September 2019 LSAT
Section 2
Question 22
Art critic: All of Dolores Albarran's oil paintings are highly original, though few of them are critically acclaimed ...
Replies
faithwood21 on October 7, 2020
Hi there, would like explanation on this questionEmil-Kunkin on September 27, 2022
Lets take a look at how we can do this without diagraming. I would start by seeing what appears multiple times in the passage. Here, the concept to originality relates to three other things. We know that her oil paintings are all original, very few of her abstract works are original, and that all her original paintings were later in her life. Then, we can put these statements together.We know that she must have made at least some oil paintings late in life, since op=original, and if it was original, it must have been late in life. We also know that few of her abstract works were oil paintings, since all op=original, and few abstract are original.
Indeed, one of these things we were able to figure out is an answer choice, D tells us that few abstract works are oil paintings.
JGC on July 7, 2023
So why would C be eliminated in this case if we are able to establish that oil paintings came later in her career? Is it because "Most, if not all" is too extreme to assume how much work she produced later in her career?Emil-Kunkin on July 11, 2023
Hi, we an knock out C because we have no idea how many of her later work pieces were oil paintings. We know that all her oils were late in her career, but it's possible that those oil paintings were only a small fraction of her later works.Mjvizcarra on August 29, 2023
Hi, I have trouble understading why these two premises are diagrammed as a "most" statement and not a "some" statement. The stimuli says "though a few of them are..."2) Oil Paintings-most-not Critically Acclaimed
3) Oil Paintings-most-not Popular
Emil-Kunkin on August 30, 2023
Few can be take to mean not most. That is, if few people like sardines, I think we can safely say that most people do not like sardines. That said, I'm personally not a huge fan of diagraming most and some statements, so note that this is by no means a necessity.