Q18 - If the standards committee has a quorum

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Inference (Must be True)

Stimulus Breakdown:
CONDITIONAL 1:
If SC has quorum, then GA begins at 6.
CONDITIONAL 2:
If AC has quorum, then GA begins at 7.

Answer Anticipation:
Whenever we receive more than one conditional on LSAT, we ask ourselves if they can be chained together.

Indeed they can.
"If SC has quorum, GA starts at 6, so GA doesn't start at 7, so AC doesn't have quorum".
This also works in contrapositive form,
"If AC has q, GA starts at 7, so SC doesn't have quorum."

We can't prove that one of them does have a quorum and the other doesn't (because it's possible that neither of them have a quorum). But we can definitely prove that the SC and AC do not both have quorums.

Correct Answer:
E

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Nope, this makes it seem like SC or AC are bound to have a quorum, but it's possible they both don't.

(B) Nope, same as (A).

(C) No, that's just an illegal reversal of the first sentence.

(D) Nope, nothing would guarantee that either committee DOES have a quorum.

(E) Yup! They can't both have a quorum.

Takeaway/Pattern: By simply writing the two conditionals and their contrapositives, we can see the four (right-side) ideas that are provable with this info:
we can prove the GA starts at 6.
we can prove the GA starts at 7.
we can prove that SC does not have a quorum.
We can prove that AC does not have a quorum.

Those are the only eligible ideas we can prove.

#officialexplanation

[CiciC626]

I still get questions.....

Can't GA have 2 meetings, they can begin at 6 pm and end at 6:50 pm, followed by the next GA begin at 7 again?

Thank you for your thoughts.

[Misti Duvall]

I still get questions.....

Can't GA have 2 meetings, they can begin at 6 pm and end at 6:50 pm, followed by the next GA begin at 7 again?

Thank you for your thoughts.

Hmmm, there's nothing in the information given that says there can be two meetings (for ex, there's nothing about a first meeting or a second meeting). It just gives two different scenarios for when the general assembly will begin. Be careful about brining in additional info; stick very literally to the information given in the stimulus.