Q4 - One way to furnish

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Explain Discrepancy (EXCEPT)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Modular furniture lets you separate / combine the parts of a normal piece of furniture. However, it's more expensive. For the same size/quality, 3-piece modular is twice as costly as a 1-piece sofa.

Answer Anticipation:
We just need four ways to explain the higher cost of modular furniture.

Correct Answer:
B

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Helps explain: Mass-produced things have economies of scale, so they are cheaper to produce and thus can be sold more cheaply.

(B) Does nothing: This doesn't differentiate at all between standard and modular.

(C) Helps explain: Modular is more costly because it is more likely to be high fashion, which is typically more costly.

(D) Helps explain: Modular is more costly because it never goes on sale.

(E) Helps explain: Modular is more costly because it costs more to produce than standard sofas, because modular sofas have more upholstered surfaces (since the 3-piece sofa needs to also function as 3 standalone furniture pieces, it will be upholstered on all sides)

Takeaway/Pattern: Since the heart of Explain Discrepancy questions is finding ANOTHER distinction that would explain the surprise, we can get this one right pretty easily by just noticing that (B) makes no distinction between modular and standard sofas.

#officialexplanation

[shirando21]

why does C strengthen?

[O LSAT Why Art Thou A Pain]

When I did this, I was caught between B & C. I picked B primarily because B does nothing at all to increase the price of modular furniture. When I first read C, I thought that maybe b/c it is used by the most fashionable designers, there is a prestige price tag associated with it, thereby making it more expensive.

[tommywallach]

Hey All,

This is a weird little question. It's not really logic based so much as real world! So all we can do is ask the question: "Why does Modular Furniture cost twice as much as comparable non-modular furniture?"

(A) Yep, if something isn't mass-produced, it's certainly going to cost more.

(B) This would explain why ALL sofas are expensive (when demand goes up without supply matching it, cost tends to go up; they call it supply and demand!), but not why ONE type of sofa costs more than another type of sofa.

(C) Fashionable designers tend to charge more. This is just a real-world fact. As I said above, this is more a real-world question than a logical one. You should be annoyed by it, because USUALLY the LSAT is all about the logic. But every now and again, it just expects you to know that fashionable stuff tends to cost more money. : )

(D) Obviously if it's not on sale, it's gonna cost more.

(E) This would increase cost as well, as the fabric is the main cost in sofas.

Hope that helps!

-t

[shirando21]

Hey All,

This is a weird little question. It's not really logic based so much as real world! So all we can do is ask the question: "Why does Modular Furniture cost twice as much as comparable non-modular furniture?"

(A) Yep, if something isn't mass-produced, it's certainly going to cost more.

(B) This would explain why ALL sofas are expensive (when demand goes up without supply matching it, cost tends to go up; they call it supply and demand!), but not why ONE type of sofa costs more than another type of sofa.

(C) Fashionable designers tend to charge more. This is just a real-world fact. As I said above, this is more a real-world question than a logical one. You should be annoyed by it, because USUALLY the LSAT is all about the logic. But every now and again, it just expects you to know that fashionable stuff tends to cost more money. : )

(D) Obviously if it's not on sale, it's gonna cost more.

(E) This would increase cost as well, as the fabric is the main cost in sofas.

Hope that helps!

-t

Thanks.
"for sofas" in B is why B is the answer.
for C, I understand if modular furniture are designed by fashionable designers they charge more, so these designs are more expensive. But C says "use", which I don't really know how it connects to the meaning that I want...

[kjsmit02]

Hey All,

This is a weird little question. It's not really logic based so much as real world! So all we can do is ask the question: "Why does Modular Furniture cost twice as much as comparable non-modular furniture?"

(A) Yep, if something isn't mass-produced, it's certainly going to cost more.

(B) This would explain why ALL sofas are expensive (when demand goes up without supply matching it, cost tends to go up; they call it supply and demand!), but not why ONE type of sofa costs more than another type of sofa.

(C) Fashionable designers tend to charge more. This is just a real-world fact. As I said above, this is more a real-world question than a logical one. You should be annoyed by it, because USUALLY the LSAT is all about the logic. But every now and again, it just expects you to know that fashionable stuff tends to cost more money. : )

(D) Obviously if it's not on sale, it's gonna cost more.

(E) This would increase cost as well, as the fabric is the main cost in sofas.

Hope that helps!

-t

While I chose (B) and understand why it's right, I feel like this is the most unbalanced LR question I've seen. All of the answers require you to make assumptions for them to help the argument that modular furniture costs more, assumptions which may or may not be true. i.e. Couldn't there be factors that make mass production more costly? Can't the most fashionable designers sell cheaper things or couldn't they also design regular couches in addition to modular couches, thus making them even in this regard? I just feel that while these assumptions do make the most sense, especially in real world application, this is a little more deceiving than the norm?