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Here's a Logical Reasoning question from the October 2004 LSAT.
Let's make a quick chain of phrases:
Cars/real estate (RE) doing badly --> economy bad --> if one were okay, economy may be okay
We don't quite know what to pre-phrase so let's just jump into the answer choices:
A) The opposite of what the argument's saying. It says that if both cars/RE are bad, the economy probably is, not that if just cars are bad then the economy is bad.
B) Out of scope. The argument says that if cars/RE are bad, so is the economy. It does not say the converse that if the economy's bad, cars/RE are too. Maybe they're fine and the stock market has crashed and the economy is in bad shape.
C) Out of scope. The argument says that if one of cars/RE is okay, that may be consistent with a good economy, not that that means that a good economy is likely. The argument doesn't address whether or not it's likely.
D) Correct. The argument says that if cars/RE are bad, the economy probably is too. So, if the economy isn't bad, cars/RE probably are not either (this is called the "contrapositive" for anybody into formal logic...knowing about the contrapositive as such is not at all necessary to answering this problem, it's just common sense). After all, if the economy is good yet cars/RE remained bad, we would have a conflict...the economy is good but probably bad at the same time, which makes no sense.
E) Wrong for a similar reason as B. The argument says that if cars/RE are bad, the economy probably is too. What it doesn't say is that if the economy is bad, cars/RE probably are. Two totally different things.
Remember:
1) Use a chain of phrases (underlining can accomplish this, once you get some experience) to show how the argument progresses.
2) If you're not sure what a right answer might look like, don't worry about finding a pre-phrase. Just jump right into the answer choices.
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