Tony: Few anarchists have ever performed violent actions. These few are vastly outnumbered by the violent adheren...

Mehran on July 23, 2018

Hi @smilde11, thanks for your post.

Let's first examine the stimulus carefully. Tony is speaking in terms of numbers (rather than percentages or proportions). He speaks of the "few" violent anarchists, who are "vastly outnumbered by the violent adherents of other political ideologies."

Keisha responds that while, yes, anarchists are "few in number," the anarchist movement itself is relatively small (compared to other ideologies, which have "spawned mass movements"). Thus, she concludes, the *proportion* of anarchists who are violent is possibly greater than the proportion of adherents of other ideologies who are violent.

This Argument Evaluation question then asks you to identify how Keisha has responded to Tony's argument. Answer choice (A) is correct, because it accurately describes how Keisha responds to Tony - she highlights Tony's questionable reasoning (i.e., that Tony focuses on absolute numbers - the "few" violent anarchists - rather than the proportion).

You can eliminate (B) because Keisha does not introduce plausible evidence that is *incompatible* with Tony's evidence. Incompatible means inconsistent with, cannot be true. But Keisha's response to Tony accepts his premise as true - that is, that there are only a few violent anarchists. She points out, however, that *relatively speaking*, there may be proportionally more violent anarchists that violent adherents of other ideologies.

Hope this helps! The LSAT writers love to test numbers vs. percentages vs. proportions, so you're wise to pay special attention to these kinds of questions. Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.