LSAC LSAT-TEST Online Practice Questions and Exam Preparation

LSAC LSAT-TEST Online Questions & Answers

• Question 561:

  Commissioner: Budget forecasters project a revenue shortfall of a billion dollars in the coming fiscal year. Since there is no feasible way to increase the available funds, our only choice is to decrease expenditures. The plan before you outlines feasible cuts that would yield savings of a billion dollars over the coming fiscal year. We will be able to solve the problem we face, therefore, only if we adopt this plan.

  The reasoning in the commissioner's argument is flawed because this argument

  A. relies on information that is far from certain
  B. confuses being an adequate solution with being a required solution
  C. inappropriately relies on the opinions of experts
  D. inappropriately employs language that is vague E. takes for granted that there is no way to increase available funds
  B. confuses being an adequate solution with being a required solution

  ---

  We're looking for a flaw, and it's quite possible you sensed that the commissioner goes a little too far in her conclusion. Some organization or institution (we're not told who the poor saps are) is short a whopping billion dollars (so that's where all the petty cash went...). Funds cannot be increased, so the only way is to decrease outlays. Fair enough so far. Then a plan is introduced that will save, lo and behold, a billion dollars over the next year (no more free coffee in the company cafeteria?). So the problem can be solved ONLY if this plan is adopted. And there's where the commish overreaches. Just because this plan will save the billion, what evidence is provided that it is the only way to do so? Perhaps itis, but the commissioner gives no evidence to that effect, which she must do if she is going to claim that this is the ONLY way to solve the problem. Option [confuses being an adequate...] fancies this up a little, but says the same thing: The plan may be adequate, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's required--that is, that nothing else could do the trick.

• Question 562:

  Historian: Political regimes that routinely censor various forms of expression on the grounds that they undermine public morality inevitably attempt to expand the categories of proscribed expression to include criticisms that these regimes perceive to threaten their power. Accordingly, many totalitarian regimes classify as blasphemous or pornographic those writings that would, if widely influential, reduce public passivity.

  Which one of the following is an assumption on which the historian's reasoning depends?

  A. Unless a piece of writing expresses something that is widely believed, it is unlikely to be very popular.
  B. Not all political regimes that routinely censor forms of expression on the grounds that they erode public morality are totalitarian regimes.
  C. A totalitarian regime can perceive loss of public passivity as a threat to its power.
  D. Widespread public passivity is usually needed fora regime to retain political power.
  E. Most writings that totalitarian regimes label blasphemous or pornographic would, if widely influential, reduce public passivity.
  C. A totalitarian regime can perceive loss of public passivity as a threat to its power.

  ---

  Another standard Assumption question, and you know the drill: Paraphrase the components of the argument, then look for scope shifts, mismatched terms, and elements that need to be connected for the argument to work. The author states that totalitarian regimes that censor expression on moral grounds tend to expand the scope of the censored material to criticisms they perceive may threaten their power. The conclusion drawn from this, signaled by "Accordingly," is that writings that could reduce passivity are vilified (labeled as blasphemous or pornographic) by many totalitarian regimes. If totalitarian regimes wish to censor, on moral grounds, expression that challenges their power, and therefore, according to the historian, vilify as immoral writings that make people less passive, then the historian must be assuming a connection between reduced passivity and a threat to the regimes' power.

• Question 563:

  Of the eight students--George, Helen, Irving, Kyle, Lenore, Nina, Olivia, and Robert--in a seminar, exactly six will give individual oral reports during three consecutive days-- Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Exactly two reports will be given

  each day--one in the morning and one in the afternoon--according to the following conditions:

  Tuesday is the only day on which George can give a report.

  Neither Olivia nor Robert can give an afternoon report. If Nina gives a report, then on the next day Helen and Irving must both give reports, unless Nina's report is given on Wednesday.

  Which one of the following is a pair of students who, if they give reports on the same day as each other, must give reports on Wednesday?

  A. George and Lenore
  B. Helen and Nina
  C. Irving and Robert
  D. Kyle and Nina
  E. Olivia and Kyle
  B. Helen and Nina

  ---

  The rather intricate wording might suggest a good "skipper," since we may learn more about which pairs can or cannot share a day in subsequent questions. (At the very least, subsequent questions are likely to be simpler to read and understand than this one.) But in the end it doesn't prove too difficult. The word "Wednesday" might suggest Rule 3, and are reading of Rule 3 might suggest that if Nina is to share a day with either Helen or Irving, that day would have to be Wednesday. And sure enough, "Helen + Nina" is what LSAT chose as option [Helen and Nina]. "Irving + Nina" would also qualify. Rule 1 in and of itself makes option [George and Lenore] incorrect - George cannot report on Wednesday, period; and it's relatively easy to work out, if you need to, that Irving and Robert., or Kyle and Nina, or Olivia and Kyle could each share the Tuesday slots, not necessarily Wednesday's.

• Question 564:

  The print circulation of The World Tribune has shown a 40 percent decline in the past two years. However, the traffic on the newspaper's website has increased by 30 percent during the same period. The website contains many news sections and blogs that are not featured in the print newspaper but are the most read pages of the website. Therefore, to maintain its profits, the newspaper has decided to discontinue its still-profitable print edition and to introduce more content on the website that is similar to the exclusive content on the most read pages of the website.

  Which one of the following is an assumption on which the decision of The World Tribune depends?

  A. The print circulation of the newspaper would not have declined further in the near future.
  B. To access the content on the newspaper's website, the readers of the website will be willing to pay a monthly subscription fees that is equal to the revenue that the print edition of the newspaper earned per reader each month.
  C. The print circulation of the newspaper declined in the past two years because the newspaper's website offered more interesting content.
  D. The revenue earned from increased website traffic will not be less than the revenue lost by discontinuing the print edition.
  E. Introducing more content similar to the exclusive content on the most read pages of the website will increase the newspaper's website traffic further.
  E. Introducing more content similar to the exclusive content on the most read pages of the website will increase the newspaper's website traffic further.

  ---

  Argument construction

  This argument features two versions/modes in which The World Tribune newspaper is available: the Print Mode and the newspaper's website (called the Web Mode henceforth).

  Over the past 2 years:

  The Print Mode's circulation has decreased by 40% - Premise 1

  The Web Mode's traffic has increased by 30% - Premise 2

  The website contains many news sections and blogs that are not featured in the print newspaper but are the most read pages of the website. This is Premise 3.

  The Conclusion drawn (= the decision made) by the newspaper from these three premises is that:

  to maintain profits, the newspaper should:

  discontinue the still-profitable Print Mode.

  introduce more exclusive content on the website that is similar to the most read pages of the website.

  When we analyze the premises of this argument, we realize that from Premises 2 and 3, the decision-makers at the newspaper have assumed that the increase in the Web Mode's traffic is due to the exclusive content that makes for the

  website's most read pages. It is due to this assumption that they have decided to introduce more such content on the Web Mode. It can also be said that these decision-makers believe (assume) that because such content led to an increase in

  the website traffic in the past two years, introducing more such content will inevitably increase the website traffic in the future too. That is, they are assuming that a past relationship between two metrics (amount of exclusive content that forms

  the most-read pages of the Web Mode, website traffic) that held in the past will hold in the future too.

  Further, the explicit goal of the newspaper is "to maintain its profits." However, the decision that it has taken concerns its reach ?because the reach ";circulatio";) of the Print Mode was decreasing while the reach ";traffi";) of the Web Mode was

  increasing, the newspaper decided to kill the still-profitable Print Mode and focus solely on the Web Mode and take measures to increase the traffic of the Web Mode further. So, one necessary assumption that the decision-makers have made

  is that the increase in profits from increasing the traffic of the Web Mode will at least offset (if not exceed) the loss of profits due to closing down the Print Mode.

  

  The decision-makers assume that this decision will enable them to "maintain profits," that is:

  z x + y => z - y x => (Post-decision Increase in profit from Web-Mode) (Post-decision Loss of profit from Print-Mode)

  Therefore, to sum up, the assumptions that have gone into the newspaper's decision are:

  over the past two years, the increase in the Web Mode's traffic was due to the exclusive content that makes for the website's most read pages in the future too, introducing more such content will continue to drive an increase in the Web Mode's traffic (Post-decision Increase in profit from Web-Mode) (Post-decision Loss of profit from Print-Mode)

  In analyzing the options in an assumption question, the Negation Test often comes in handy. Since a necessary assumption is, by definition, vital for the conclusion to be logically valid, we can test an answer choice by deeming it to be false. If, upon doing so, the conclusion no longer holds, this means that the answer choice in question is indeed a necessary assumption.

  Let's analyze each option one by one.

  Answer choices explanation [The print circulation of the newspaper would not have declined further in the near future.] This option is incorrect. Suppose the print circulation of the newspaper would have declined further in the near future. Then, the perception that the Print Mode is a sinking business would be further strengthened and the newspaper's decision to kill the Print Mode would be validated. So, if we Negate this answer choice, the conclusion (= decision made by the newspaper) stands strengthened, instead of being demolished. Therefore, this answer choice fails the Negation Test.

  [To access the content on the newspaper's website, the readers of the website will be willing ...] This option is incorrect. Let the revenue that the print edition of the newspaper earned per reader each month (at the time of the decision) be dollars. Suppose the readers of the newspaper's website are not willing to pay a subscription fees of dollars per month for access to the website content. Does this necessarily mean that the newspaper will not be able to maintain its profits? No. For example, suppose the readers of the website are only willing to pay a monthly subscription fees of dollars. If the number of website readers is more than ten times the number of print-edition readers (which it very well might be, because, from the argument, we only know the percentage changes in readership of the print-edition and the website traffic, and not the actual numbers), then the revenue from the website subscription fees will be greater than the revenue from the print-edition. If the costs of the website are not greater than the costs of the print-edition, then the profits from the website will be greater than the profits that the print-edition earned at the time of the decision. Therefore, negating this answer choice does not necessarily impact the conclusion.

  [The print circulation of the newspaper declined in the past two years...] This option is incorrect. Suppose the print circulation did not decline in the past two years because of the content offered in the Web Mode but due to some other reason. The facts of the case still remain the same ?the print circulation was declining, the Web Mode traffic was increasing, and the newspaper wanted to maintain its profits. So, negating this answer choice has no impact whatsoever on the conclusion drawn.

  [The revenue earned from increased website traffic will not be less than...] This option is incorrect. Suppose the revenue earned from increased website traffic is indeed less than the revenue lost by discontinuing the print edition. However, if the costs incurred by the newspaper for the Web Mode are far lesser than those for the Print Mode, then profits earned by the newspaper for the Web Mode can still be greater than or equal to the profits earned for the Print Mode. Therefore, the conclusion ("to maintain profits," kill the Print Mode and put more of XYZ type of traffic-increasing content on the Web Mode) can still stand. Therefore, this answer choice fails the Negation Test.

  [Introducing more content similar to the exclusive content on the most ...] This option is correct. Suppose that introducing more content similar to the exclusive content on the most read pages of the website will not increase the newspaper's website traffic further. The newspaper had assumed: (More such content --> More Web Traffic --> More Profit from Web-Mode that would at least offset the loss of profit from Print-mode). The negation of this answer choice breaks this chain of assumptions and therefore suggests that the newspaper's decision may not result in greater profit from Web-Mode that would at least offset the loss of profit from Print-Mode. Therefore, the profits of the newspaper may not be maintained. The negation of this answer choice substantially weakens the decision made by the newspaper. Therefore, this answer choice represents a necessary assumption on which this decision depends.

• Question 565:

  The village of Vestmannaeyjar, in the far northern country of Iceland, is as bright and clean and up-to-date as any American or Canadian suburb. It is located on the island of Heimaey, just off the mainland. One January night in 1973, however, householders were shocked from their sleep. In some backyards red-hot liquid was spurting from the ground. Flaming "skyrockets" shot up and over the houses. The island's volcano, Helgafell, silent for seven thousand years, was violently erupting! Luckily, the island's fishing fleet was in port, and within twenty-four hours almost everyone was ferried to the mainland. But then the agony of the island began in earnest. As in a nightmare, fountains of burning lava spurted three hundred feet high. Black, baseball-size cinders rained down. An evil-smelling, eye-burning, throat-searing cloud of smoke and gas erupted into the air, and a river of lava flowed down the mountain. The constant shriek of escaping steam was punctuated by ear-splitting explosions. As time went on, the once pleasant village of Vestmannaeyjar took on a weird aspect. Its street lamps still burning against the long Arctic night, the town lay under a thick blanket of cinders. All that could be seen above the ten-foot black drifts were the tips of street signs. Some houses had collapsed under the weight of cinders; others had burst into flames as the heat ignited their oil storage tanks. Lighting the whole lurid scene, fire continued to shoot from the mouth of the looming volcano.

  The eruption continued for six months. Scientists and reporters arrived from around the world to observe the awesome natural event. But the town did not die that easily. In July, when the eruption ceased, the people of Heimaey Island returned to assess the chances of rebuilding their homes and lives. They found tons of ash covering the ground. The Icelanders are a tough people, however, accustomed to the strange and violent nature of their Arctic land. They dug out their homes. They even used the cinders to build new roads and airport runways. Now the new homes of Heimaey are warmed from water pipes heated by molten lava.

  The color of the hot liquid was

  A. orange
  B. black
  C. yellow
  D. red
  E. gray
  D. red

• Question 566:

  We are well aware that there are warning signs concerning massive climate changes; these climate changes are reducing plant life. Many hopeful crop growers believe that there will not be an overall negative affect on the plant growth population due to the fact that rain fall should not be altered because of the climate changes. However; for the average plant, it is because of the climate change that agricultural technology has an overall yield in annual fluctuation.

  On which of the following assumptions are these hopeful claims based?

  A. There is not accurate way to predict a climate change.
  B. If patterns of rainfall began to shadow the climate changes there would be supplementary damaging effects.
  C. Improved yields grow highly unlikely, if technology is significantly influential in spite of climate change.
  D. Rainfall patterns are not as predictable as patterns of temperature.
  E. Plant life is threatened more from cool temperatures than warm ones.
  B. If patterns of rainfall began to shadow the climate changes there would be supplementary damaging effects.

• Question 567:

  Theoretically, analog systems are superior to digital systems. A signal in a pure analog system can be infinitely detailed, while digital systems cannot produce signals that are more precise than their digital units. With this theoretical advantage there is a practical disadvantage, however. Since there is no limit on the potential detail of the signal, the duplication of an analog representation allows tiny variations from the original, which are errors. These errors tend to accumulate as signals are duplicated, until this "noise" obliterates the information embodied in the original signal.

  The statements above, if true, most strongly support which one of the following?

  A. Many ideas that work well in theory do not work well in practice.
  B. Analog representation of information is impractical because we do not need infinitely detailed information.
  C. Digital systems are the best information systems because error cannot occur in the emission of digital signals,
  D. Analog systems are inferior to digital systems for most practical purposes.
  E. Digital systems are preferable to analog systems when the signal must be reproduced many times.
  E. Digital systems are preferable to analog systems when the signal must be reproduced many times.

  ---

  We see an Inference stem and a lot of text, so we should gear our attack on the stimulus accordingly, scoping out the more concrete facts and looking to interpret and combine as we go. In theory, we're told, analog systems trump digitalones, and sentence 2 tells us one way that's so--a difference in the detail and precision of their respective signals. But there's a very real downside to this theoretical advantage: The detail possible in an analog signal allow for errors to creep in during duplication, and the resultant noise can eventually drown out the original signal. There's nothing really obvious in the way of connections here, so we'll have to rely on a careful evaluation of the choices.

• Question 568:

  If a petrochemical plant manufactures a range of hazardous chemical products and must therefore follow strict guidelines concerning each of the chemicals may interact with one another on a daily basis. The plant processes five different

  chemicals every week. Three of these chemicals can be processed on any given day. Xenon may be processed any day except for every other Monday and every other Thursday.

  Oxygen, however, can be processed only on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

  Liquid Hydrogen may be processed on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

  Sulfur Dioxide can't be processed on Fridays.

  Methane can't be processed on Wednesday.

  What are the three chemicals that can be processed on any given Monday?

  A. Liquid Hydrogen, Xenon, and Oxygen
  B. Methane, Oxygen, and Sulfur Dioxide
  C. Methane, Xenon, and Oxygen
  D. Sulfur Dioxide, Methane, and Liquid Hydrogen
  E. Xenon, Oxygen, and Sulfur Dioxide
  D. Sulfur Dioxide, Methane, and Liquid Hydrogen

• Question 569:

  All Italian greyhounds are graceful and fast, but some are nervous. Graceful and fast greyhounds are slender, but nervous greyhounds are unpredictable. If the statements are true, all of the following must be true EXCEPT

  A. all Italian greyhounds are slender
  B. some greyhounds are nervous
  C. no Italian greyhounds are slow
  D. No Italian greyhounds are predictable
  E. all Italian greyhounds are graceful
  D. No Italian greyhounds are predictable

  ---

  All Italian greyhounds are graceful and fast and graceful and fast greyhounds are slender, so all Italian greyhounds are slender. If some graceful and fast Italian greyhounds are nervous, then some greyhounds are nervous.

• Question 570:

  For some years before the outbreak of World War I, a number of painters in different European countries developed works of art that some have described as prophetic: paintings that by challenging viewers' habitual ways of perceiving the world of the present are thus said to anticipate a future world that would be very different. The artistic styles that they brought into being varied widely, but all these styles had in common a very important break with traditions of representational art that stretched back to the Renaissance.

  So fundamental is this break with tradition that it is not surprising to discover that these artists ?among them Picasso and Braque in France, Kandinsky in Germany, and Malevich in Russia ?are often credited with having anticipated not just subsequent developments in the arts, but also the political and social disruptions and upheavals of the modern world that came into being during and after the war. One art critic even goes so far as to claim that it is the very prophetic power of these artworks, and not their break with traditional artistic techniques, that constitutes their chief interest and value.

  No one will deny that an artist may, just as much as a writer or a politician, speculate about the future and then try to express a vision of that future through making use of a particular style or choice of imagery; speculation about the possibility of war in Europe was certainly widespread during the early years of the twentieth century. But the forward-looking quality attributed to these artists should instead be credited to their exceptional aesthetic innovations rather than to any power to make clever guesses about political or social trends. For example, the clear impression we get of Picasso and Braque, the joint founders of cubism, from their contemporaries as well as from later statements made by the artists themselves, is that they were primarily concerned with problems of representation and form and with efforts to create a far more "real" reality than the one that was accessible only to the eye. The reformation of society was of no interest to them as artists.

  It is also important to remember that not all decisive changes in art are quickly followed by dramatic events in the world outside art. The case of Delacroix, the nineteenth-century French painter, is revealing. His stylistic innovations startled his contemporaries ?and still retain that power over modern viewers ?but most art historians have decided that Delacroix adjusted himself to new social conditions that were already coming into being as a result of political upheavals that had occurred in 1830, as opposed to other artists who supposedly told of changes still to come.

  Which one of the following characteristics of the painters discussed in the second paragraph does the author of the passage appear to value most highly?

  A. their insights into pre-World War I politics
  B. the visionary nature of their social views
  C. their mastery of the techniques of representational art
  D. their ability to adjust to changing social conditions.
  E. their stylistic and aesthetic accomplishments
  E. their stylistic and aesthetic accomplishments

  ---

  Kind of picks up on Global issues even as it nominally concerns only a portion of the text. 2, highlighted in the question stem, is where the author describes the claim he is prepared to rebut later on. However, he discusses those artists in 1, 2, and 3, and the sum total of all of those discussions is that these particular artists are to be seen and celebrated as artistic innovators who possessed zippo interest in "the reformation of society," let alone prophesying same. It is their restructuring of visual reality that impresses our author.