LSAT 149 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q23

LR Question 23 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: No nonfiction book published by Carriage Books has…

QUESTION TYPE: Parallel Reasoning

CONCLUSION: Carriage did not publish a non-fiction book this year.

REASONING:

1. Carriage nonfiction ➞ profit
2. Profit ➞ Carriage nonfiction
3. Every Carriage book earned a profit

ANALYSIS: This is a good argument. It gives us one conditional statement. Then the argument gives us a fact that combines with the contrapositive of the conditional statement. (I drew the contrapositive above as well.)

This is a bit of a subtle argument. It makes a division within Carriage books. There are nonfiction books and other books. The argument eliminates one category (nonfiction) because they earned a profit, so clearly all books were of another type.

___________

1. This answer is very similar. But it’s not quite right. We could only conclude this:
   “Every actor acted in a non-movie role last year, and they did not have major movie roles.”
   It is incorrect to conclude that none of the actors were in movies. They might have been in movies, just not in major roles. So this is a bad argument, whereas the stimulus had a good argument. 
2. This doesn’t make a distinction or use the contrapositive. It just gives us a conditional statement and a fact that matches the sufficient condition. It has this structure:
   A ➞ B
   A is true in one particular case, therefore B is also true in that case.
3. CORRECT. This matches exactly:
   1. Marketing ➞ bonus
   2. Bonus ➞ marketing
   3. Every systems analyst earned a bonus.
   4. Therefore, every systems analyst was not in marketing.
   The biggest feature is that this answer distinguishes between two types of employees: analysts and marketing. This resembles how the stimulus distinguished between non-fiction and other books.
4. This answer is a good argument, but it doesn’t match the structure. Both the stimulus and the right answer made a distinction between two types (books, and employees). This answer makes no distinction, it just applies a fact to a conditional statement.
   1. Business file ➞ has done business
   2. has done business ➞ business file
   3. James Benson has never done business, therefore he has no business file.
5. This is just a bad argument. It’s possible that Conway Flooring installs hardwood floors in other areas. Maybe they haven’t installed any in Woodbridge because no customer in Woodbridge wants hardwood floors.