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- ali.charania
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Vinny Gambini
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Q18 - Each year, an official estimate
I don't understand why A is the correct answer. Could you also please point out why the answer answer choices are incorrect? Thank you!
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- ManhattanPrepLSAT2
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Atticus Finch
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Re: Q18 - Each year, an official estimate
The official estimate is derived by taking an average of two measures -- one by researchers, and one by fisherman.
As an analogy, imagine that you take stock of your cash by taking an average, every month, of your savings account and your checking account. Now imagine that one month your savings account goes up, but your average stays the same--how can that be? In order for this to be true, your checking account would have to go down by about the same amount that the savings went up.
In a sneaky way, that's what is happening here. We're told that the commercial estimate has gone up greatly, and the researcher's estimate has been going down by about the same amount. It's the "by the same amount" that clues us in that the average has stayed about the same.
Like a lot of tough inferences, this is made easier by the fact that the four wrong choices are not anywhere near provable:
(B) is not provable. The argument is about the "rate" at which fish are being caught, and cannot be used to determine anything about the number of fishing vessels.
(C) is not provable. We have no information that helps us gauge which measure is more accurate.
(D) is not provable. "Should be used as sole basis" is far beyond what can be provable based on this text.
(E) is the most tempting, especially if you misread the last sentence of the argument, because at least it matches the subject matter. However, we don't have evidence that the estimate was greater 20 years ago than it is today.
Hope that helps! Please follow up if you have further questions.
As an analogy, imagine that you take stock of your cash by taking an average, every month, of your savings account and your checking account. Now imagine that one month your savings account goes up, but your average stays the same--how can that be? In order for this to be true, your checking account would have to go down by about the same amount that the savings went up.
In a sneaky way, that's what is happening here. We're told that the commercial estimate has gone up greatly, and the researcher's estimate has been going down by about the same amount. It's the "by the same amount" that clues us in that the average has stayed about the same.
Like a lot of tough inferences, this is made easier by the fact that the four wrong choices are not anywhere near provable:
(B) is not provable. The argument is about the "rate" at which fish are being caught, and cannot be used to determine anything about the number of fishing vessels.
(C) is not provable. We have no information that helps us gauge which measure is more accurate.
(D) is not provable. "Should be used as sole basis" is far beyond what can be provable based on this text.
(E) is the most tempting, especially if you misread the last sentence of the argument, because at least it matches the subject matter. However, we don't have evidence that the estimate was greater 20 years ago than it is today.
Hope that helps! Please follow up if you have further questions.
2 posts Page 1 of 1