I chose A in my BR, but I feel like because it uses the word "solely" at the end makes the answer too extreme. Like it overreaches, which is why I hesitated to choose this answer. Typically answers that use this language tend to overreach and thus are incorrect, so I am curious to know why this answer is correct despite the extreme language towards the end of the answer choice.
I literally hate this question like so much. All of the answer choices (to me, at least) jumble together and I have a hard time telling what's up and what's down. Marty's when I find you.... Anyways, I notice on a lot of sufficient assumption questions that my brain "fills" the right answer in, because they're often not an "obvious" logical gap but something that I would infer/naturally understand at if the same topic was being discussed in a conversation. In this problem, my brain naturally assumes that purposefully going out of your way not to accept something that benefits you is motivated by the desire to hurt the other party. Before I started doing this, it was easy for me to miss these type of questions out of a sort of "not considering the obvious" thing.
is it okay to automatically eliminate questions like D for being in the wrong set because I remember a few questions is PSAr that the answer choices presented principles or rules that were the contrapositive of the facts presented in the argument and were right for that reason even tho lets say they ended or started in the wrong place.
I guess for this one simply knowing that if the contrapositive was taken it still doesn't properly draw the arguments conclusion about the motive for refusing the competitors coupons
I've noted for these SA questions that the correct answers seem to condense the entire passage into a singular "If>then" statement. Or basically, a summary of the entire passage.
Another thing is that anytime an answer introduces an "If" as an immediate quantifier in the answer choice, that's automatically wrong considering it introduces a hypothetical idea.
Alongside this, every other wrong answer somehow manages to jumble up the wording/sequential flow of the argument which thus violates our "If>then" correct flow.
@yes-coconuts lately it's been helping to think of the sufficient assumption as a gap in the argument. the premises tell us some stuff, then boom, a conclusion which usually is pretty out there. It's like some reasoning went on behind the scenes and we weren't told. the sufficient assumption is like an extra premise that the author can use to get to that conclusion for sure, 100%.
Just ask the argument, "how on earth can you reach that conclusion from what you've said so far?" In this question, they say all this stuff about the circumstances of the coupon denial, then come out of left field and say "welp, they must have been trying to hurt Marty's". and our job is to say 'woah woah woah, how do you conclude that?'
For these kinds of questions, unlike weaken, we actually want to help this author, so we say ok, we want your conclusion to be true :) Let's imagine a world where the premises you have told me somehow magically make the conclusion 100% true. So we take these facts about coupon refusal and say "boom, in this world, when a company does these kinds of things, they MUST be doing it to hurt their competitor. Just ask yourself, what can I say on behalf of the arguer that would tie their premises to their conclusion without a shadow of a doubt. The result can sound crazy. But as long as you can take the premises and use them to reach the conclusion, the lsat is happy. I hope this helps!
Hi, I also struggled with this question a lot, and it sent me on a quest to do research and crack the code for this type of question. I also practiced a fair number of 4-star and 5-star questions, and this method seems to work most of the time.
If you’re struggling with this type of question and you’re learning it for the first time, then get into the habit of doing it untimed and, MOST IMPORTANTLY, writing your prephrase. Your prephrase should be in the IF…THEN format, where the IF contains the premises and the THEN contains the author’s conclusion.
I’ll include the exact prephrase I wrote in my notes for this question that helped me get it right without second-guessing any other choices—I hope it helps you:
IF you refuse to accept coupons from a competitor when doing so would cost you nothing and satisfy your potential customers, THEN your motive in doing so is simply to hurt your competitor.
Now, simply look for the answer choice that follows the arrow from P → C and adheres to the same logic, without adding anything foreign or using weird quantifiers. In this instance, A does all of that perfectly. If you compare A to the prephrase, it is almost identical.
With most other questions, the correct answer will usually be very similar and will follow the same logical structure as your prephrase. That’s why getting into the habit of doing this will eventually make it more of an automatic mental process.
I am really struggling trying to work out when words such as “any” or “all” should be applied as a distinguishing factor. The economics professor was simply talking about two pizza parlour's - why do we assume that is “any company”? Why isn’t it just some, or at least one etc.
@WilltheFifth when stating a rule, 'any' and 'all' are pretty much the same. to me, 'all' is more absolute. 'any' and 'all' are similar, but 'some' and 'at least one' do not equate to 'all.'
also - yes the professor was talking about two parlours, but SA questions, like PSA, contain rules. this question and the one before this one are very similar to PSA
The explanation of C isn't really helpful in the video. None of the answers reference pizza. That's not really why it's wrong. It tells about what happened, doesn't set out a rule
@NickFiacco In context the reason why J.Y. emphasized that it didn't specify the company is that (C) just says "at least one company..." -- so we don't even know whether the fact (C) tells us is about the company that we're trying to draw a conclusion about. The correct answer doesn't say pizza company either, but because it's about "any company," it still applies to the company that we're trying to draw a conclusion about. I think this matches your take that (C) doesn't set out a rule -- it's not telling us something that must apply to Checkers' Pizza.
Is it happening to anyone else that when they pause the video to write down the question or notes the screen goes all white and the question disappears, if so does anyone know how to fix this problem?
Regardless of ? type, I keep getting down to 2 options and one of them is always correct. Anyone else having this problem? Anyone have tips on how to overcome this?
@GabrielleRothstein ive noticed that most problems are like this!! usually when i'm unable to narrow it down to 2, then that means i probs don't understand the question well enough.
@AnthonyElHelou The conclusion of the professor's argument is about the motive of Checker's. The motive of a company appears in the necessary condition of Answer choice A and in the sufficient condition of Answer choice B. It's the oldest trick in the book!
@AnthonyElHelou I had this exact toss up with A and B but the explanation and above comment helped. Flipped necessary and sufficient, order is not correct in B.
@AnthonyElHelou I would try writing out the logic of the argument in the same way that the instructor does for PSA questions and for the newspaper column question (it comes right before this one) and doing the same for each of the answer choices! That has helped me get these questions right way more often.
For anyone confused by the word "solely" in answer choice A, think about the conclusion simply as "This shows their motive was X". The goal of a sufficient assumption is to GUARANTEE the conclusion and in order to guarantee "their motive was X" we must eliminate all other potential motives and show that this is the SOLE motive.
"If the argument presents three facts supporting a conclusion, you could come up with a rule that places all three facts in the sufficient condition but you don't have to. A rule that uses a subset of those facts could also suffice to fully justify the conclusion."
Can someone help clarify this ^ (i.e. the SA application of conditional relationships)? So when we see a conditional relationship in the premises of SA questions, we are only concerned with what facts/phenomena "trigger" (sufficient) the relationship and making sure that it's going in the right direction (like not starting with the necessary)? Do we assume that most facts, listed in the way that they are in this question, would fall in the sufficient to support the hypothesis?
I want to clarify what I can count as the sufficient conditions, like which facts I can more logically kick up into the domain, when they appear as facts/phenomena and not in obvious conditionals.
153 comments
I chose A in my BR, but I feel like because it uses the word "solely" at the end makes the answer too extreme. Like it overreaches, which is why I hesitated to choose this answer. Typically answers that use this language tend to overreach and thus are incorrect, so I am curious to know why this answer is correct despite the extreme language towards the end of the answer choice.
I literally hate this question like so much. All of the answer choices (to me, at least) jumble together and I have a hard time telling what's up and what's down. Marty's when I find you.... Anyways, I notice on a lot of sufficient assumption questions that my brain "fills" the right answer in, because they're often not an "obvious" logical gap but something that I would infer/naturally understand at if the same topic was being discussed in a conversation. In this problem, my brain naturally assumes that purposefully going out of your way not to accept something that benefits you is motivated by the desire to hurt the other party. Before I started doing this, it was easy for me to miss these type of questions out of a sort of "not considering the obvious" thing.
is it okay to automatically eliminate questions like D for being in the wrong set because I remember a few questions is PSAr that the answer choices presented principles or rules that were the contrapositive of the facts presented in the argument and were right for that reason even tho lets say they ended or started in the wrong place.
I guess for this one simply knowing that if the contrapositive was taken it still doesn't properly draw the arguments conclusion about the motive for refusing the competitors coupons
I've noted for these SA questions that the correct answers seem to condense the entire passage into a singular "If>then" statement. Or basically, a summary of the entire passage.
Another thing is that anytime an answer introduces an "If" as an immediate quantifier in the answer choice, that's automatically wrong considering it introduces a hypothetical idea.
Alongside this, every other wrong answer somehow manages to jumble up the wording/sequential flow of the argument which thus violates our "If>then" correct flow.
found working backwards for this one to be helpful for this one.
last sentence aligns really closely with the answer
Not today satan (S/N confusion)!
Honestly surprised by the difficulty level. Thought this was a pretty straight up question.
@SeanWolfe we can't all be you, sean. loll
@SeanWolfe for once, looking at these positive comments in the discussion panel, i can agree lol
@SeanWolfe least obvious ragebait
i honestly have no idea what i'm looking for
@yes-coconuts lately it's been helping to think of the sufficient assumption as a gap in the argument. the premises tell us some stuff, then boom, a conclusion which usually is pretty out there. It's like some reasoning went on behind the scenes and we weren't told. the sufficient assumption is like an extra premise that the author can use to get to that conclusion for sure, 100%.
Just ask the argument, "how on earth can you reach that conclusion from what you've said so far?" In this question, they say all this stuff about the circumstances of the coupon denial, then come out of left field and say "welp, they must have been trying to hurt Marty's". and our job is to say 'woah woah woah, how do you conclude that?'
For these kinds of questions, unlike weaken, we actually want to help this author, so we say ok, we want your conclusion to be true :) Let's imagine a world where the premises you have told me somehow magically make the conclusion 100% true. So we take these facts about coupon refusal and say "boom, in this world, when a company does these kinds of things, they MUST be doing it to hurt their competitor. Just ask yourself, what can I say on behalf of the arguer that would tie their premises to their conclusion without a shadow of a doubt. The result can sound crazy. But as long as you can take the premises and use them to reach the conclusion, the lsat is happy. I hope this helps!
Hi, I also struggled with this question a lot, and it sent me on a quest to do research and crack the code for this type of question. I also practiced a fair number of 4-star and 5-star questions, and this method seems to work most of the time.
If you’re struggling with this type of question and you’re learning it for the first time, then get into the habit of doing it untimed and, MOST IMPORTANTLY, writing your prephrase. Your prephrase should be in the IF…THEN format, where the IF contains the premises and the THEN contains the author’s conclusion.
I’ll include the exact prephrase I wrote in my notes for this question that helped me get it right without second-guessing any other choices—I hope it helps you:
IF you refuse to accept coupons from a competitor when doing so would cost you nothing and satisfy your potential customers, THEN your motive in doing so is simply to hurt your competitor.
Now, simply look for the answer choice that follows the arrow from P → C and adheres to the same logic, without adding anything foreign or using weird quantifiers. In this instance, A does all of that perfectly. If you compare A to the prephrase, it is almost identical.
With most other questions, the correct answer will usually be very similar and will follow the same logical structure as your prephrase. That’s why getting into the habit of doing this will eventually make it more of an automatic mental process.
@OmarAlmi goated tactic
The sheer number of words in these can be daunting.
I need to stop overthinking! I always get the correct one in the br because I choose the one my gut wanted in the first place!
I am really struggling trying to work out when words such as “any” or “all” should be applied as a distinguishing factor. The economics professor was simply talking about two pizza parlour's - why do we assume that is “any company”? Why isn’t it just some, or at least one etc.
@WilltheFifth when stating a rule, 'any' and 'all' are pretty much the same. to me, 'all' is more absolute. 'any' and 'all' are similar, but 'some' and 'at least one' do not equate to 'all.'
also - yes the professor was talking about two parlours, but SA questions, like PSA, contain rules. this question and the one before this one are very similar to PSA
i hope this helps
Yay! Got that one quickly.
The explanation of C isn't really helpful in the video. None of the answers reference pizza. That's not really why it's wrong. It tells about what happened, doesn't set out a rule
@NickFiacco In context the reason why J.Y. emphasized that it didn't specify the company is that (C) just says "at least one company..." -- so we don't even know whether the fact (C) tells us is about the company that we're trying to draw a conclusion about. The correct answer doesn't say pizza company either, but because it's about "any company," it still applies to the company that we're trying to draw a conclusion about. I think this matches your take that (C) doesn't set out a rule -- it's not telling us something that must apply to Checkers' Pizza.
this one was difficult:/
Is it happening to anyone else that when they pause the video to write down the question or notes the screen goes all white and the question disappears, if so does anyone know how to fix this problem?
some of these answers are written like Mad Libs
Regardless of ? type, I keep getting down to 2 options and one of them is always correct. Anyone else having this problem? Anyone have tips on how to overcome this?
@GabrielleRothstein ive noticed that most problems are like this!! usually when i'm unable to narrow it down to 2, then that means i probs don't understand the question well enough.
Still can't see any difference between A and B, like I'm so confused,
@AnthonyElHelou The conclusion of the professor's argument is about the motive of Checker's. The motive of a company appears in the necessary condition of Answer choice A and in the sufficient condition of Answer choice B. It's the oldest trick in the book!
@AnthonyElHelou I had this exact toss up with A and B but the explanation and above comment helped. Flipped necessary and sufficient, order is not correct in B.
@AnthonyElHelou I would try writing out the logic of the argument in the same way that the instructor does for PSA questions and for the newspaper column question (it comes right before this one) and doing the same for each of the answer choices! That has helped me get these questions right way more often.
For anyone confused by the word "solely" in answer choice A, think about the conclusion simply as "This shows their motive was X". The goal of a sufficient assumption is to GUARANTEE the conclusion and in order to guarantee "their motive was X" we must eliminate all other potential motives and show that this is the SOLE motive.
Found this one hard for some reason ah
it took me 4 minutes to answer this question but i got it right!
"If the argument presents three facts supporting a conclusion, you could come up with a rule that places all three facts in the sufficient condition but you don't have to. A rule that uses a subset of those facts could also suffice to fully justify the conclusion."
Can someone help clarify this ^ (i.e. the SA application of conditional relationships)? So when we see a conditional relationship in the premises of SA questions, we are only concerned with what facts/phenomena "trigger" (sufficient) the relationship and making sure that it's going in the right direction (like not starting with the necessary)? Do we assume that most facts, listed in the way that they are in this question, would fall in the sufficient to support the hypothesis?
I want to clarify what I can count as the sufficient conditions, like which facts I can more logically kick up into the domain, when they appear as facts/phenomena and not in obvious conditionals.
#help #feedback
fantastic english bro