Q3 - An instructor presented two paintings

[noah]

So the kids UNANIMOUSLY voted based off of what the teacher said. I understand this, and I was tempted to select the right answer but the inclusion of the word "some" threw me off.

Why is (d) correct if it says only some of the students were affected? Wouldn't it have been more correct to say 'most' or 'all'?

Am I to assume that some chose the pieces regardless of what the teacher said and some others based their decision off of what they'd been told? Doesn't that go against the point of the stimulus, saying that they unanimously voted based on what they'd been told?

I think you're right to be suspicious of (D), but I actually hesitated because it was too strong in my opinion. But, when I moved on to (E) and saw that it was just as bad as (A)-(C), (D) became the clear winner.

It's actually possible that the two classes were not affected by what the teacher said, and it's simply that the first class is impatient, and always chooses the first thing, and the second one has a short attention span and so forgot about the first one. Obviously, this is an exaggeration, but without knowing that all other conditions were the same, including the nature of the students, we can't say for sure. Perhaps the most obvious explanation (though it's come to me last!) is that the painting that was shown in the museum was simply much better. So, (D) is the MOST STRONGLY supported, but it is not something we can infer 100%. It's more of a 95% sort of thing.

Common sense would lead us to believe that the kids were swayed by the history of the paintings, but we would be on thin ice to say ALL the students were affected by that. Just one kid feeling otherwise would throw this off. When you have to choose between two answer choices for an inference question, choose the safer, more provable one. This is great practice, I imagine, for fact pattern work in law school.

As for the incorrect answer choices:
(A) is too extreme! Any piece of work? What about if their mom made it?
(B) is unsupported. We don't have any information about that.
(C) is unsupported. Perhaps a really grotesque painting in a museum would not pass muster.
(E) is unsupported. Perhaps one painting was simply much better (from the kids point of view).

[chike_eze]

Am I to assume that some chose the pieces regardless of what the teacher said and some others based their decision off of what they'd been told? Doesn't that go against the point of the stimulus, saying that they unanimously voted based on what they'd been told?

I had the same issue here as well. The prompt seemed straight forward enough, but "some" threw me off in answer choice D. I think the question prompt is worded in such a way as to trick us to assume that the students voted "solely" based on what they'd been told. At least, I was tricked.

Once that assumption is made, then "some" does not sound strong enough. In fact, after reading "D" the first time, I was convinced that "E" would use the same language as "D" but instead state "all the students" or "most of the students...".

No luck on E, so I went back to D.

My thought process: "Okay, so 'some' doesn't sound complete to me... what does some mean anyway? Some children were swayed... what about the others? Wait a minute, one of the instructors (Mike or Noah) said if you can make an inference about 'most' then you can definitely infer 'some'. Maybe that's what's going on here... ruled out other answers, Some it is!"

After reviewing the question, I caught my false assumption about students voting "solely" on the instructor's info. I see now that we are not told that explicitly. Also, some students in either class could have chosen the first painting or second painting regardless of the instructor's coaching.

[Ibrahim.diallo]

I got to D by POE and still wasn't convince, so I went back to each of the answers again. I ended picking D but was still hesitant because it said "History of the painting". Is it quibbling to try to reason that "history of the painting" is not really the same thing as saying who the painter is/where the painting hung? I think I wasted a precious 30 seconds on this question.

[tommywallach]

It's both quibbling AND true.

[dontmesswmeow]

I chose (E) initially but now I see why (D) is a much better, and the best possible answer I can choose among the given.

I was also frozen at the point that I saw 'the history of the paintings' which just popped out of nowhere because the stimulus suggests nothing like that and just stated the teacher mentioned the sources of the pictures.. Maybe, maybe you could extend the sources to the history of paintings.

because the history of paintings might include the sources of paintings quite plausibly (although it's still odd to go such over-the-top.)

And yet, on top of that, since the answer choice doesn't mention if the instructor told them about the history, maybe some of them had been told about it long before, like in kindergarten or grade school, or even from parents or art curators when they went to Met.

So that's why students determined in such ways in the stimulus.

But (E),

it's possible but here's 'almost all would have,' which is too strong to be considered a possible hypothesis that we can make up on an LSAT answer choice.