Logical ReasoningDifficulty: Medium

PT9 S4 Q20 Explanation

Of every 100 burglar alarms

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

TopicsRole

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Stimulus

Of every 100 burglar alarms police answer, 99 are false alarms. This situation causes an enormous and dangerous drain on increasingly scarce public resources. Each false alarm wastes an average of 45 minutes of police time. As a result police are consistently taken away from responding to other legitimate calls for service, owners the cost of 45 minutes of police time for each false alarm their systems generate.

What this question is testing

Role

Your task

Break the argument into its conclusion and evidence, then do exactly what the question stem asks with that structure.

Common trap

Answers that sound relevant to the topic but don't connect to the argument's actual reasoning.

Winning move

Predict what a right answer must do, then test each choice against the conclusion-evidence 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
20.

The statement that burglar alarm systems, unlike car alarm systems, are effective in deterring burglaries plays which one of the following

Answer choices

  1. Trap15% picked this

    It justifies placing more restrictions on owners of burglar alarms than on owners

  2. Trap7% picked this

    It provides background information needed to make plausible the claim that the number of burglar alarms police are called on to answer is great

  3. Correct71% picked this

    It provides a basis for excluding as unacceptable one obvious alternative to the proposal of fining owners of burglar

    Why this is right

    Answer C is correct.

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

  4. Trap6% picked this

    It gives a reason why police might be more inclined to respond to burglar alarms

  5. Trap1% picked this

    It explains why a disproportionate number of the burglar alarms responded to by police come from alarm

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