Q23 - This year a flood

[kimyooji]

I"m not really sure what I"m missing,
I was able to elminate A (strangers) B*government relief) C ( disaster publicize.. and left with D and E, but then I also elminated D as well because I found no information about 'before the diaster'

please help me!!!

[dtangie23]

This year, a majority of Hollyville's residents responded to a flood in another town.

This majority of Hollyville residents is a higher proportion of Hollyville residents than the proportion of Hollyville residents who responded to an earthquake a few years ago.

Last year, Hollyville itself had a deadly tornado and received aid.

Sequence of events:

lower proportion of Hollyville residents (a few years ago) -- Hollyville has a tornado (last year) -- majority of Hollyvile residents respond to flood (this year)

So, after the disaster struck Hollyville itself last year, Hollyville residents were more likely to offer aid this year. Hence, answer choice (D).

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Great work detangle23

Sequence of events:

lower proportion of Hollyville residents (a few years ago) -- Hollyville has a tornado (last year) -- majority of Hollyvile residents respond to flood (this year)

Great work detangle23! That's exactly right.

Let me just run through some of the incorrect answers in case someone is having a hard time eliminating some of the incorrect answers.

(A) relies on an unwarranted assumption. We cannot assume that just because Hollyville is a river town that they know the people of the recently devastated river town.
(B) has a quite forward shift in language. Government relief programs are not the same as private donations for relief efforts.
(C) focuses on the wrong issue. The issue is not publicity. It is not stated how publicized the flood or tornado were.
(E) does not conform to the events of the stimulus but plays on a similarity in the kind of towns - not on the kinds of hardships. None of the towns experienced the same kind of hardship.

[christian.askari]

Though I agree that C does not encapsulate the stimulus but only one part, the information given does not tell us which disaster occurred first in the current year, the flood or deadly tornado, so how do we know that is the reason why they gave more?

In fact, though we should avoid our own real-life assumptions, I would think it is much more likely that a town gives a lot of aid before it is struck by a natural disaster rather than after, where the town is in such disarray it cannot afford to be charitable.

[cecilydr]

so when i chose my answers i thought flood and tornado r "similar hardships" while flood and earthquakes r not. Does hardship here only refers to the level of difficulties posed by the natural disasters rather than the nature of such a disaster? need clarification!! many thanks!!

[mahamansoor]

Hi CecilyDr,

I had trouble with this question too.

Tornadoes + Floods don't need to be equivalent here to be relevant.

As the first poster suggested, it's about time not about similarity of disasters (answer D notes "once a disaster has struck them").. Therefore, it doesn't matter whether it's an earthquake, a comet, or a flood... it is because Hollyville was struck last year by a natural disaster that they support their neighbors this year.

Hopefully that helps! I eliminated D initially because I didn't see any "time" sequence... but upon rereading it makes sense.

[keonheecho]

Hi,
I see how (D) may be the best answer, but I don't see how it can be right. Even though Hollyville sent more aid, they still sent aid to the victims of the earthquake as well. But (D) is saying that they are more likely to aid others in general, not that they are more likely to send more aid. Isn't this making a shift from that of degree to absolute values? There doesn't seem to be anything in the passage that suggests they wouldn't send aid

Also, is this an inference question?

Thank you in advance

[ohthatpatrick]

This is definitely most closely related to Inference. When they ask us to read a passage/situation and then conform to a generalization, most of the wrong answers have extreme language giveaways.

The passages normally allow us to say "sometimes X has an influence on Y" or "sometimes you can be X, yet also be Y".

The facts here seem to set us up for answering the paradox of "Why was Hollyville so much more actively willing to help this time around? Oh, it must be because they can empathize, having just gone through a natural disaster."

The facts are not about amount of money, but rather proportion of participants in the relief effort.

So it IS a binary idea -- you helped or you didn't. Technically, the population of Hollyville may have grown or shrunk considerably in between the two non-Hollyville disasters. LSAT was actually careful to avoid citing numbers for that reason.

The proportion / likelihood of helping was higher in the recent situation than it was in the prior situation.

Hope this helps.