Q22 - All highly successful salespersons

[tamwaiman]

This one is easy, but I have a formal logic question at the 2nd sentence: characteristics(well organized and self-motivated) absent from many salespersons who are not highly successful.

~highly successful-->~well organized and ~self-motivated

Is it correct?
Thanks.

[noah]

Happy to help. I tried to do this question in my head and quickly remembered why this sort of question (at least for me) MUST be written out! Let me start by explaining the question, in case future students want to discuss it:

We learn the following from the stimulus (and notice that I linked up whatever I could):

well known --> high success --> Well Org + Self Mot. --> ~ Regret

~ success --(some)--> ~ Well Org + ~ Self Mot.

I basically didn't need to write down the second statement, since this is an inference question, and with just one "some" statement, what can we infer?

(C) is provable. It translates to "if well known --> ~ regret" which we can infer from the chain above.

(A) refers to unsuccessful people, about which we know little.
(B) has a similar issue to (A).
(D) is about not-organized people. From the contrapositive of the chain above, we know about them is that they're not successful nor well-known. But, we don't know how they feel about their career choices.
(E) is a reversal of the chain. We don't know anything about the non-regretters, other than that some of them are well-known, self-motivated, etc. We don't know if all of them are successful.

To answer your question, you translated the second phrase (not sentence, BTW) a bit off. "Many" does not mean "all", so we can't draw a formal conditional logic statement. All we know is that some of multiple unsuccessful salespersons aren't well organized and aren't self-motivated.

[goriano]

I'd like to know how to rationalize combining

(1) "All highly successful salespersons are both well organized and self-motivated"

and

(2) "Only THOSE who are highly successful are well known among their peers"

From (2), IF you are well known among your peers --> highly successful. So is the reason we can link the two statements because a highly successful salesperson is a SUBSET of being highly successful?

So by the above reasoning I could say

(1) All oranges are fruits

(2) Only THOSE items that are orange have a wavelength 590_620 nm

But then we would conclude any item that has a wavelength 590-620 would be a fruit!

I suspect that the clause "Only THOSE who are highly successful" was intended to be interpreted as being exclusively to salespersons, but it seems that it could have also been a more general statement as well. Help!

[noah]

I suspect that the clause "Only THOSE who are highly successful" was intended to be interpreted as being exclusively to salespersons, but it seems that it could have also been a more general statement as well. Help!

That's exactly it. The clause is subordinate, and the "those" refers to salespersons. Perhaps there's grammatical wiggle room, but apparently, the LSAT didn't think so!

Plus, even if you take the statement to be general, and we know that well known --> high success, we know that's true about well known salespersons. So, we can then apply the statement to them and arrive at (C).

So by the above reasoning I could say

(1) All oranges are fruits

(2) Only THOSE items that are orange have a wavelength 590_620 nm

But then we would conclude any item that has a wavelength 590-620 would be a fruit!

Good thinking. However, I think you've switched from "oranges" to "items that are orange." That's two different senses of the word.

From the correct statements, we could draw the conclusion you note:

(1) All oranges are fruits

(2) Only THOSE items that are oranges have a wavelength 590_620 nm

Therefore, any item that has a wavelength 590-620 is a fruit.

And I'm going to trust you on the "nm" stuff!

[randitect]

I chose the correct answer, but I don't see why A is incorrect... I think it may have to do with my misunderstanding the role of negated sufficient conditions, in which case I would really appreciate if someone could clear this up for me.

I diagrammed it as follows:

well-known --> High success --> Organized + (Self Motivated --> ~Regret)

Clearly, C is correct as well known necessitates no regret.

However, when I negate the last bit in order to evaluate A I get:

~Organized *or* ~Self Motivated --> ~High Success
If self motivated and not highly successful, then wouldn't the salesperson HAVE to be disorganized?

For the necessary condition to be met, as in A, one of the two sufficient conditions must be met...no? Since A states that the unsuccessful salesperson IS self-motivated, then I reasoned that the person would have to be disorganized.

What is my mistake here?

Thank you for your help.

[noah]

However, when I negate the last bit in order to evaluate A I get:

~Organized *or* ~Self Motivated --> ~High Success
If self motivated and not highly successful, then wouldn't the salesperson HAVE to be disorganized?

For the necessary condition to be met, as in A, one of the two sufficient conditions must be met...no? Since A states that the unsuccessful salesperson IS self-motivated, then I reasoned that the person would have to be disorganized.

What is my mistake here?

Thank you for your help.

My head is spinning a bit from your question! Let me tell you how I approach (A) and let's see if that clears it up:

(A) says self-motivated + ~ high success --> ~ well organized

Looking at the chain we have:

well known --> high success --> Well Org + Self Mot. --> ~ Regret

all I can infer from self-motivated is that they have no regrets, and all I can infer from ~ high success is ~ well known. I don't know if either lead to ~ well organized.

I think you're thinking that well organized + self motivated --> high success, in which case if we knew self motivated, but we didn't get to high success, then we'd have to "undermine" the sufficient with ~ well organized.

The issue is in your statement here:

~Organized *or* ~Self Motivated --> ~High Success
If self motivated and not highly successful, then wouldn't the salesperson HAVE to be disorganized?

If we know that ~ O or ~ S.M. --> ~ H.S., we can't infer anything from SM, nor from ~H.S., which is what (A) provide.

That clear it up?