@coconut 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.
"Solely" really screwed me up. In retrospect though, the solely is really needed for this to be a proper SA question. Since the rule ensures that the stimulus must end up being true, the solely needs to be there so that the stimulus can conclude beyond reasonable doubt that Checkers was trying to hurt Marty's.
I got it right in blind review. I think I realized that B was jumping the gun and saying immediately that they wished to hurt the company. But it did not list the facts first to prove that, A did that. So, B was not the best bridge to connect to the conclusion. And D is just an alternative hypothesis so that modifier should have been the signal to throw it out. Tough question.
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144 comments
Honestly surprised by the difficulty level. Thought this was a pretty straight up question.
i honestly have no idea what i'm looking for
@coconut 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
"Solely" really screwed me up. In retrospect though, the solely is really needed for this to be a proper SA question. Since the rule ensures that the stimulus must end up being true, the solely needs to be there so that the stimulus can conclude beyond reasonable doubt that Checkers was trying to hurt Marty's.
@MacSelesnick Same here! I was down to A and B but picked B before picking A UGH
I got it right in blind review. I think I realized that B was jumping the gun and saying immediately that they wished to hurt the company. But it did not list the facts first to prove that, A did that. So, B was not the best bridge to connect to the conclusion. And D is just an alternative hypothesis so that modifier should have been the signal to throw it out. Tough question.
I got really tripped up by the word "solely" in answer A
M coupon book. -> All pizza accept
C refused M coupon -> motive hurt M
Must be: M coupon -> C refuses/hurts M
A) “Any” — they are major competitors (clearly setting example for others)
Specifically if we need to connect A -> C we should try to target the first section of prem and the ending goal — this case motive— was to hurt M
Hope that helps
These are the curve breakers folks lol
Yo J.Y. this SA conundrum is wack YO!