Q2 - All people prefer colors

[ezraryu]

Hi I usually have harder time than others on most strongly supported conclusion questions

For this one I had the answer choices narrowed down to B and D. B seemed a tad extreme so I eliminated it, and thanks to POE I got the right answer. But no matter how many times I review the answer I can't figure out how it is sufficiently relevant to be the perfect answer choice. Sure, it's true and that itself prevents me from crossing it out on the getgo, but I'm not convinced it's a good conclusion. I'm thinking there is a better, more reliable way to tackle such question type. Can anyone please help?

Deeply appreciative of what you guys do for the LSAT community!

[christine.defenbaugh]

I'm so glad you asked about this ezraryu!

I'd like to zero in on one part of your post to begin:

Sure, it's true and that itself prevents me from crossing it out on the getgo, but I'm not convinced it's a good conclusion.

How do you know (D) is true?

It's critical to know what our job is on this question type, and this particular type is often misinterpreted. We're looking for a supported conclusion, so what does that really mean? It's not the same thing as looking for a good conclusion for an article, or for a thesis we're writing. In those situations we're often looking for good rhetorical conclusions - something interesting, powerful, and that serves to tie together all our threads.

That's not at all what we want on the LSAT. We're looking for a good logical conclusion, which is a completely different activity. So what makes a good logical conclusion? One for which there aren't any (or many) assumptions you need to get to it!

So, the fact that you know (D) is true means it's logically concludable! You know it's true from the statements in the stimulus, and that's exactly what we want. The fact that this might not be a great 'writerly' conclusion is irrelevant. In fact, logical conclusions may rest on only a small part of the information given - they don't have to tie everything together, they just have to be supported.

Let's walk through the specifics for this question:

For inference questions of the 'most strongly supported' flavor, we are given a laundry list of facts, and we need to find the answer we can support very nearly 100%.

Facts:
Everyone likes distinguishable colors better.
Babies distinguish primary colors better.
Bright color baby toys sell better than subtle color.

We can conclude easily that babies must like primary colors better than subtle colors from the first two facts. Combine that idea with the last fact and we know those brightly colored toys match up with the color preferences of babies! We know (D) is true from these facts!



We Don't Know That!
(A) Where did primary and secondary colors come from? False comparison!
(B) "the most important factor" - bold claim! We don't have support for that!
(C) Nothing in the stimulus compares some bright colors to others. Maybe infants like one particular bright better, maybe they don't.
(E) They do? How would we know that? Maybe they just got lucky with the bright toys? Or they just noticed they sold well and ran with it? No idea!


It's absolutely critical to know your task on inference questions. Don't look for a good conclusion for "good writing". Look for a logical conclusion - one that's fully supportable!

Please let me know if that completely answers your question!

[ezraryu]

Thanks christine.defenbaugh!
You really got to the heart of the problem and I'm so much better off for it. Now I can see that the question stem isn't asking for the "rhetorical" conclusion, which has been at the core of my reasoning, but rather something that's true and relevant to the extent of the stimulus!:)