Logical Reasoning

PT153 · S3 · Q9 Political organizer: Our group needs to assemble

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Political organizer: Our group needs to assemble at least 30 volunteers if Marcia Garson is to have a chance of winning the election, since she will win only if the public is fully informed about her record.

Conclusion

If MG is going to have a chance of winning the election, our group needs to assemble at least 30 volunteers.

Evidence

MG will only win if the public is fully informed, and the public will only be fully informed if at least 30 people campaign for her. However, we can't pay people for this (so they'd have to be volunteers)

Evaluate

How did we know that first sentence was the Conclusion?

It starts with reading the question stem. Whenever we're doing Main Conclusion or Role, we know that LSAT tries to make the conclusion harder to find, by putting it earlier than the support (in most, but definitely not all, cases).

So we prime our brain, before reading the paragraph, with this reminder:

As we read the first claim, it's hard to hear whether it's an opinion or a fact, but as soon as we see "since", we know that the first half of that first sentence is a Conclusion.

Any time we see F.A.B.S (for, after all, because, since), it's showing us a supporting idea. Any time we see "since / because" we know the other clause in that sentence is a conclusion.

The other way to validate that the first claim is the conclusion is to ask of it,

Since the rest of the paragraph offers supporting reasons, we know that first claim was the conclusion.

Goal

Once you find the conclusion, the hard part is over. Now we just need to find an answer that means the same thing as,

9.

Which one of the following most accurately expresses the conclusion drawn in the political organizer's argument?

  1. Marcia Garson will probably not

    Not Stated

    The correct answer to Main Conclusion is 99.8% of the time an explicitly stated conclusion. This answer choice brings up an idea that was never said. They're trying to tempt students into drawing their own conclusions, rather than the real task, which is just to identify which explicit claim was the conclusion.

    10% picked this

  2. The political organizerʼs group cannot

    Premise Last Idea Trap

    Sometimes the final idea is the main conclusion, but it's very rare on Main Conclusion questions. You should always be skeptical when you're picking an answer that reiterates the last claim. It's too easy for the conclusion to be at the literal conclusion of the paragraph, so LSAT usually doesn't put it last when they're testing our ability to find it. We can verify this isn't the conclusion by asking, "Why should we believe you can't afford to pay people for this work?" A supporting reason would sound like, "because donations have been low this cycle" "because we spent all our money on promotional signs" etc.

    5% picked this

  3. Correct

    If winning the election is

    Why this is right

    This correctly regurgitates the meaning of our first claim, which was the conclusion. All the other ideas in the paragraph offer support for why we should believe this claim.

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

    70% picked this

  4. If the public is not

    Premise

    It's 100% guaranteed a claim is not the Main Conclusion if it's prefaced by Since (or because, after all, for) as this claim was. Those words guarantee that the claim attached to them is there to support some bigger conclusion.

    10% picked this

  5. At least 30 people from

    Never Stated

    This claim was not made, so it's not the Main Conclusion. This is tempting students into liking an answer that sounds like an Inference or Necessary Assumption, in case they forgot that our ask is merely to reiterate the author's explicit conclusion.

    6% picked this

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