Strengthen with Necessary Premise Questions - - Question 15
The more television children watch, the less competent they are in mathematical knowledge. More than a third of child...
a42March 14, 2018
More explanation of D
I understand that E strengthens the conclusion by ruling out an alternative explanation. However, I thought that the method of strengthening for "Strengthen with Necessary Premise"questions (the section of LSATmax in which this question is found) was to negate the premise and see if it destroys the conclusion. When you negate answer choice D, you get: "A child's ability in advanced measurement and geometry DOES NOT increase if he or she watches less than one hour of television a day." How does this not destroy the conclusion that "if children are to do well in mathematics, they must watch less television"??
Thanks.
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Think about the conclusion we are looking to strengthen: if U.S. children are to do well in math, then they must watch less tv.
Conclusion: USCWM ==> LTV not LTV ==> not USCWM
Answer choice (D) states: if children watch less TV, then they will do well in math.
(D): LTV ==> USCWM not USCWM ==> not LTV
This does not help strengthen our conclusion. This is merely an incorrect reversal of our conclusion.
Just because watching less TV is sufficient to do well in math concepts such as advanced measurement and geometry, that does not mean that watching less TV is NECESSARY to doing well in these areas, which is what the conclusion is purporting.
Thus, answer choice (D) does not strengthen the conclusion so you don't even need to bother checking if it is necessary.
Hope that helps! Please let us know if you have any other questions.
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Gabby_teixeiraMarch 31, 2020
Based on your description, should we, when in doubt if an answer choice strengthens the conclusion, diagram the answer choice and make sure that the terms parallel their parts in sufficient or necessary with the parts in the conclusion? In other words, if we notice they're invalid reversals such as in this example, we would eliminate that as an answer choice...
