! That is the issue! The argument does not tell us how many people in the California class, prior to the earthquake, were dreaming about earthquakes!

Imagine that it were the case that 3 months prior to the earthquake in California, half of the students in the California class were reporting dreaming about earthquakes.

Then the earthquake happens.

Then the three months following this earthquake, the California class had the same half of its students dreaming about earthquakes!

Can we really say that experiencing an earthquake CAUSED these dreams? No!

[romanmuffin]

So does A basically say 0 California students dreamed about earthquakes prior to the California earthquake? Thus strengthening the causal relationship between the earthquake and dreams of earthquakes.


My reasoning being: If, prior to the California earthquake, no more of the students in california than of those in Ontario recorded dreams about earthquakes, and if 0 Ontario students dreamed about earthquakes, that makes 0 california students dreaming about earthquakes prior to the occurrence of the Califonia earthquake.

Is this reasoning correct? Would it be possible to go over answer choice C as well?

[timmydoeslsat]

So does A basically say 0 California students dreamed about earthquakes prior to the California earthquake? Thus strengthening the causal relationship between the earthquake and dreams of earthquakes.


My reasoning being: If, prior to the California earthquake, no more of the students in california than of those in Ontario recorded dreams about earthquakes, and if 0 Ontario students dreamed about earthquakes, that makes 0 california students dreaming about earthquakes prior to the occurrence of the Califonia earthquake.

Is this reasoning correct? Would it be possible to go over answer choice C as well?

Choice (A) is strengthening the correlation that is cited, and that is all we can really do to aide in concluding cause from a correlation. Make it more likely that the idea in question really is the cause. There were almost no students that dreamed about the earthquake during the six months in Ontario, so there are some that did.

However, with (A) stating that before the California earthquake, no more students in California recorded dreams about earthquakes than did those in Ontario, that means that at most a couple of people did in California, perhaps even none in California!

As for choice C, it really leaves us with nothing more than we already have in the stimulus.

The stimulus gave us:

California students:

Three Months ------Earthquake ------Three Months

-----??------------------------------Half of students



This answer choice is saying that some California students experienced an earthquake before the six months in question. This does address our earthquake in question and the students supposed reaction to it. The author is taking a correlation of students dreaming about an earthquake after experiencing one and is concluding cause, which is a no-go.

This answer choice is simply irrelevant and tough to figure how it would influence this argument in any way.

[senorhosh]

Why can't the answer be E?

What if students in California had more dreams at night than those in Ontario? What if students in Ontario rarely dream, if ever? So the number of earthquake dreams is smaller only because the number of total dreams is smaller.
For example: only 1 person in Ontario dreamed, thus only 1 person reported dreaming about earthquakes.

E would strengthen because it would show this is wrong.

The only reason I can think of that this might be incorrect is because we are supposed to assume that most people dream at night, and only a few people out of many dreaming at night over a 6 month period is implausible.

[timmydoeslsat]

E would not have any impact on our argument.

The stimulus states that the students in Ontario have never experienced an earthquake, this includes the California earthquake mentioned in the stimulus.

The conclusion is that experiencing an earthquake can cause people to dream about earthquakes.

The Ontario students have never experienced one. So this would not affect our conclusion of students experiencing an earthquake.

The real factor in this stimulus is that the argument does not let us know about the dreams Californian students had BEFORE the earthquake!

We know that after the earthquake, half of the students in California dreamed about earthquakes.

But how many were dreaming about earthquakes prior to that?

(A) would strengthen the argument. If it is the case that almost none of the students in California were dreaming about earthquakes, then after the earthquake half of the students dreamed about them...we have the makings of getting a causation started. It is still a correlation at this point. Meaning there is a relationship between the earthquake and the time Californian students dreamed about the earthquakes.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Great discussion guys! I'd like to chime in on answer choice (E) though. Keep in mind how the LSAT undermines causation:

1. alternative cause
2. cause without effect
3. effect without cause

Answer choice (E) actually weakens this argument since the students in Ontario never experienced an earthquake. If the students in Ontario are dreaming about earthquakes without experiencing an earthquake, it would provide an example of the 3rd approach - effect without cause.

Hope that helps!

[Nina]

What is C doing here? does it weaken the argument? since even before they start recording many students have already experienced earthquake, it cannot be explained why the first three months before earthquake none have dreamed about the earthquake.

any thoughts will be appreciated!

[sumukh09]

What is C doing here? does it weaken the argument? since even before they start recording many students have already experienced earthquake, it cannot be explained why the first three months before earthquake none have dreamed about the earthquake.

any thoughts will be appreciated!

C is doing absolutely nothing here and so has no effect on the argument. The argument is that experiencing earthquakes causes dreaming about earthquakes. The fact that many Cali natives experienced at least one earthquake in their lifetime has no bearing on the causal link in the posited in the argument.

[FarOutsidetheBox]

Why can't the answer be E?

What if students in California had more dreams at night than those in Ontario? What if students in Ontario rarely dream, if ever? So the number of earthquake dreams is smaller only because the number of total dreams is smaller.
For example: only 1 person in Ontario dreamed, thus only 1 person reported dreaming about earthquakes.

E would strengthen because it would show this is wrong.

The only reason I can think of that this might be incorrect is because we are supposed to assume that most people dream at night, and only a few people out of many dreaming at night over a 6 month period is implausible.

This is a great question and it still bothers me. senorhosh just wrote the wrong letter. The question is really about choice D. I wondered the same thing on this one: if we know that people in Ontario hardly dream at all, then the study wouldn't be very meaningful because they wouldn't dream about earthquakes anyway. So this closes that possibility and says, yes, the two samples were relevantly similar. Why is this wrong?

Are we to assume (as senorhosh suggest) that this is an unreasonable possibility? That doesn't sound convincing to me: some people just have more dreams than others.

[csunnerberg13]

Why can't the answer be E?

What if students in California had more dreams at night than those in Ontario? What if students in Ontario rarely dream, if ever? So the number of earthquake dreams is smaller only because the number of total dreams is smaller.
For example: only 1 person in Ontario dreamed, thus only 1 person reported dreaming about earthquakes.

E would strengthen because it would show this is wrong.

The only reason I can think of that this might be incorrect is because we are supposed to assume that most people dream at night, and only a few people out of many dreaming at night over a 6 month period is implausible.

This is a great question and it still bothers me. senorhosh just wrote the wrong letter. The question is really about choice D. I wondered the same thing on this one: if we know that people in Ontario hardly dream at all, then the study wouldn't be very meaningful because they wouldn't dream about earthquakes anyway. So this closes that possibility and says, yes, the two samples were relevantly similar. Why is this wrong?

Are we to assume (as senorhosh suggest) that this is an unreasonable possibility? That doesn't sound convincing to me: some people just have more dreams than others.

Good question - I've been wondering about it, too. Maybe some geeks can give us a clearer understanding, but here's what I think:

Choice (D) doesn't do anything for us in terms of strengthening. Even if the students in Ontario had 1000 dreams and the people in California had only 100, the fact remains that almost none of the 1000 in Ontario are about earthquakes and half of the California dreams are about earthquakes.

As senorhosh asked - what about if the California bunch had more dreams than the Ontario bunch? So, the California bunch had 1000 dreams and the Ontario bunch had only 1. We still know that none in Ontario were about earthquakes and half in California were. So basically, we're still resting our conclusion on these proportions and, even if the numbers change, the proportions involved don't, and therefore the conclusion is basically untouched.

If LSAT geeks could confirm, that would be great. And a follow up question: How would we make this answer into a good strengthen answer choice? I'm trying to perfect my thought process on proportions and wondered how this choice could be made to work.