Q6

[wj097]

Hard time eliminating (A)...

For (A), I was thinking hard what "many times" could possibly mean, and thought if it could be anything between more than one (maybe even 1.1..?) to infinite, then it fits with "are not as rare as some zoologists suspected (line 23)"

Is this translation of "many" too strict...? and rather use less of lazer sharp eyes and just have it casually interpret as 5, 10, 20...

thx

[ohthatpatrick]

Great question.

The use of "many" on LSAT is frustratingly vague. For the most part, in Logical Reasoning, it behooves us to think of "many" the same way we do "some" (i.e., at least one).

The reason for this is that we CANNOT equate "many" with "most", and lots of trap answers will lure us into doing so.

'Many' is a really subjective measurement.

I could say "many types of fast-food are bad for your health"
and "many children get struck by lightning each year" and we could be talking about wildly different numbers/percentages.

'Many' sort of plays off our expectations of how common/rare something is to begin with, so we might say that 10 kids getting hit by lightning is "many" if we think that figure is surprisingly high.

However, "many" does mean something different from "some".

While "some" literally means "at least one" and thus only needs one example to support it, "many" must mean some sort of plurality greater than one, so it needs more than one example to support it.

Quick example:
Brad is an actor.

From this I am allowed to infer that "some actors are named Brad".

I would not be allowed to infer that "many actors are named Brad".

I need at least a few examples of Brad-actors to justify 'many'.

In terms of Q6 choice (A), there are a couple issues I would use to eliminate it:

1. "many times" larger would have to be a minimum of 2 or 3 times larger to qualify as "many times" larger.

Even though you can say that one quantity is 1.1 times another, you wouldn't use the expression "many times larger" for that sort of relationship.

The "many times" implies integers ... is it 2 times larger? 3 times larger? 4 times larger? etc.

And the fact is that line 23 doesn't give us any way to approximate the extent to which current okapi estimates are bigger than previously thought.

If there are 30% more okapis than previously thought, that would go along with "they're not as rare as some zoologists think", but it would NOT go along with "there are many times as many okapis as zoologists thought". (30% more means there's 1.3 times as many)

2. (A) generalizes about "zoologists", but the 2nd paragraph is careful to distinguish between "some zoologists" who thought okapis were rare and others who thought okapis were just out of sight (lines 16-18). Line 23 is only saying that okapis aren't as rare as SOME zoologists thought. (A), meanwhile, generalizes about all zoologists.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have lingering questions.

[wj097]

Great question.

The use of "many" on LSAT is frustratingly vague. For the most part, in Logical Reasoning, it behooves us to think of "many" the same way we do "some" (i.e., at least one).

The reason for this is that we CANNOT equate "many" with "most", and lots of trap answers will lure us into doing so.

'Many' is a really subjective measurement.

I could say "many types of fast-food are bad for your health"
and "many children get struck by lightning each year" and we could be talking about wildly different numbers/percentages.

'Many' sort of plays off our expectations of how common/rare something is to begin with, so we might say that 10 kids getting hit by lightning is "many" if we think that figure is surprisingly high.

However, "many" does mean something different from "some".

While "some" literally means "at least one" and thus only needs one example to support it, "many" must mean some sort of plurality greater than one, so it needs more than one example to support it.

Quick example:
Brad is an actor.

From this I am allowed to infer that "some actors are named Brad".

I would not be allowed to infer that "many actors are named Brad".

I need at least a few examples of Brad-actors to justify 'many'.

In terms of Q6 choice (A), there are a couple issues I would use to eliminate it:

1. "many times" larger would have to be a minimum of 2 or 3 times larger to qualify as "many times" larger.

Even though you can say that one quantity is 1.1 times another, you wouldn't use the expression "many times larger" for that sort of relationship.

The "many times" implies integers ... is it 2 times larger? 3 times larger? 4 times larger? etc.

And the fact is that line 23 doesn't give us any way to approximate the extent to which current okapi estimates are bigger than previously thought.

If there are 30% more okapis than previously thought, that would go along with "they're not as rare as some zoologists think", but it would NOT go along with "there are many times as many okapis as zoologists thought". (30% more means there's 1.3 times as many)

2. (A) generalizes about "zoologists", but the 2nd paragraph is careful to distinguish between "some zoologists" who thought okapis were rare and others who thought okapis were just out of sight (lines 16-18). Line 23 is only saying that okapis aren't as rare as SOME zoologists thought. (A), meanwhile, generalizes about all zoologists.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have lingering questions.

Wow, what an airtight overkill; wish I could do this on my PTs...
Thx!

[SecondWind180]

The use of "many" on LSAT is frustratingly vague. For the most part, in Logical Reasoning, it behooves us to think of "many" the same way we do "some" (i.e., at least one).

The reason for this is that we CANNOT equate "many" with "most", and lots of trap answers will lure us into doing so.

'Many' is a really subjective measurement.

I could say "many types of fast-food are bad for your health"
and "many children get struck by lightning each year" and we could be talking about wildly different numbers/percentages.

'Many' sort of plays off our expectations of how common/rare something is to begin with, so we might say that 10 kids getting hit by lightning is "many" if we think that figure is surprisingly high.

However, "many" does mean something different from "some".

While "some" literally means "at least one" and thus only needs one example to support it, "many" must mean some sort of plurality greater than one, so it needs more than one example to support it.

Quick example:
Brad is an actor.

From this I am allowed to infer that "some actors are named Brad".

I would not be allowed to infer that "many actors are named Brad".

I need at least a few examples of Brad-actors to justify 'many'.

GOLD Best explanation I've ever seen for some vs. many. You earned yourself your very own Many/Some.docx file on my hard drive.

[matthew.mainen]

How does one justify C?

[ohthatpatrick]

In line 15-18, we get the question of "why are okapis so infrequently captured? Is it because they're very rare or because their habits simply keep them out of sight?"

The passage goes on to say that they're NOT as rare as we thought, they just seem scarce because of what's discussed in lines 27-33.

The "coloration" part of (C) is supported by 27-29.
The "habits" part of (C) is supported by 29-33.

(A) "many times larger" is too strong to support
(B) "finally answer ALL questions" is too extreme to support (in fact the last paragraph raises lingering questions)
(D) contradicted by 35-38
(E) The passage said okapis SEEM scarce because they don't hang out on the perimeter too much. This choice acts like they ARE scarce because they don't hang out there and WOULD be more plentiful if they did. There's even speculation in the last paragraph that if okapis ventured out more into the open border, they would be more vulnerable to predators.

[matthew.mainen]

Thanks. I understand C is the least bad answer, but to me it seems pretty bad.

1. The passage tells us they WERE captured infrequently. C holds that they ARE captured infrequently.

2. C limits the discussion to hunters. But the passage also talks about zoologists. Why is it all that informative to talk about hunters when maybe zoologists do not have difficulty capturing? Just because hunters have difficulty capturing - and this is granting the assumption that they are NOW being infrequently captured at all - the passage leaves open the possibility that zoologists do not have trouble capturing.

[ohthatpatrick]

Be careful, you're giving me reasons why (C) does not have to be true.

You're right, it doesn't.

The question doesn't ask for must be true.

Wording such as "implies", "suggests", "most likely to agree" simply means we want the Best supported answer.

At the beginning of every LR section, it warns us against making any assumptions that by commonsense standards are superfluous, implausible, or incompatible with the passage.

You want those same mental guidelines in RC.

In order for you to think that they WERE hard to capture, but NOW they're now, you'd have to assume that something changed that made okapis easier to capture. Well that's superfluous to the passage. It didn't indicate anything changed. (In fact lines 22-26 are present tense, indicating that the okapis ARE not scarce and DO mostly hang out in the hard to reach center of the forest).

In order for you to think HUNTERS find it hard to capture but RESEARCHERS don't find it hard, you'd have to assume that RESEARCHERS are better at trapping animals than HUNTERS. That assumption seems superfluous, if not implausible.

In regards to "Why the heck did we even bring up hunters?"

This question points to an even more important habit in RC ... you want to notice whenever an RC passage brings up a point of view (often telegraphed by "it is commonly thought", "most critics have agreed that" type stuff), it will frequently shoot down that notion.

That process of initially explaining someone else's ideas, pivoting on a but/yet/however, and then providing what the AUTHOR really thinks is going on is a huge source of what the questions test.

So the hunters were brought up merely to give context to the initial (wrong) point of view: okapis are scarce.

The author, meanwhile, wants to clarify this misconception. He goes to some effort to convince us that they're NOT as scarce as we thought. Okay, well then why were hunters finding it so hard to capture them? Because, the author thinks, they hide out in the inner forest and travel mostly alone.

The passage never explicitly returned to the hunters to say, "You see, hunters, your guess was wrong. THIS is why they're hard to capture." But that was the purpose of that whole discussion. So (C) is rewarding us for seeing that the author wanted to clarify that misconception.