February 1995 LSAT Section 2 Question 25
A letter submitted to the editor of a national newsmagazine was written and signed by a Dr. Shirley Martin who, in th...

2 Replies

Max on September 2, 2018
@smilde11 think about it this way: we can combine the two probabilities together to get the following:Probability professor is male: 95%
Probability Shirley is male: unknown % (we'll use the variable PSM)
So the probability that this particular professor named Shirley is a male is: .95 x PSM.
So note that the only way this formula could equal .95 is if 100% of Shirleys were MALE. In other words, if there's even one FEMALE named Shirley, then the conclusion is invalid. So it doesn't even matter if someone answering this question decides whether Shirley is "typically" a male or female name; as long as you recognize that there is at least one female Shirley, then the conclusion is flawed.
I hope that helps!

on February 10 at 08:53AM
Hi Team - thanks very much for the above. I'm not sure I understand the flaw in this argument? I picked D as the answer because of the similarity in language, grateful if you could please explain why this and the other answer choices are incorrect and why E is actually correct? Thank you!