#13 - Plant manager: We could greatly reduce the amount of

[SherryZ]

Thank you in advance to help me!!

Oct 1999 LSAT, Sec 4, Q13:

I chose C but the correct answer is B. Could you analyze why C is wrong but B is right?

I really appreciate your help!


Sincerely,
Sherry

[Steve Stein]

Hi Sherry,

That one comes requires you to isolate the point of disagreement: What does the supervisor take issue with?

One of the plant manager's points, and it must be related to fuel efficiency--that is the stated basis of the manager's disagreement. The manager must then be referring to the point made about the new process' costing more to run than the current process, supporting correct answer choice (B).

I hope that's helpful! Let me know--thanks!

~Steve

[est15]

Is (D) incorrect because neither the plant manager nor supervisor explicitly make the comparison for fuel efficiency between closed and open furnaces?

[David Boyle]

Is (D) incorrect because neither the plant manager nor supervisor explicitly make the comparison for fuel efficiency between closed and open furnaces?

Hello est15,

More or less. Answer B, the correct answer, relates back to the supervisor praising the fuel-efficiency of the new closed furnaces (and by implication saying that maybe the new furnaces will be cost-efficient); but, yes, he/she does not compare the efficiency of the new closed furnaces to any open furnaces, which hurts answer D.

Hope that helps,
David

[PB410]

I wanted to get some clarification on the structure of the plant manager's argument and how the supervisor's response applies. When the supervisor states, "I agree with your over all conclusion", are they agreeing that the amount of sulfur dioxide can be reduced, or are they agreeing the new process will cost much but bring the company no profit. I guess it comes down to my confusion of what the "overall" conclusion of the plant manager is. If the overall conclusion is "we could greatly reduce sulfur dioxide" then the supervisor agrees, but disagrees over the reason for the price increase. If the overall conclusion is "adopting the new process will cost much", then the supervisor agrees that the new process will cost much, but for different reasons than the plant manager.

[Eric Ockert]

The overall conclusion of the Plant Manager's argument is the last sentence, that the new process will cost much but bring the company no profit. The Plant Manager cites evidence for why this is true. There is no evidence offered for why the new process will be able to reduce sulfur dioxide. When trying to identify conclusions to arguments, always ask, "why?" If the stimulus does not provide any answers for why that statement is true, then it almost certainly is not the conclusion of the argument. This can be a handy tool on Method-Argument Part questions, Main Point questions, or even circumstances such as this when you have some confusion as to exactly which statement is the main conclusion.

So yes, the Supervisor agrees with the conclusion that it will cost much and bring no profit, but basically argues that the process might not be quite as expensive as the Plant Manager suggests.

Hope that helps!

[tpmeade24]

Hello,

Can you please help me understand why answer choice E is incorrect?

I understand that the last sentence is the "overall conclusion," largely because that is the point that the rest of the stimulus serves to prove. So the Supervisor agrees with that point, but disagrees on another point about the new furnaces being "extremely fuel-efficient." From that I determined his point of disagreement has to do with the cost of reheating the copper due to the new process - and narrowed my choices down to B and E.

What I don't understand is why E is not a more complete answer than B, since both refer to the "new process" of transferring the solid copper and reheating it "after it has cooled" (taken straight from the third sentence, which answer B seems to be based on.) The line "must be reheated after..." seems to be referential to the process detailed in the second sentence, about moving the copper in solid rather than molten form.

Since the new process is moving copper in solid form, and the current process is moving copper in molten form, the two answers seem to be paraphrased iterations of the same concept - only with E being more specific than B.

I know that the LSAC doesn't make mistakes, and that I must be missing something; but I just can't figure out what that something is.

Thanks in advance for any explanation!

[Brook Miscoski]

tpmeade, that's a very fair question since the choices are so similar.

The point of disagreement in the stimulus seems to be about whether the new process would cost more to run than the current process (they both agree there is no profit, but disagree over whether the new process would break even).

That makes (B) and (E) strikingly similar--some might even argue unfairly similar. To me, the distinction is that the stimulus is about whether the whole process is more expensive, and that matches more closely with (B).

Another way to illustrate that point is to consider what (E) concerns--cooling and then reheating the metal. The cost of that would be affected by fuel efficiency. But if fuel efficiency only counted for that part--cooling and reheating--that wouldn't help the Supervisor (since it is an additional step).

See? The supervisor is also considering the first heating of the metal. That's why fuel efficiency matters, because it affects both the existing step and the new step.

That's why (B) and (E) are different. Personally, I think it's easier to pick (B) just because it captures the whole process, and it could take some time to find the full explanation of why (E) is wrong, more time than is available on the LSAT. The best LSAT reason to pick (B) is that the Manager's assertion about cost was about the entire process (even though he gave a basis for it that involved reheating).