nightblade354 wrote:
Historians of North American architecture who have studied early nineteenth-century houses with wooden floors have observed that the boards used on the floors of bigger houses were generally much narrower than those used on the floors of smaller houses. These historians have argued that, since the people for whom the bigger houses were built were generally richer than the people for whom the smaller houses were built, floors made out of narrow floorboards were probably once a status symbol, designed to proclaim the owner's wealth.
Which one of the following, if true, most helps to strengthen the historians' argument?
(A) More original floorboards have survived from big early nineteenth-century houses than from small early nineteenth-century houses.
(B) In the early nineteenth century, a piece of narrow floorboard was not significantly less expensive than a piece of wide floorboard of the same length.
(C) In the early nineteenth century, smaller houses generally had fewer rooms than did bigger houses.
(D) Some early nineteenth-century houses had wide floorboards near the walls of each room and narrower floorboards in the center, where the floors were usually carpeted.
(E) Many of the biggest early nineteenth-century houses but very few small houses from that period had some floors that were made of materials that were considerably more expensive than wood, such as marble.
one key on tough LR questions is to be very clear about your task, and, always, to be very clear about the conclusion.
In this case, your task is not to reinforce the idea big houses were for the rich - we know this. Your job is to strengthen the argument, which is that narrow floor boards must have been a symbol of wealth since they show up in mostly rich folks' houses.
The first gap you'd probably notice here is that there might be another reason the rich folks use those narrow floorboards--maybe they worked better structurally in big houses. Or, maybe, those rich people got rich because they were cheap! So, we need to deal with these gaps. But, there's also a lurking assumption: that using narrow floorboards is actually more expensive! We would want to validate that assumption.
The correct answer, (B), does this, albeit in a rather "LSAT" way, by telling us that narrow floor boards were NOT less expensive than wide floorboards. The inference here is that it would cost more to floor your house with narrow floorboards if they cost the same or more than wide ones (since you'd need more narrow ones to cover a given space).
Thus, as narrow floorboards, overall, are a more expensive flooring option, the idea that they are a symbol of wealth is strengthened.
See it?
As for the wrong answers:
(A) weakens the argument! This is another way to explain why we see more small floorboards--it's mostly those big houses that have survived.
(C) is irrelevant--the number of rooms relates to the size of the floorboards how?
(D) is confusing, but essentially irrelevant. Who cares if there were some (i.e. at least one) houses with a combo of floorboards? We're talking about overall trends.
(E) is very tempting! This seems to be saying "the rich folks used more expensive flooring--so, they must have used more expensive floorboards." However, notice how the answer remains vague about what type of flooring was expensive. Perhaps it's referring to some marble in the foyer. That marble doesn't tell us anything about the narrow floorboards and why they're there; in fact, it just as easily could be used to show that the rich folks had blown all their money on the marble and so had to go with cheap floorboards.
B is correct