Q8 - Early in the development of a new product line, the cri

[anjelica.grace]

Can someone explain why (D) is right and (B) is wrong? To me, the stimulus sounded very convoluted and I think I lost track of the conclusion by the time I moved to the answer choices.

I could see how (B) might be a useless fact about proportion of expenditures and (D) demonstrates no negative offset, but I am not absolutely won over by my too simple explanations.

[timmydoeslsat]

We want to start by knowing our goal before reading the stimulus. It is a strengthening question stem.

Our argument goes like this:

Talent plays a big part early on in new product lines for companies. These new product lines marketing efforts would need really talented managers, but these types of mangers are ordered to work with the already developed and more profitable product lines most of the time.

We are also told that the reason why these new product lines ultimately fail so often with its marketing is due to not having the talented mangers to lead the helm.

We conclude that the companies should assign these managers to the new product lines.

So we have a conclusion of a should statement. I can certainly think of one beneficial aspect to saying that these companies should be assigned to help with these new lines: it would meet a requirement for these new line marketing ventures.

However, is there anything left to consider about why it may be problematic to assign these managers to the new lines? What if these established and profitable product lines would deteriorate with the absence of these managers. This would be something the company may not like to see occur.

A) Weakens. It suggests that the caliber of manager is not a factor. Even then, it is a bit of an assumption to say that talent = level of manager.

B) Does nothing for us. How would telling us that these new development lines cost little in the grand scheme of things do anything for us? This does not support the idea of moving managers from the established lines to the new lines. I think you could make an argument if it were the case that these new lines were being funded at an enormous amount by the company.

C) This weakens if anything. We need talented managers for these new line items. Having an inclination for disinterest gives us some support for these new line items not taking off like they may.

D) This is what we want. This would support the idea that the established lines will not suffer as a result of the assigment to the new lines.

E) Knowing early on which ones will earn money does not help us with the idea of placing a caliber of manager to it.

[anjelica.grace]

Thanks Noah! I realized that I initially choose (B) because it supported the notion of new development projects. I didn't stick close to the text and instead of noting that the conclusion is whether the best managers should go to new development projects, I thought it was whether the company should pursue new development projects at all, a much broader issue, which is why I chose (B) for indicating small costs.

[cnguye15]

Hi,
I ended up picking D (the correct answer) but my reasoning was different. I don't know if this is a correct way to attack this particular question. First, I tried to identify the assumption; that is, these talented managers should (must) be assigned to new product lines in order to avoid failure ( losing profit or revenue etc). I then looked at the answer choices and saw that answer D is the negated form of the assumption.
Recalling the negate assumption technique, often used to test a correct answer choice in the assumption question type, that if a negated answer choice weakens the argument then it is the correct answer, i decided to pick D without even checking other answer choices

[WaltGrace1983]

Hi,
I ended up picking D (the correct answer) but my reasoning was different. I don't know if this is a correct way to attack this particular question.

First, I tried to identify the assumption; that is, these talented managers should (must) be assigned to new product lines in order to avoid failure ( losing profit or revenue etc).

I then looked at the answer choices and saw that answer D is the negated form of the assumption.

Recalling the negate assumption technique, often used to test a correct answer choice in the assumption question type, that if a negated answer choice weakens the argument then it is the correct answer, i decided to pick D without even checking other answer choices

A few things about this...

(1) Good job finding the assumption. Pretty much every strengthening question has an underlying assumption (after all, it is an assumption family Q).
(2) Your assumption is almost there but not quite. Most of what you say is the assumption is more or less already stated in the stimulus. The assumption is all about finding what is NOT stated. What is NOT stated here is the impact that redefining a manger's role will have for the place he/she already manages.
(3) The negation test is great for necessary assumption questions. However - and someone correct me if I am wrong - it really doesn't have a place in any other question type. There are some flaw questions, principle questions, etc. where I have seen a stem pertaining to the NECESSARY, but this isn't one of them. The LSAT is not a test that can be done successfully relying on tricks. 90% of the time it will not reward you for that kind of thinking.
(4) Always check the other answer choices. Even if its something that you predicted perfectly. Even if you are on question 23/25 and there is only a minute and a half to go on test day, at the VERY least gloss over the other answer choices. You never know what you could be missing and the LSAT also likes to make incredibly tempting trap answers.