September 2019 LSAT Section 2 Question 21

A study of 30 years of weather pattern records of several industrialized urban areas found that weekend days tend to ...

AndrewArabie on September 4 at 09:29PM

Answer Choice E

After reading the explanations in the forum I still don't understand how E is a necessary assumption. The author doesn't have to believe this because the stimulus says the natural seven-day cycles are of too little significance to produce measurable patterns. So even if the cause of these patterns don't have a 7-day cycle, the patterns themselves are too subtle to be measured whereas the cloudiness isn't so the conclusion still stands. Am I misunderstanding the argument? the answer choice? or both?

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Emil-Kunkin on September 4 at 11:24PM

I think you might be slightly misconstruing the argument. The weeklong cycles mentioned in the passage I think correspond to the causes in E. That is, the author is missing the possibility that some cycle that is not 7 days (likely the tides, caused by the moons 28 day cycle) could possibly have manifestations that could be relevant 4x a cycle, that is, every 7 days. In this case, the weather pattern/effect would be visible every seven days but it wouldn't be caused by a 7 day cycle, but rather by a 28 day cycle.

AndrewArabie on September 5 at 12:04AM

Holy smokes you're so right. In the passage, the cycles are the causes so their could be cycles that occur every 28, 35 (multiple of 7) days that have manifestations that occur every 7 days. Ok thank you Emil