Logical Reasoning

PT146 · S2 · Q14 A study at a company found

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A study at a company found that most meetings showed diminishing returns after 30 minutes, and little could be expected after 60 minutes.

Conclusion

For a meeting to achieve max productivity, it should have a clear time frame and be no more than 30 mins long.

Evidence

According to a study, for most meetings ... - after 30 min, diminishing returns, and by 60 mins pretty much worthless. - most productive meetings were ones with a clearly established time frame.

Evaluate

When we do Main Conclusion questions, we know that the conclusion will almost never be in the final sentence. (It's usually the First Sentence or a But/Yet/However rebuttal in the middle)

However, LSAC hears us test prep companies shouting that pattern from the hilltops, so on some recent tests they've been trying to vary it up a little.

The one keyword we have available to help us here is the word "then". It's a very infrequently used Conclusion keyword, but it functions much like a "then" in a "if / then" conditional statement.

All these authors are implicitly thinking, .

We always check our conclusions with the Support test. If you think Claim X might be the conclusion, then ask yourself Why should I believe that? and make sure that the argument provides at least one explicit premise to support Claim X.

Goal

Once we've properly located a conclusion, all the hard stuff is usually done. Now we just go find a meaning match in the answers. So we just want the best meaning match for the final sentence.

14.

Which one of the following most accurately expresses the conclusion drawn in the argument?

  1. In general, a meeting at

    Reversal

    It's weird to be dealing with this issue on Main Conclusion, but it's definitely no accident that this incredibly tempting answer was placed in spot (A). This sounds an awful lot like the conclusion, but the conclusion presented "clear time frame" and "30 min limit" as requirements of a maximally productive meeting (it needs to have X and Y), not as a guarantee of a maximally productive meeting. Last sentence: maximally productive meeting → Clear Timeframe and < 30min This answer: Clear Timeframe and < 30min → maximally productive meeting

    27% picked this

  2. Most meetings at the company

    Premise

    The phrase "according to a study" will pretty much guarantee something can't be a Conclusion, because it will just be some background or supporting fact, not a supported Author opinion. If we were tempted by this and asked why should we believe that "according to a study, most meetings showed diminishing returns after 30 mins" we wouldn't be able to point at either of the remaining ideas in the paragraph as support for that claim.

    1% picked this

  3. Correct

    A meeting at the company

    Why this is right

    For a meeting to be Z, it needs to have Y and Z is equivalent to A meeting can be Z only if it has Y and Z They both would diagram like this, Z → Y and Z If we applied the Support Test to this answer and asked, why should we believe that "meeting will be max productivity only if they have clear time frame and stay 30 mins or less" we could point to the other two ideas as support: They'll only be maximally productive if they have those two qualities because a study found that the most productive meetings had a clear time frame and that most meeting showed diminishing returns when they went longer than 30 mins.

    Skill tested: Main Conclusion · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    70% picked this

  4. According to a study, meetings

    Premise

    Anything prefaced by "moreover" is guaranteed to be another Supporting point, not a Conclusion.

    2% picked this

  5. A study of meetings at

    Premise

    This is just the second half of the first sentence. The findings of a study will never be a Conclusion. What we can takeaway from those findings will be a conclusion, and that's our last sentence.

    0% picked this

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