December 2011 LSAT Section 1 Question 25

Interior decorator: All coffeehouses and restaurants are public places. Most well–designed public places feature artw...

kens on March 18, 2020

question 25

I still have hard time understanding... I thought the correct answer is B: Most public places that feature artwork are well designed (directly from the passage). If D: Any well–designed coffeehouse or restaurant has a spacious interior were to be true, shouldn't it say any well-designed coffeehouse or restaurant that is comfortable has spacious interior?

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BenMingov on March 18, 2020

Hi Kenken, let's break this question down.

Lots of conditional and quantifier language here, so let's unpack it line by line.

1) All coffeehouses and restaurants are public places.

Coffeehouse -> Public place (NOT public place -> NOT coffeehouse)

Restaurant -> Public place (NOT public place -> NOT restaurant)

2) Most well designed public places feature artwork.

Well-designed public place -most- Feature artwork (No contrapositive)

3) But if a public place is not comfortable, it is not well designed.

NOT comfortable public place -> NOT well designed public place (Well designed public place-> Comfortable public place)

4) All comfortable public places have spacious interiors

Comfortable public places -> Spacious interior (NOT spacious interior -> NOT comfortable public place)

The only statements that I see which are combinable are 3 + 4.

To form the following: Well designed public place -> Comfortable public place -> Spacious interior.

The reason we are able to choose answer choice D is because since our inference is about public places, and all coffeehouses are public places, anything that holds true about a public place will hold true about a coffeehouse.

Answer choice B basically takes the quantified language and flips it. Just because most well designed public places feature artwork, does not mean that most public places that feature artwork are well designed. We cannot reverse most statements. Only some statements from quantifiable terms can be reversed.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions.