The more modern archaeologists

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Logical Reasoning question.

TopicsFlaw

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Stimulus

The more modern archaeologists learn about Mayan civilization, the better they understand its intellectual achievements. Not only were numerous scientific observations and predictions made by Mayan astronomers, but the people in general seem to have had a strong grasp of sophisticated mathematical concepts. We know this from religious scribes exhibit a high degree of mathematical competence.

What this question is testing

Flaw

Your task

Describe the reasoning error the argument actually commits.

Common trap

Answers that name a real logical flaw the argument doesn't actually make.

Winning move

Articulate the gap in the reasoning yourself, then match it to the choice that describes that gap.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question

The argument's reasoning is most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that

Answer choices

Not a Flaw5% picked this
fails to provide an adequate definition of the term
We never really need precise definitions on LSAT, as long as words / concepts are being used consistently. Also, this is addressing wording that wasn't even in the argument core, just in a background idea.
5%
Correct78% picked this
bases a generalization on a sample that is likely to
Why this is right
The conclusion is a generalization: "The people in general seemed to have a strong grasp of math". The evidence is a sample, religious scribes, who are likely to be unrepresentative since they are presumably a small group of elites. (notice that we're allowed to use our common sense here)
Skill tested: Flaw · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
78%
Out Of Scope: "other civilizations"1% picked this
overlooks the impressive achievements of other
Again, "impressive achievements" isn't even part of the argument core. It's an accepted fact that the Mayan civilization had impressive achievements. We don't care whether other civilizations did / didn't also. The reasoning is "The people in general knew math. We know this from the fact that scribes knew math."
1%
Not Accurate1% picked this
relies on two different senses of the
The term 'scientific' is only used once, so this answer can't even get off the ground. Furthermore, 'scientific' is used in a throwaway background sentence. It doesn't appear in the argument core at all.
1%
Bad Conclusion Match16% picked this
takes a mere correlation to be evidence of a
The conclusion isn't stating or assuming any causal relationship. It's a big stretch to even call the evidence a correlation, but you could technically say that "being a scribe was correlated with having a high degree of math skills". In that case, the conclusion described by this answer choice would have been something like "Thus, being a scribe must have involved undergoing math training".
16%

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