Q9 - In one study of a particular

[sbuzzetto10]

I chose D the correct answer, but I was confused about some of the choices and what they meant/ their implications to the stimulus.

Could someone explain A and C's implications?

Thanks!

[arischacter]

Going through this question myself and I'll take a shot at it I figure. I refuse to take any blame if I am wrong though.

a) I think (a) hinges on "70 percent of the plants studied", which means that they were only studying a specific amount of those plans. It wouldn't matter if they were more populous at a certain time of year given they're studying the same ones.

c) I think (c) contradicts a premise in the same regard as (a) does. It's denying that they studied the same.

(D) fits as it allows both studies to study the same amount of plants.

Hopefully I am not too far off base.

[noah]

No blame is apportioned around here for bad explanations! Thanks for your thoughts. Here are mine.

Let's boil down this question to it's discrepancy:

Study 1 found 70% have patterned stems and Study 2 found 40%, yet they studied the same type of plant in the same area.

(D) resolves this because the studies used different definitions, with Study 1 counting more plants as being patterned.

Incorrect Answers
(A) is tempting - perhaps Study 1 was done when there are lots of these patterned pants, and Study 2 was...wait, we don't know when Study 2 was done. Perhaps it was done at the same time.
(B) is out of scope - who cares if other plant species were looked at. We're only talking about what was discovered about a certain plant species.
(C) is also tempting - perhaps one of the studies didn't look at enough plants. But, we only learn a relative difference (and a small one), not whether one study was ineffective.
(E) might be tempting if you make the assumption that a study will gather "bad" data if gathering that data is not the primary focus of the study. But, for all we know, that's irrelevant.

Notice how so many of the wrong answers required extra "work" to make them resolve the discrepancy. Most right answers don't require any fixing...

[fruityfatty]

I picked B because the wording in the stimulus is ambiguous -- it says in the first study of a particular plant species, "70 percent of the plants studied" were patterned, as opposed to, in the second study, "40 percent of the plants of that species." B seemed to explain this mismatch, by showing that in the first study, the "plants studied" included more than just "the plants of that species."

B and D thus seemed like equally valid choices to me...

[ngilens]

I appreciate how closely you read that.

But, the first study was "of a particular plant species," so we can be assured that the data was about that plant.

Furthermore, if the study also collected information about another plant, did that information get included with all the other information?

BTW, sorry for not responding earlier, I misread your post - I thought you were saying you had already figured it out.

[fruityfatty]

Thank you, ngilens. I guess the lesson I am learning is that Occam's razor applies to the LSAT. If two answers seem like they could work, pick the one that requires fewer mental gymnastics, even if those mental gymnastics might be fair game for arriving at the correct answer in a different question.

[LSAT-Chang]

Just wanted to add another point to answer choice (A) - even if the plants of the species are at their most populous, you can't assume that it is likely for there to be more "patterned stems" plants. It could be more populous, but still there could be a few patterned stem plants. It would be a mistake to assume that the more populous the plants, the more likely it is for there to be more patterned stem plants.

[ktongalson]

Can someone clarify why C is wrong? Is it valid just not as strong as d?

[monicajamaluddin]

The reason I didn't pick A was because the stimulus states that in a study of a particular plant species 70% of the plants studied were reported to have a patterned stem.
In A they say that the plants were studied at a time when they were most populous.
If the only plants that were examined in the study was of that specific species then it doesn't matter how many plants of that species were available relative to other plant species - we are only interested in the group of plants that are a part of that species.

So if we were studying roses and found 70% of them had a particular pattern. And then someone said well.. ya, but this study was done at a time when roses made up 90% of the total flowers and tulips made up only 10% - that really has no effect at all on our study because we don't care about tulips or the ratio of roses to tulips.



C I decided was wrong because whether or not the second study had more absolute number of plants studied than the first study doesn't matter. What matters is the % of plants within each study that has the pattern - again it's trying to compare across studies - which is irrelevant.


Is that the right way to think about both?

[sukim764]

As far as answer C goes, I'd also like to add that it doesn't resolve the discrepancy seeing as the first study accounted for higher % of x, while the second study accounted for a lesser %. The answer choice states that the second study, the study with a lower %, had more individual plants. Upon close inspection, choice C would have been tempting if the studies were flipped, and even then, as one of the moderators has pointed out, it' no where near of a good answer as D: which addresses the scope of "patterned," not simply an increase # of plants in general.

[alandman]

Answer choice A doesn't resolve the discrepnancy. Here how the numbers break down:

First study:

100 plants.
70 same pattern.
70/100 = 70%.

Second study:

50 plants.
20 same pattern.
20/50 = 40%.

So the first study was conducted when that plant species was at its most populous number. However, it doesn't explain the different in percentages, as one would expect the percentages to be the same or very similar across both studies.

Even if you assume that bigger population is the reason for the discrepancies in percentages, like Noah said, we don't know when the second study was conducted and while it's tempting to make an assumption (the second study was conducted when the plants were not populous), we should not bring any such outside information.

[mswang7]

Study A - 70% patterned stems
Study B - 40% patterned
Same area.
Prephrase - different definition of patterned? Were the studies conducted in the same season?

A. matches my prephrase
B. Out of scope - we only care of this particular species right now
C. the number of plants is irrelevant since both gave us stats in percentages
D. Oh man, this is my other prephase!
E. Out of scope but this is trying to make you think because it was a secondary goal they were less attentive in their search for patterned, therefore less % but this is an unsupported assumption!

Coming back to A by season prephase does not work for the same reason C does not work - percentages should be consistent despite a higher number of overall plants which leaves us with D!

[GolddiggerF208]

The stimulus is about the nature of a particular plant species. The question is to find the explanation addressing the discrepancy. (A) and (C) seem to be tempting. They, however, relate to quantitative factors, which cannot contribute to the qualitative nature. Only (D) does a good job.