If you are struggling with this skill builder, as I was, I asked ChatGPT to provide more details, and it honestly helped me. It even gave me extra practice. "Is the author saying that one thing produced, brought about, increased, decreased, prevented, or influenced another thing." Is it only a pattern or explanation.
If the sentence is only describing what is true together, it’s not causal.If it’s describing why something is true, it is causal.
Turning Q1 into a causal statement:
High school basketball teams tend to favor their best players, which increases those players’ popularity.
Turning Q5 into a causal statement:
Noise and distractions at parties reduce people’s mental functioning.
I guess this is how the LSAT is. But to me, question three mentioning "suffered from" should qualify the statement as a causal claim. What else could they have suffered from besides the thing mentioned right before that phrase? Especially if "produce" in question three makes it causal, I feel like "suffered from" implies that the thing they were suffering from wasn't some random third thing, but the day old sushi mentioned right before that phrase. I guess I just need to keep retraining my brain to remember the key words like "produce" and "increase" and "decrease."
@BillyM_ That's right. They suffered from food poisoning...but was it the sushi that caused it?
It's totally a trick question in that people would normally assume that the sushi is what caused it. But I think you'll agree that if we read literally....that's not what the sentence says. This is what we're training ourselves to do -- read more literally and see where we're filling in the gaps with our own assumptions.
I think the point of this exercise is to retrain our brains to not jump to hypotheses to explain phenomena in the stimulus. In real life, we often conflate correlation with causation (see the sushi example), but on the LSAT, we cannot do that.
I think what helped me the most was the technique of identifying the cause and effect. For example:
Q1 states that all the people who ate the day old sushi suffered from poisoning .
This question is telling you a result... in essence an effect, but it is not giving you the actual cause of HOW they got sick. This stumped me because I used my 'real world' thinking and not logic.
@Kevin_Lin I'm a little stuck on the "tend to", so I want to know if there are ways to change Q1 into a causal statement? or Q2 into a non-causal sentence?
E.g., On every high school basketball team, the best players tend to become the most popular people at school.
Children that are given everything they ask for tend to be individuals who are unable to cope with life's challenges?
@joshuali I still wouldn't read those as causal because they don't assert that X actually produces Y.
"People who are X tend to become Y." Ok, but is it the X that is a causal factor in leading to Y? Or is this just a coincidence? Or is there something else associated with being X that is the cause of Y?
"People who grow up rich tend to become well-mannered adults."
Does that mean growing up rich causes well-mannered? Or is it that people who grow up rich are likely to grow up in environments that teach them to be well-mannered?
I think this lesson would be helpful if each question came with an example of how to make the claim causal or non-casual. I think seeing what would make it meet the standards would help understand why it doesn't.
@mibuch Just want to be clear here in case others are confused. The explanation for #1 does not say that it's not causal because it uses the phrase "tends to be." The explanation says that "tends to be" does not indicate cause; that means you can't look at the phrase "tends to be" and know whether the claim is causal or not. That doesn't mean that "tends to be" shows that a claim is NOT causal.
I find this section challenging, because I am taking more of a practical approach.
If I am sticking to the rules, Question 2 has a trigger "tends to"; which infers correlation. However, it is causal because of the "to produce" that follows.
Therefore, I got 2 wrong for picking correlation not causation.
Questions 3/5 are also taken from a more practical manner because you are not using the language presented, rather inferring that exterior metrics influenced the effect.
There needs to be more lessons regarding the diffrence between causation and correlation.
While the list of indicator words was helpful, it was sparse. There were indicator words - yet they don't imply a causal relationship. There are Non-causal indicator words that imply causal relationships.
@CMas One issue is that there's no way to give you an exhaustive list. I recommend studying the language that throws you off in any case where you thought something was causal but it wasn't, or vice versa. Then you can build a personal list of language that you've missed before. It's not practical to list out every single word or phrase that the LSAT could present that means there's a causal relationship.
Can you let me know which indicator words sometimes don't indicate cause, and which words you thought don't indicate cause, but sometimes they do?
Q5 uses "Decreased," which is an indicator word for causal language, but it isn't causal. It's not the verb, yes, but the former lesson implies that Decreased = Causal. And that lesson wasn't there a few months ago.
That's why I think there should be more lessons inolving causal indicators that don't imply causal language. It teaches students not to rely on the list, and to look for the underlining structure.
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75 comments
If you are struggling with this skill builder, as I was, I asked ChatGPT to provide more details, and it honestly helped me. It even gave me extra practice. "Is the author saying that one thing produced, brought about, increased, decreased, prevented, or influenced another thing." Is it only a pattern or explanation.
If the sentence is only describing what is true together, it’s not causal.If it’s describing why something is true, it is causal.
Turning Q1 into a causal statement:
High school basketball teams tend to favor their best players, which increases those players’ popularity.
Turning Q5 into a causal statement:
Noise and distractions at parties reduce people’s mental functioning.
I guess this is how the LSAT is. But to me, question three mentioning "suffered from" should qualify the statement as a causal claim. What else could they have suffered from besides the thing mentioned right before that phrase? Especially if "produce" in question three makes it causal, I feel like "suffered from" implies that the thing they were suffering from wasn't some random third thing, but the day old sushi mentioned right before that phrase. I guess I just need to keep retraining my brain to remember the key words like "produce" and "increase" and "decrease."
@BillyM_ I guess "suffered from" is referring to food poisoning and not people who ate day old sushi.
@BillyM_ That's right. They suffered from food poisoning...but was it the sushi that caused it?
It's totally a trick question in that people would normally assume that the sushi is what caused it. But I think you'll agree that if we read literally....that's not what the sentence says. This is what we're training ourselves to do -- read more literally and see where we're filling in the gaps with our own assumptions.
@Kevin_Lin Thank you! Yeah coming back to this three days later and it seems much more clear.
I think the point of this exercise is to retrain our brains to not jump to hypotheses to explain phenomena in the stimulus. In real life, we often conflate correlation with causation (see the sushi example), but on the LSAT, we cannot do that.
how did i get all of these wrong omg
Me: [Reading Q4] Nuts. That ruins the plans for my next attempt
5/5 light work
i need to quit relying on strictly looking for causal language and to instead focus on actual comprehension
5/5 for me also, not bad honestly
I need some more skillbuilders.
Dang I thought I understood the concepts. Keep practicing
I was so confident going into this one... I got humbled
1/5 correct. Drilling in LR and RC improved by 20% after learning this. lol, I'll review this again with a fresh brain.
I think what helped me the most was the technique of identifying the cause and effect. For example:
Q1 states that all the people who ate the day old sushi suffered from poisoning .
This question is telling you a result... in essence an effect, but it is not giving you the actual cause of HOW they got sick. This stumped me because I used my 'real world' thinking and not logic.
4/5... Question 5 tripped me up but after listening to the video I feel it cleared up the confusion!
5/5!
What is Q1 was phrased as "...., the best players are the most popular"? Would it still be not causal?
@joshuali Still not causal, because it doesn't assert why they are the most popular.
Think about it like this:
"All the people named Johnny are the most popular."
Does that mean being named Johnny causes them to be the most popular? No.
"The best players are the most popular."
Does that mean being the best is what causes them to be the most popular? No.
@Kevin_Lin I'm a little stuck on the "tend to", so I want to know if there are ways to change Q1 into a causal statement? or Q2 into a non-causal sentence?
E.g., On every high school basketball team, the best players tend to become the most popular people at school.
Children that are given everything they ask for tend to be individuals who are unable to cope with life's challenges?
Thanks for the help!
@joshuali I still wouldn't read those as causal because they don't assert that X actually produces Y.
"People who are X tend to become Y." Ok, but is it the X that is a causal factor in leading to Y? Or is this just a coincidence? Or is there something else associated with being X that is the cause of Y?
"People who grow up rich tend to become well-mannered adults."
Does that mean growing up rich causes well-mannered? Or is it that people who grow up rich are likely to grow up in environments that teach them to be well-mannered?
I think this lesson would be helpful if each question came with an example of how to make the claim causal or non-casual. I think seeing what would make it meet the standards would help understand why it doesn't.
#1 says it is not causal because it uses the phrase "tends to be" and then #2 is causal even though it uses "tends to be" ... ok
@mibuch What do you think about the word "produce" in example 2?
@mibuch Just want to be clear here in case others are confused. The explanation for #1 does not say that it's not causal because it uses the phrase "tends to be." The explanation says that "tends to be" does not indicate cause; that means you can't look at the phrase "tends to be" and know whether the claim is causal or not. That doesn't mean that "tends to be" shows that a claim is NOT causal.
Its pretty simple, its only casual if the cause of something is explained. Saying "people who smoke die early" is not saying why they die.
#3 -_-
I find this section challenging, because I am taking more of a practical approach.
If I am sticking to the rules, Question 2 has a trigger "tends to"; which infers correlation. However, it is causal because of the "to produce" that follows.
Therefore, I got 2 wrong for picking correlation not causation.
Questions 3/5 are also taken from a more practical manner because you are not using the language presented, rather inferring that exterior metrics influenced the effect.
Anyone else?
5/5. feelin good
There needs to be more lessons regarding the diffrence between causation and correlation.
While the list of indicator words was helpful, it was sparse. There were indicator words - yet they don't imply a causal relationship. There are Non-causal indicator words that imply causal relationships.
@CMas One issue is that there's no way to give you an exhaustive list. I recommend studying the language that throws you off in any case where you thought something was causal but it wasn't, or vice versa. Then you can build a personal list of language that you've missed before. It's not practical to list out every single word or phrase that the LSAT could present that means there's a causal relationship.
Can you let me know which indicator words sometimes don't indicate cause, and which words you thought don't indicate cause, but sometimes they do?
@Kevin_Lin Thanks for the advice.
Q5 uses "Decreased," which is an indicator word for causal language, but it isn't causal. It's not the verb, yes, but the former lesson implies that Decreased = Causal. And that lesson wasn't there a few months ago.
That's why I think there should be more lessons inolving causal indicators that don't imply causal language. It teaches students not to rely on the list, and to look for the underlining structure.
I'm fricked.
5/5!
#3 was very tricky though lol