October 2010 LSAT
Section 1
Question 27
As it is presented in the passage, the approach to history taken by mainstream U.S. historians of the late nineteenth...
Replies
Mehran on November 24, 2017
Sure. What is confusing you here?hterhune86 on August 18, 2020
Why did you use the hypothetical from question 3 to answer question 5? How did you know to use that hypothetical as opposed to any other one that was created?nardine6@my.yorku.ca on November 10, 2020
Hi friends, here's what I can gather from this type of question.- When it is asking "what is the maximum number of slots that can separate two variables from one another" as Question 5 is asking, it is like asking "what is the farthest they can be from one another".
- In Question 3, it just so happened that that was the question and that S, one of the two variables asked about in question 5, was already placed in a hypothetical being the farthest it could be from H. In that hypothetical S and N were separated by at least 4 other variables. This helps us eliminate answer choices 1, 2 and 3 (it shows us that S and N can validly be separated by at least 4 variables already). That's why using that hypothetical made sense - it was the same question and concerned a common variable (S).
However, since H has no restrictions and Question 5 is asking how far apart S and N can be from one another (ie. how many letters maximum can separate them), N and H can be switched, thereby confirming that S and N can be separated by 5 slots, which is the maximum, with S being in slot 1 and N, in slot 7.
I hope this was helpful and made sense, and @Mehran please correct me if I'm wrong. Thank you!