Q25 - A recent poll revealed that most students

[mshinners]

What does the Question Stem tell us?
This is an Explain a Result question.

Break down the Stimulus:
Students prefer that the university hire a president with extensive experience in that role. However, from a list of leading candidates, they chose a person who has never served in that role.

Any prephrase?
Perhaps the person whom they chose has qualites other than experience that make her a more favorable candiate. Maybe all of the other candidates were convicted embezzlers and axe murderers, and the students chose the only one who isn't.

Answer choice analysis:
A) This answer choice tells us that several of the candidates did have extensive experience, but it doesn't tell us why the students failed to choose one of those experienced candidates over the one who lacks experience. Eliminate.

B) As with answer choice (A), if this is true we would expect the students to choose one of the candidates with extensive experience. This doesn't explain why they didn't.

C) This doesn't address the issue of experience at all, or explain why students would choose a candidate with no experience.

D) Correct. This would have been hard to predict, but it makes sense. When reading the stimulus we might assume that the students were aware of each candidate's experience, but we were never explicitly told that. If they weren't aware of it, a lack of expereince would not make any candidate less likely to be chosen.

E) This might seem relevant at first, but we don't know if applies to the candidates being discussed in the stimulus. By comparison, answer choice (D) specifically mentions the students who took the poll. That makes (D) a better answer. Choice (E) might have gotten away with it, if it weren't for that meddling answer choice (D).

Takeaway/Pattern: Explain a Result questions often have two appealing answer choices. The correct choice will be more directly relevant to the stimulus, and therefore will do more to help explain the apparent discrepancy.

#officialexplanation

[T.housman31]

Why is C wrong? I understand how D is right, but doesn't c resolve the discrepancy?

[danitay]

I'm not sure about this one either, but my opinion is D is probably stronger than C.

C might or might not explain the discrepancy (for example, if there are fewer candidates in the poll than are currently in the running, there might not be anyone in the poll who has had president experience), but it's a bit of a stretch to assume that. Even if there are fewer candidates in the poll, one or a few in the poll could still very well have president experience, so why would the students choose the unexperienced candidate?

So I think D is probably stronger because unlike C, it definitely resolves the discrepancy no matter how you slice it.

[noah]

I think danitay has nailed it, except that (C) does not at all resolve the discrepancy. If you have to do "work" to make an answer do what it's supposed to do, then it's not really a great answer (though sometimes it might be the best).

As danitay explains, if the number of candidates in the poll is small students might still apply their preference for those candidates who are experienced.

A side note: (C) doesn't even say that the number is small - just that the number in the poll is less than the number of candidates being considered. Strange.

[danitay]

Ah, that makes sense now. Thank you for the explanation! Good advice about having to "work" to make an answer do something.

[jeffrey.christopher.nelson]

I narrowed it down to D and A, but eventually chose D. But reviewing the question, I don't see why A, B, and D shouldn't all be in contention. This is the scenario I'm considering:

100 students polled, 51 prefer extensive experience. 49 prefer something else.

Poll lists 4 candidates, 3 with extensive experience (A, B, and C), 1 without experience (D). A, B, and C equally divide the 51 votes of people who prefer extensive experience. Thus, they each get 17 votes. Candidate D sweeps all 49 who prefer something else. As a result, inspite of a majority of people favoring extensive experience, candidate D who has no experience can still lead the poll.

I feel like A and B reference this scenario. Am I missing something? Additionally, I feel like I've seen this type of logical flaw on previous lsats.

Please help!

[noah]

I narrowed it down to D and A, but eventually chose D. But reviewing the question, I don't see why A, B, and D shouldn't all be in contention. This is the scenario I'm considering:

100 students polled, 51 prefer extensive experience. 49 prefer something else.

Poll lists 4 candidates, 3 with extensive experience (A, B, and C), 1 without experience (D). A, B, and C equally divide the 51 votes of people who prefer extensive experience. Thus, they each get 17 votes. Candidate D sweeps all 49 who prefer something else. As a result, inspite of a majority of people favoring extensive experience, candidate D who has no experience can still lead the poll.

I feel like A and B reference this scenario. Am I missing something? Additionally, I feel like I've seen this type of logical flaw on previous lsats.

Please help!

That's awesome! Really creative and smart analysis.

The issue is, consider how much work you had to do in order to make (A) and (B) "work" as opposed to (D). (D) works because if the students don't know which candidates had what experience, the students' votes don't reflect their interest in experience. Pretty straightforward. (Though not as interesting!)

[goriano]

I narrowed it down to D and A, but eventually chose D. But reviewing the question, I don't see why A, B, and D shouldn't all be in contention. This is the scenario I'm considering:

100 students polled, 51 prefer extensive experience. 49 prefer something else.

Poll lists 4 candidates, 3 with extensive experience (A, B, and C), 1 without experience (D). A, B, and C equally divide the 51 votes of people who prefer extensive experience. Thus, they each get 17 votes. Candidate D sweeps all 49 who prefer something else. As a result, inspite of a majority of people favoring extensive experience, candidate D who has no experience can still lead the poll.

I feel like A and B reference this scenario. Am I missing something? Additionally, I feel like I've seen this type of logical flaw on previous lsats.

Please help!

That's awesome! Really creative and smart analysis.

The issue is, consider how much work you had to do in order to make (A) and (B) "work" as opposed to (D). (D) works because if the students don't know which candidates had what experience, the students' votes don't reflect their interest in experience. Pretty straightforward. (Though not as interesting!)

@jeffrey.christopher.nelson

I don't think your scenario is consistent with the stimulus.

You: Candidate D sweeps all 49 who prefer something else. As a result, inspite of a majority of people favoring extensive experience, candidate D who has no experience can still lead the poll.

Stimulus: The person MOST students chose from among a list of leading candidates was someone who has never served as a university president

[Laura Damone]

Full Explanation

What does the stem tell us: “account for the apparent discrepancy” = Explain a Result!

Breakdown the stimulus: If most students would prefer to hire someone with experience, we would expect them to choose an experienced candidate from the list of potential candidates the poll provided. But, they didn’t. That’s the paradox.
Any prephrase? Why didn’t they? Maybe there weren’t any experienced candidates on the list? Or maybe because all the experienced folks on that list were distasteful for some other reason? Or maybe because other qualities outweigh experience, and the selected candidate had those in abundance?

A) furthers the discrepancy. If there were experienced folks on the list, why weren’t they picked? We still don’t know…

B) same problem as A. If they were there, why didn’t students pick them?

C) irrelevant. The number of the candidates doesn’t necessarily impact the makeup of the group.

D) bingo. If the students didn’t know the candidates’ respective experience levels, they couldn’t choose a more experienced candidate over a less experienced one.

E) “often” is a red flag here: is that strong enough language to resolve a paradox? Often it’s not (no pun intended). What’s more, even though this may be true, students expressed a preference for experience then chose an inexperienced candidate. The paradox remains, even if (E) is true generally, because in this particular situation, the students override it with their preference for experience.

Takeaway/Pattern: Identify the paradox first and think of what might resolve it, but don’t be too beholden to your prephrase(s). LSAT paradoxes tend to have many possible resolutions, so correct answers often won’t match your prephrase. That’s OK! The prephrasing process is still worthwhile because it sets you up to evaluate answer choices successfully.

[mswang7]

Poll results said students wanted a president who has experience as that role. The winner of the pole with names was someone without that experience.
Prephase - people did not know the winner of the pole lacked the experience/ biased due to friendship or knowing the individual

A. We don't need all or even most of the candidates to have been differentiated - we only care about why the top one was selected
B. Same as A
C. Number of choices is irrelevant (unless none of the candidates has experience & all the students knew this)
D. Matches prephase
E. We are not concerned with how well suited, but rather what the students wanted according to the poll