Q14 - For one academic year all the students

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

The question asks us to explain why the results of the observation supported the initial hypothesis.

Hypothesis: Studying more increased a student's chances of earning a higher grade.

Observation: The students who spent the most time studying did not earn grades that were as high as many students who studied less.

The key here is that the hypothesis is a comparison between a student who studies say 10 hours a week and that same student if he/she were to study say 20 hours per week. So, while the hypothesis is a prediction about how a single student would perform under various conditions, the observation is a result measured across different students. Answer choice (C) helps to explain the why the observation across students did not undermine the hypothesis about any one particular student.

(A) is a comparison across students, whereas the conclusion is about a particular student under various conditions.
(B) is irrelevant. This might be addressing another issue related to student performance, it does not explain why the researchers stuck with their initial hypothesis.
(C) helps explain why the researchers concluded that the hypothesis was supported by the results of the observation. If the students improved relative to themselves, then the more a student studied the better chance they had of earning a higher grade.
(D) says that the students who studied the least weren't busy doing other things. What students do when they're not studying is irrelevant to whether studying improves their grades.
(E) is irrelevant. Understanding course material and receiving a higher grade relative to others doesn't help support the idea that studying more can improve your own grade.


#officialexplanation

[sheffieldjordan]

I took (E) to support the notion that understanding the course material better would increase your "chances" of receiving a better grade.

How does it NOT support that notion?

Am I supposed to assume that a better understanding of the material is not necessary to receiving a higher grade?

And what about (C) lends to the notion that their chances improved? I know their grades improved, but what if their chances diminished? what if they were lucky?

I am really hoping that you could elaborate on why (E) is wrong though.


Thanks.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

I can see why you're tempted with answer choice (E). Let me ask though, are you at least somewhat tempted by answer choice (C) though too?

Let's compare answer choices (C) and (E). There is a lot that is similar between these two choices, but also much that is different. They both provide a connection between studying more and getting better grades.

So which one is better? Well, answer choice (E) doesn't quite make it all the way to the generous connection just suggested. Answer choice (E) requires an additional assumption that understanding the material is equivalent to receiving a higher grade. While in all likelihood we'd say that if one has a good understanding of the material one would get a high grade, but it's a bad habit to fill in gaps for the answer choice. For questions that ask you to help explain the strange findings, it's not a death blow though.

So, the more serious issue with answer choice (E) is that it presents a relative claim between the amount of studying and the amount of understanding. But this a universal claim, not an individual one such as answer choice (C).

This reminds of some answer choices on another question that I've adjusted slightly.

(A) As one gets older, one gets wiser. Jim is older than Steve. Therefore Jim is wiser than Steve.
(B) The older one is, the wiser one is. Jim is older than Steve. Therefore Jim is wiser than Steve.

Notice that the argument in answer choice (A) is NOT valid whereas the argument in answer choice (B) is.

Answer choice (E) doesn't account for the individual improvement of the hypothesis that "studying more increased a student's chances of earning a higher grade," but answer choice (C) does.

Does that answer your question?

[jamiejames]

I've gotten to the point on the LSAT where if I can't get the correct answer, I'm always down to the last two, and this one really bothered me because i was down to E and C. I chose E because of the "increases the chances" part, and while I wanted to choose C, it seemed a little more off to me than E did.

Could you explain C a little further? I understand E (needs an extra assumption to bride that gap)

[eunjung.shin]

Say you spent 10hrs studying one subject and got an A, and didnt study for the other class got a D. (assuming 2 is the max you can take) whereas your friend who spent 8hrs studying 2 subjects received B+ on both classes.

So as C says, in each course the more you studied, the better the grade was in that course. Studying more did increase chances of earning a higher grade yet students who spent most time studying did not earn grades as high as did students who studied less.

[alana.canfield]

I've gotten to the point on the LSAT where if I can't get the correct answer, I'm always down to the last two, and this one really bothered me because i was down to E and C. I chose E because of the "increases the chances" part, and while I wanted to choose C, it seemed a little more off to me than E did.

Could you explain C a little further? I understand E (needs an extra assumption to bride that gap)

I read (C) a little differently than others - instead of reading it as saying the more an individual studied the better their grade is in their course, I read it as saying that for all the kids who take the SAME course, the ones who got the best grades were the ones who studied the most. So I thought (C) was addressing the issue that some students take harder classes than others. So even though those students studied more, they may still have lower grades than students in the easier classes who studied less. So I thought (C) was dividing everything up into individual classes, making the comparison equal, and thus resolving the paradox. Not sure if this is an okay interpretation or not (probably not as great since most classes grade on a curve anyways), but I suppose it doesn't matter since both interpretations work and all the other answers are flawed.

[kjjida9797]

This is how i understood this question,

Hypothesis: studying more increased a student's chances of earning a higher grade.

Experiment: the students who spent the most time studying did not earn grades as high as did many students who studied less.

Yet, the researchers concluded that the results of the observation supported the initial hypothesis.

Suppose student A studied 100 hours in a given year, and student B studied 50 hours in a same period. They each take 5 courses.

While B spent 10 hours on each courses, and got all Cs, A spent 50 hours each for two courses and neglected the rest. A got two As (those he spent 50 hours) and Failed the rest. When translated into GPA B got 2.0 and A got 1.6 as the experiment data in the stimulus states.

With the case shown above, C can clearly help explain why the hypothesis is in fact correct.

Is this way of interpreting this question correct?

Also, for A), i crossed it out 'some' seems too weak to support the hypothesis. Is there any other reason why A) should be crossed off? It took me a while to decide between A and C.

[ying_yingjj]

Thank you Vinny Gambini.

But I am still not fully convinced.

Is GPA a grade?

The passage says "did not earn grades as high as did many students who studied less.

I thought grades are A, A-, A+, B, B-, B+, etc.

I think the wording is confusing in the passage, the clearer wording should be "the students who spent most time studying still had grades lower than the student who spent less time in some classes.

To LSAC, if the passage is vaguely worded, how do you expect us to get the correct answer? Are they really testing our ability on logical reasoning when the stimulus was not even clearly worded?

Poor question. Don't spend too much time dwelling on this one.

[tommywallach]

GPA = Grade Point Average. They are the same thing. One is an average. (An A is a 4.0, a B is a 3.0, etc.)

-t

[logicfiend]

This one took a while to sink in, especially because I misread the stem as a sufficient assumption!

The one question I have about this is it feels like it could have been a flaw question with a different conclusion, and if it is a flaw (individual vs. relative) that often comes up on the LSAT, are there other questions that exhibit this flaw? Just wondering, I can't remember anything off the top of my head.


Anyway, here's my understanding of the question for any other confused student: As explained in above posts, the hypothesis deals with the changes in a student's grade compared to himself/herself while the observations are across, multiple different students. So, as Matt has said, the difference between the hypothesis and observations is individual results vs. relative results.

(C) is the only answer that discusses individual results of studying. Compared to him or herself, studying more does yield better grades in those student's individual courses.

As for the rest of the answers, the "individual vs. relative" difference helps to understand why (A) is wrong, which I was also hung up on. (A) like the rest of the answers talks about other students collectively. If we're trying to understand why the hypothesis could still be right, an answer that talks about a student's grades in relative to other students' grades wouldn't help us. We want something that is similar to the hypothesis, which is about individual performance!

A) Again, we're looking for an answer that talks about one individual student and his or her grades as being proportional to the amount of studying.
B) This doesn't help us at all, still confused about how the hyp could be correct.
D) "Involvement in extracurricular activities?" way out of scope. Though this doesn't disqualify AC in resolve/reconcile question, this AC still doesn't bridge any gap in the understanding.
E) Similar to A, this also talks about grades in relative to other students. How much students collectively understand the material doesn't help to understand why one individual student studying receives better grades. How do we know this applies to each individual student? And then also, we would have to assume that understanding of material would help someone get a better grade. Not always true, in real life and LSAT life.

[JovyT883]

HI I still don't get it how can we interpret from the stimulus that the hypothesis is about the effect of study within an individual, not among different students.

If Student A studied for 50 hours and got an A and Student B studied for 20 hours and only got a B, it actually also matches with the hypothesis that "studying more increases chances of a student to get higher grade". When Student A's grade is compared with that of B, A still gets a "higher grade".

[YurikaC738]

This is how i understood this question,

Hypothesis: studying more increased a student's chances of earning a higher grade.

Experiment: the students who spent the most time studying did not earn grades as high as did many students who studied less.

Yet, the researchers concluded that the results of the observation supported the initial hypothesis.

Suppose student A studied 100 hours in a given year, and student B studied 50 hours in a same period. They each take 5 courses.

While B spent 10 hours on each courses, and got all Cs, A spent 50 hours each for two courses and neglected the rest. A got two As (those he spent 50 hours) and Failed the rest. When translated into GPA B got 2.0 and A got 1.6 as the experiment data in the stimulus states.

With the case shown above, C can clearly help explain why the hypothesis is in fact correct.

Is this way of interpreting this question correct?

Also, for A), i crossed it out 'some' seems too weak to support the hypothesis. Is there any other reason why A) should be crossed off? It took me a while to decide between A and C.

-- The hypothesis we are aim to explain is "studying more increased a student's chance of earning a higher grade". We are not to compare study time with different students (they may have different aptitude, motivation, curiosity, etc.)