December 2011 LSAT Section 1 Question 25

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

JoshG on July 16, 2020

C Versus D & Zooming Out

Hi There, I could use some help in understanding what's wrong with C. CH or R --> PP WD PP -M-> FA So, in the world of public places, there are two paths to take: either you are well designed or not. We don't know anything about not well designed public places, but we do know that if you ARE a well designed public place that more than 50% have art. Is the issue that we can't jump to saying that most coffeehouses are in the well-designed path, but D avoids this flaw and just jumps straight to that path, such that even if there were only 1 coffeehouse in the universe (*cries*) that were well-designed, it would be guaranteed to follow down the S&N chain to having a spacious interior? I feel like this is a common nasty trick they play: adding an adjective onto a necessary and impeding chaining thereof. Any tips/insights for how to be on guard and not deceived by LSAC? Thanks in advance.

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shunhe on July 16, 2020

Hi @JoshG,

Thanks for the question! So as you diagrammed, we know the following

C —> PP
R —> PP
WD & PP —most—> FA

So let’s say that there are 100 well-designed public places in our world. Well, that means that at least 51 of them feature artwork.

Now (C) tells us that most coffeehouses that are well designed feature artwork. Well, a coffeehouse is a public place, and we’re told it’s well-designed. But what if there are 49 coffeehouses that are well designed, and those are the 49 public places that don’t feature artwork? Or, there’s 1 coffeehouse that’s well designed in our world, and it doesn’t feature artwork. And the 51 public places that do feature artwork are restaurants (or other public places). That makes (C) not necessarily true, so it can’t be the correct answer.

(D), on the other hand, follows straight from the conditionals. We know that if a public place is uncomfortable it’s not well designed. In other words, for public places

~C —> ~WD

And taking the contrapositive, we know that

WD —> C

In other words, if a public place is well-designed, then it’s comfortable. And then, of course, we know that if a public place is comfortable, it has a spacious interior, in other words

C —> SI

So now let’s take a well-designed coffeehouse or restaurant. Well, those are going to be public places, so the conditionals above will apply to them. In that case, we know that

WD —> C —> SI

And so those well-designed coffeehouses/restaurants are going to have spacious interiors, and that’s what (D) tells us.

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