February 1992 LSAT
Section 3
Question 5
What is the minimum number of different salaries earned by the nine partners of the firm?
Replies
slothlovechunk on December 30, 2022
Edit. Apologies, I meant to say "how many salaries there are. That, there's no way to deduce who makes the same salary as anyone else, so it's literally not possible to figure out the total number of salariesslothlovechunk on December 30, 2022
In fact, it implies the opposite.Kohn makes more than lopez and iman. It does NOT say that iman makes the same amount as Lopez, only that Kohn makes more than each of them. As far as we know, that is 3 separate salary amounts...followed by a hierarchy.
Kohn makes more than Lopez, who makes more than N - that side of the tree promptly stops there.
Then the salary tree goes down via Imam after Kohn.
As follows:
Kohn makes more than --> Iman & Lopez
Kohn makes more than --> Lopez,
who makes more than --> N.
That ends the line from Lopez. With NO indication given to suggest in anyway that Lopez makes an equal amount to Iman. Again, Lopez line promptly ends.
Then it goes:
Kohn --> makes more than Iman,
who makes more than --> F,
who makes more than --> M,
who makes more than --> G,
who makes more than --> Jacoby
who makes more than --> Hae
It's a heirarchy from top to bottom.
Please do enlighten me as to how you somehow *know* 2 people are even paid the exact same amount at all, let alone WHICH 2 people, from the information provided, that you can make such a claim, app developers.
In await your explanation.
Emil-Kunkin on January 24, 2023
Hi, we know that there must be seven people who make different salaries. Based on the chain you provided, we know that K through H all make different salaries. However, we have no idea about I or N. We only know that they both make less than K. I or N could make the same as F and M respectively, or any other combination in the right order. Since we only know for sure that the seven in our big chain do not earn the same, we can only be sure there are seven distinct salaries. There are two that could earn the same as one of the others. This is only asking us how many we can be certain about, and we can be certain about seven of our nine.