June 2016 LSAT Section 3 Question 23

Businessperson: Because the parking area directly in front of the building was closed for maintenance today, I was la...

saskipper on June 23, 2020

Why not A

Wouldn't it be necessary to know the reason the maintenance was being done? The business person insists that if it had been done on another day, he would have had no trouble parking and wouldn't have been late. But what if the whatever needed maintenance also would have prevented him from parking there? If the maintenance was moved to another day, but he still could not park in the parking area because of the issue that required the maintenance, wouldn't this affect the logic of his argument??

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saskipper on June 23, 2020

But what if whatever needed maintenance also would have prevented him from parking there?**

shunhe on June 23, 2020

Hi @saskipper,

Thanks for the question! So a businessperson is telling us that the parking area in front of the building was closed, and so they were late to a meeting, since they had to find parking elsewhere, which took 15 minutes. Now we’re tasked with finding a question whose answer would help us evaluate the reasoning in the businessperson’s argument. And when we do a bit of anticipating, the question should have something to do with what parking is usually like.

Now let’s take a look at (A), which would tell us why maintenance was performed that day. That doesn’t really help us evaluate why the businessperson was late to the meeting on that particular day. It’s definitely not necessary to know the reasons for the maintenance, even if it might help a little. The argument is about why the businessperson was late today, and not that if the maintenance was done another day, the businessperson would’ve been fine today. That’s not the core of the argument, so the possibility that the maintenance could also have been moved is pretty irrelevant.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.