LSAT Practice Test 83 - Logical Reasoning 1 – Questions + Answers

The mayoral race in Bensburg is a choice between Chu, a prodevelopment candidate, and Lewis, who favors placing greater limits on development. Prodevelopment candidates have won in the last six mayoral elections. Thus, Chu will probably defeat Lewis.

Which one of the following statements, if true, most weakens the argument?

Rose: Let’s not see the movie Winter Fields. I caught a review of it in the local paper and it was the worst review I’ve read in years. Chester: I don’t understand why that might make you not want to see the movie. And besides, nothing in that paper is particularly well written.

Chester’s response suggests that he misinterpreted which one of the following expressions used by Rose?

Enrique: The city’s transit authority does not have enough money to operate for the next twelve months without cutting service or increasing fares, and the federal government has so far failed to provide additional funding. Nonetheless, the transit authority should continue operating without service cuts or fare increases until it has exhausted its funds. At that point, the federal government will be willing to provide funding to save the authority. Cynthia: If the transit authority tries that maneuver, the federal government will probably just let the authority go out of business. The transit authority cannot risk allowing that to happen.

The dialogue most strongly supports the claim that Enrique and Cynthia disagree over whether

A survey published in a leading medical journal in the early 1970s found that the more frequently people engaged in aerobic exercise, the lower their risk of lung disease tended to be. Since other surveys have confirmed these results, it must be the case that aerobic exercise has a significant beneficial effect on people’s health.

The reasoning above is questionable because the argument

Researchers examined 100 people suffering from herniated disks in their backs. Five of them were found to have a defect in a particular gene. The researchers also examined 100 people who had no problems with the disks in their backs; none had the genetic defect. They concluded that the genetic defect increases the likelihood of herniated disks.

Which one of the following, if true, most strengthens the researchers’ reasoning?

The only vehicles that have high resale values are those that are well maintained. Thus any well-maintained vehicle has a high resale value.

The flawed nature of the argument can most effectively be demonstrated by noting that, by parallel reasoning, we could argue that

Rita: No matter how you look at them, your survey results are misleading. Since people generally lie on such surveys, the numbers you collected are serious underestimates. Hiro: I have no doubt that people lie on surveys of this type. The question is whether some people lie more than others. While the raw numbers surely underestimate what I’m trying to measure, the relative rates those numbers represent are probably close to being accurate.

Rita and Hiro disagree over whether

Lopez: Our university is not committed to liberal arts, as evidenced by its decision to close the classics department. The study of classical antiquity is crucial to the liberal arts, and it has been so since the Renaissance. Warrington: Although the study of classical works is essential to the liberal arts, a classics department isn’t, since other departments often engage in that study.

Warrington’s argument proceeds by

Ted, a senior employee, believes he is underpaid and attempts to compensate by routinely keeping short hours, though it is obvious to everyone that he still makes some valuable, unique, and perhaps irreplaceable contributions. Tatiana, Ted’s supervisor, is aware of the deficit in Ted’s performance, and realizes other workers work harder than they should to make up for it. Nevertheless, Tatiana decides that she should not request that Ted be replaced.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, would most help to justify Tatiana’s decision?

One adaptation that enables an animal species to survive despite predation by other species is effective camouflage. Yet some prey species with few or no other adaptations to counteract predation have endured for a long time with black-and-white coloration that seems unlikely to provide effective camouflage.

Which one of the following, if true, most contributes to a resolution of the apparent discrepancy mentioned above?

Lecturer: If I say, “I tried to get my work done on time,” the meanings of my words do not indicate that I didn’t get it done on time. But usually you would correctly understand me to be saying that I didn’t. After all, if I had gotten my work done on time, I would instead just say, “I got my work done on time.” And this example is typical of how conversation works.

The lecturer’s statements, if true, most strongly support which one of the following statements?

Legislator: The recently passed highway bill is clearly very unpopular with voters. After all, polls predict that the majority party, which supported the bill’s passage, will lose more than a dozen, seats in the upcoming election.

The reasoning in the legislator’s argument is most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that the argument

Songwriters get much of the money they earn from then- songs from radio airplay. A hit song is played thousands of times, and the songwriter is paid for each play. Only a fraction of songwriters actually achieve a hit, however, and even fewer manage to write several. Writers of hit songs are often asked to write songs for movie sound tracks, but they sometimes decline, because although such songs frequently become hits, their writers receive single up-front payments rather than continued revenues from radio airplay.

If the statements above are true, which one of the following must be true?

Debate coach: Britta’s command of the historical facts was better than Robert’s, and that led to the distinct impression that Britta won the debate. But it’s also important to evaluate how reasonable the debaters’ arguments were, regardless of their ability to bring the facts to bear in those arguments. When you take that into consideration, Robert’s debate performance was as good as Britta’s.

The debate coach’s argument depends on the assumption that

Physicists attempting to create new kinds of atoms often do so by fusing together two existing atoms. For such fusion to occur, the two atoms must collide with enough energy—that is, at high enough speeds—to overcome the electromagnetic force by which atoms repel each other. But if the energy with which two atoms collide greatly exceeds the minimum required for the fusion to take place, the excess energy will be converted into heat, making the resulting new atom very hot. And the hotter the atom is, the greater the chance that it will immediately split apart again.

Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the information above?

Fremont: Simpson is not a viable candidate for chief executive of Pod Oil because he has no background in the oil industry. Galindo: I disagree. An oil industry background is no guarantee of success. Look no further than Pod Oil’s last chief executive, who had decades of oil industry experience but steered the company to the brink of bankruptcy.

Galindo’s argument is flawed in that it

Discharges of lightning from a volcanic ash cloud occur only when the cloud’s highest point exceeds an altitude of 5 kilometers. Those discharges become progressively more frequent as the ash cloud moves higher still. Weather radar can measure the altitude of ash clouds, but it is not available in all parts of the world. Hence lightning discharge data can sometimes be our only reliable indicator of the altitude of ash clouds.

Which one of the following is an assumption required by the argument?

If the standards committee has a quorum, then the . general assembly will begin at 6:00 P.M. today. If the awards committee has a quorum, then the general assembly will begin at 7:00 P.M. today. .

Which one of the following statements follows logically from the statements above?

One of the things lenders do in evaluating the risk of a potential borrower defaulting on a loan is to consider the potential borrower’s credit score. In general, the higher the credit score, the less the risk of default. Yet for mortgage loans, the proportion of defaults is much higher for borrowers with the highest credit scores than for other borrowers.

Which one of the following, if true, most helps to resolve the apparent discrepancy in the statements above?

Computer modeling of reasoning tasks is far easier than computer modeling of other cognitive tasks, such as the processing of sense images. Computers can defeat chess champions, but cannot see. So, it appears that we understand the analytical capabilities of our minds much better than we understand our senses.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify the reasoning above?

Archaeologist: Our team discovered 5,000-year-old copper tools near a Canadian river, in a spot that offered easy access to the raw materials for birchbark cedar, and spruce trees. canoes—birch, The tools are of a sort used by the region’s Aboriginal people in making birchbark canoes in more recent times. It is likely therefore that Aboriginal people in Canada built birchbark canoes 5,000 years ago.

The archaeologist’s argument depends on the assumption that the copper tools that were found

Advertisement: Hypnosis videos work to alter behavior by subliminally directing the subconscious to act in certain ways. Directions to the subconscious must, however, be repeated many times in order to be effective. Hypnosis videos from Mesmosis, Inc. induce a hypnotic state and then issue an initial command to the subject’s subconscious to experience each subsequent instruction as if it had been repeated 1,000 times.

Because of the initial instruction, the subsequent instructions on Mesmosis videos are extremely effective—it is as if they had actually been repeated 1,000 times! The advertisement’s reasoning is most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that the advertisement

The traditional view of the Roman emperor Caligula as a cruel and insane tyrant has been challenged by some modem historians. They point out that little documentation of Caligula’s alleged cruelty or outrageous behavior survives from the time of his reign and that the histories that have come down to us were written by his enemies.

Which one of the following, if true, adds the most support for the challenge from the modem historians?

Critics of a plan to create new building sites from land that currently lies under only 5 meters of water claim that it will reduce the habitat area available to a local subpopulation of dolphins. It is true that the dolphins never enter water more than 30 meters deep, and the current area of habitation is bounded on one side by land and everywhere else by water that is considerably deeper than that. Nevertheless, the critics are mistaken, because __________.

Which one of the following most logically completes the argument?

Any popular television series that is groundbreaking is critically acclaimed. But not all popular television series are critically acclaimed. Thus, not all popular television series are groundbreaking.

The pattern of reasoning in the argument above is most similar to that in which one of the following arguments?