Exam LSAT Section 1 Logical Reasoning topic 1 question 157 discussion

Actual exam question from Test Prep's LSAT Section 1 Logical Reasoning

Question #: 157
Topic #: 1

[All LSAT Section 1 Logical Reasoning Questions]

Only a very small percentage of people from the service professions ever become board members of the 600 largest North American corporations. This shows that people from the service professions are underrepresented in the most important corporate boardrooms in North America.
Which one of the following points out a flaw committed in the argument?

A. Six hundred is too small a sample on which to base so sweeping a conclusion about the representation of people from the service professions.
B. The percentage of people from the service professions who serve on the boards of the 600 largest North American corporations reveals little about the percentage of the members of these boards who are from the service professions.
C. It is a mistake to take the 600 largest North American corporations to be typical of corporate boardrooms generally.
D. It is irrelevant to smaller corporations whether the largest corporations in North America would agree to have significant numbers of workers from the service professions on the boards of the largest corporations.
E. The presence of people from the service professions on a corporate board does not necessarily imply that that corporation will be more socially responsible than it has been in the past

Show Suggested Answer

Suggested Answer: B 🗳️
As soon as you see percentages being discussed, you should pay close attention. And since the question stem tells you that there is a flaw in the argument, its a good bet that the author is going to confuse the numbers in some way. The author concludes that people from the service professions are underrepresented in boardrooms because only a very small percentage of people from the service professions ever become board members of the largest corporations. Well, that doesnt make much sense. There are probably millions of people in any industry you can think of, including the service industry; but there are only a few people
(relatively speaking) that are board members of the largest corporations. So by the authors reasoning, virtually every industry would be underrepresented.
Therefore, the authors conclusion doesnt logically follow from the evidence. B. correctly identifies this flaw; it points out that the way you tell whether a group is
Underrepresented is to look at the percentage of board members who come from a particular groupnot by looking at what percentage of the group become board members.
Once you have identified this fundamental flaw, none of the other answer choices should have distracted you. Note that C., D., and E. have outside the scope elements, namely, corporate boardrooms generally, smaller corporations, and social responsibility.

by [deleted] at March 9, 2025, 1:30 p.m.

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