Hey guys,

Hope studying is going well for everyone. I am at the stage of my LR studying where many times when I am doing a question, I find two answer choices attractive. And I am left between which one to choose. Sometimes I will get the question right and sometimes wrong. Any recommendations on how you guys approach this problem on LR questions?

Any help would be appreciated

Thanks

Hi! I don't really understand why B is wrong even after reading numerous explanations. If areas subject to more fires (which is true when the level of rainfall drops below normal for an extended period of time like in a drought) tend to be less densely populated than areas where there are few such fires (where there is normal rainfall), doesn't this explain why there is less damage in areas during long periods of drought? There is less population or structural damage by the fires if there aren't a lot to begin with as opposed to ONE fire in a densely populated area would be disastrous even if there is normal rainfall.

The structure of the stimulus in both of these argument part questions seem very similar and the argument part identified in question stem seems similar as well.

Why is it that the last sentence in 8 "our sun has an unusually high abundance of these heavier elements for its age" is not an intermediate conclusion but that the last sentence in 20 "the heavy industrial activity of coal mining would force most of them to close" is an intermediate conclusion?

#help

Admin Note: PT87.S3.Q8: https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-87-section-3-question-08/

PT87.S3.Q20: https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-87-section-3-question-20/

I need help with trying to answer the questions that ask something along the lines of "Which of following could substitute the condition (insert rule here)"? I don't know how to approach these at all.

Example: PT M20.S2.Q11

anything would help. i really sturggle on these

Could someone explain this question to me please?

Lol at this discussion thread title, but I truly think my test anxiety will be the death of my score.

I am blind reviewing in LR between -3 and -5, took PT 83 S1 couldn't even finish the section and scored -11 (left 5 questions blank).

I could feel that I was really anxious because I knew I was being timed and I wasn't able to understand the stimuli/think as logically as I do when there is no pressure. I need to close my gap and kick this test anxiety before January! I really feel that it hinders my ability to think properly. :(

If anyone has been in my position or has any tips, I would greatly appreciate it.

I do like to take positives away from each test and all the strengthen, weaken, NA, MSS/MBT questions I answered were correct. Ironically I got the SA/justify/RRE questions wrong which are usually pretty straightforward for me. My Bernese Mountain dog was barking during my test so I'm hoping it was just a once off lol.

Does anyone happen to have a list of LR questions that include conditional logic flaw in the stimulus? I'm trying to get better with recognizing when the main flaw has to do with conditional logic. I ran into question 18 from section 3 of PT 31, and the stimulus includes conditional logic. I was able to make a conditional logic chain and I was forcing myself to look for a flaw in the conditional logic. It turned out that the flaw had nothing to do with conditional logic. Instead the flaw in the stimulus dealt with a part to whole error. This isn't the first time that I try to force the conditional logic flaw, so I'm planning on drilling this weakness. However, I would greatly appreciate having a list of questions with conditional flaw. Thanks in advance!

A little while ago I was on here and people were talking about "nicole.hopkins" webinar on her reading comprehension strategy. Does anybody have the link to that or know where I can find it? Thanks everyone!

Not sure how the answer is E. I located the conclusion in the middle not as the first sentence.

Can someone please explain to me why B is right?

I have no idea why the answer must include "some" instead of "many". Am I going crazy?

Okay I'm pretty pissed because I'm pretty sure I got this question wrong for a stupid reason.

AC A says: _Admin Note: I deleted the text as it is against our Forum Rules to post the answer choice text verbatim.

Everything sounded good except for 'in no way implicates the defendant' - is this answer choice basically saying the argument overlooks that a witness may think a defendant is guilty even though their testimony might not match that?

IE: in no way implicates/involves the defendant? As in, maybe they called her in to testify and asked her what she ate for breakfast?

I picked AC B for some reason, I knew the others were wrong which I'm glad about because apparently AC E was a debate for many.

If anyone has tips on matching flawed reasoning when your prephrase is correct (mine matched up perfectly!) but you have trouble navigating abstract terms, that would be helpful!

Thanks!

Admin Note: https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-48-section-4-question-13/

Hi,

I've been studying for the past 10 months and have made tremendous improvement in my LSAT from a 146--->159. Unfortunately, I believe I have hit a plateau in Logic Games and require a tutor in order to improve any further. I have followed the fool-proofing strategy as outlined by JY very closely and it has helped me master logic games (consistently -0 LR in BR) but I really struggle with performing under timed conditions (-7/-8 timed). Please comment below or DM if you know a tutor/are a tutor!

Does anyone have experience with taking FLEX in a hotel or other area for reasons that their place is not quiet enough to take FLEX? (hotels, etc.)

Hello everyone! I was curious if anyone has any thoughts/tips on what I'm experiencing: I did CC for LG using the fool proof method and got to where I was doing the games either on or under the recommended time. Hadn't touched LG the past 1-2 months to focus on RC (plus work got busy). I started doing the CC games again just to test myself (no time restrictions but still timing myself to get an idea of my comfort level) and it's taking almost double the amount of time for each game. Any tips/is this normal due to my hiatus in LG or should I spend more time fool proofing before starting to do PTs? Thank you!

Does anyone know the length of the break between the 3 sessions on the Nov Flex test? Does the next session start automatically or is the break 30 seconds or a minute? Thanks!

Hi!!

Is there an 'easy' way to find the hardest (5-star difficulty) LR sections or to see the difficulty of the LR sections in each of the PTs??

I can see this info for the tests in my analytics (for the sections that I've completed, since I started taking as Flex recently), and so far, I've only encountered 4-stars as the max difficulty - I don't even know if any 5-star ones exist (but, I have to imagine if they do for RC and LG that they do for LR). And, since I started taking PTs as 'flex,' I can't see the rating on the LR sections I haven't done.

I'd love to do a super-hard LR section as a timed practice (or to have a list of many to do) and short of looking into every PT, I don't know how to best find this info. :) Thanks for any help, if you know a shortcut (or know of sections!!).

I kind-of want to compile the data into a spreadsheet - I think it would be helpful. I'd like to also practice some 5-star difficult RC sections also ... but those are easy to find in the problem sets compared to the LR sections as a 'set.' Especially as my analytics grow and I end up working them in the process of doing PTs!! I'm concerned that I'm leaving some difficult LR sections behind by running my PTs as Flex.

• I already have a list (spreadsheet) of the LG difficulties that has been very helpful as I work through the PTs (and/or to know which specific PT LG sections I MUST do as a full set to simulate a super-difficult set experience (27, 34, 88).

The stimulus tells us that property rights are super important to the city council. Then we are told that for that particular city, there are restrictions that prevent property owner from doing anything to their property (other than cutting their grass and getting rid of weeds).

I am not well-versed on how zoning laws work, so I wasn't sure who holds the power over enacting zoning laws. I got the feeling that it was the city council members, but I wasn't sure if we were allowed to make that assumption.

Going back to the paradox, I anticipated that a possible resolution was that there were other people in local government who had a say on whether or not to pass these zoning laws.

When I got to the answer choices:

A- "sometimes allowed exemptions" this further shows that the city council is restrictive. Just because they make at least one exception, doesn't erase the fact that they're almost always restricting the property owners' rights

B- I chose this answer choice. My reasoning was that property owners actually wanted things to be this way, despite the council members cries that the zoning laws were too restrictive to meet the needs of property owners. If that's what the people want, then is there really an issue? As I'm writing this out, I'm wondering if that's where I went wrong. Equating issue with paradox? The contradiction could still exist even if the people being affected by it don't see it as an issue, right? Ugh...I feel like I'm overthinking this:/

C- I saw this as a contradiction to our premise that says that, "property rights is of the utmost importance to city council"

D- I felt that this answer wanted us to assume that every time your neighbor does something to their property, it affects your own property. Which i don't think is a fair assumption. What if someone is adding an extra room to their home, which is located on three acres of land and the nearest neighbor is miles away? I could see how putting up a fence could have a direct impact on your next-door neighbor, but the fact that it's not something that happens every single time that you do something other than cut your grass or get rid of your weeds, really confuses me.

I felt that without the assumption that I pointed out, this answer wasn't strong enough to resolve the paradox.

E- I thought this further emphasized that property rights were being restricted, and thus deepened the mystery behind the contradiction

I would greatly appreciate clarification on why D is correct and why B is incorrect. Thanks in advance!

Admin Note: https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-22-section-4-question-17/

After combing through numerous tests looking for ways to improve my logical reasoning score, I isolated a concept throughout the preptests that I was having trouble with. I will not really be discussing any particular question type, more just the concept behind statistics, and the way the LSAT uses it. I'm going to break it down into two types of statistics: formal statistics and informal statistics. Formal statistics will deal with percentages, numbers within totals, and totals. I will also discuss average under formal statistics. Informal statistics are questions that involve polls, studies, surveys, and stuff like that.

FORMAL STATISTICS:

The test writers love confusing students using percentages and totals because they can be confusing concepts for people like me, who was never very good at math. "Formal statistics" questions have three elements to keep in mind when reading: overall total, numbers within the total, and percentage. You cannot make inferences without at least two elements.

Words indicating %: percent, proportion, fraction, likelihood, probability (note that the last two are speaking in "terms of probability" meaning the chance that an event will occur. "More likely" and "Less likely" are telling you that the chances are greater than 50% or less than 50% respectively.)

Words indicating #: amount, quantity, sum, total.

Note: there are other indicator words, but these are the ones most commonly used.

Here are some common tricks test writers use on students:

2)Decreasing percentages lead to decreasing numbers (this is not necessarily true because the size of the group under discussion could be larger)

Here are some inferences you can make:

% decrease + # increase -> overall increased

Example: if I drink 30% less coke (in my overall diet of drinks) than I did three years ago, but now i'm drinking 20 more cokes a day than I was three years ago, then it just has to be true that I am drinking a lot more over all than I used to be.

% increase + # decrease -> overall decreased

Example: lets look back at the coke example. If three years ago, I drank 2 cokes and 8 glasses of water. That is only 20 percent. Now I only drink one coke, but it makes up 30 percent of my liquid diet. Then it must be true that I am drinking less than I used to.

Most of the time LSAT uses formal statistics like this, they talk about it in terms of change I.E. percentage and number differences between two periods of time. Example: between 2000 and 2006 there was a 30% increase in violent crime or In 1990 the number of crashes was less than it was in 2000. Etc...

It is important to remember that despite the changes within the total, there are only three logical options for what change the total could take: it gets smaller, it stays the same size, or it becomes larger.

Tips and tricks:

AVERAGE:

When you get a change in average, whether it be higher or lower, it gives rise to a few possibilities.

When you have a rise in the average, the possibilities are:

When you have a dip in average, some possibilities are:

Example: PT 46 Q 22

"Over the last 10 years, ... Admin note: please review the Forum rules "Do not post LSAT questions"

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-46-section-3-question-22/

Our possibilities are: more older people, fewer younger people, or both. Our conclusion is that there are more older people, so to strengthen it we have to rule out the possibility that the average change was not because there were fewer younger people. To weaken it you could say that there are fewer younger people.

Inversely, it works the same. If I tell you that the average LSAT score has changed from 157 to 150 over a period of 10 years, that could be because there are more people scoring in the 120s or that there are less people scoring in the 170s, or both. Tailor your answer choice to the conclusion. Don't get caught in whether the total number of people increases or decreases unless they tell you they are members of the group that will affect the average (120s group). These are sometimes disguised causation problems, if the conclusion says that the change of average happened for a certain reason (more older people), the answer choice could strengthen that by blocking out the other alternative.

INFORMAL STATISTICS

Informal statistics are things like polls, surveys, or experiments, or studies. You can recognize these questions when the stimulus says something like:

"In a recent study"

"50% received vaccine X and 50% received a placebo" (Really anytime they talk about experimental and control groups)

"Randomly selected"

"A nationwide poll"

"Consulted"

" _____ were surveyed"

Etc. The LSAT will almost always (maybe always I haven't taken every test) indicate when you are in informal statistics territory. While many questions that fall under the category of informal statistics have answer choices that refer to the causation mechanism in the stimulus, there are a lot of questions that revolve around your understanding of how an experiment should be tested. Here are some questions you should ask yourself.

what am I studying?

comes from the context + premise

PT 51

"Seventy-five percent of dermatologist surveyed Admin note: please review the Forum rules "Do not post LSAT questions"

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-51-section-1-question-04/

So here we are studying dermatologist's preference of skin cream using Dermactin, and they are conducting a survey to figure out the results

PT 30

"In a recent study, a group of subjects had Admin note: please review the Forum rules "Do not post LSAT questions"

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-30-section-4-question-22/

PT 34

"A group of 1,000 students was randomly selected Admin note: please review the Forum rules "Do not post LSAT questions"

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-34-section-3-question-04/

It does not have to be a detailed summary of the experiment, but you should know a brief summary of what they are testing because it is helpful in answering the other questions.

Is the premise representative of the conclusion?

Representativeness is a concept the LSAT repeats frequently. What does it mean for the premise to be representative of the conclusion? Well it means the conclusion should not be too broad compared to the evidence presented. If your conclusion is that most Americans love McDonalds then the answer come from a survey, poll, or study, that is diverse, large and unbiased enough to represent the general sentiment of most Americans. For a long time whenever I thought of representativeness in studies and polls, I usually only thought about if the sample size was large enough. While this may be important, it is only part of what you should be focused on when you are reading a stimulus for representation.

Here are some other flaws you should look for:

Lets look at some examples of representation in logical reasoning problems

PT 36 #24: Flaw

"George Orwell's book 1984 has exercised much influence Admin note: please review the Forum rules "Do not post LSAT questions"

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-36-section-1-question-24/

The correct answer picked up on the fact that we don't know the specific numbers of who picked what. Does 1984 influence a great number of readers? Not if 999 people picked the bible and only 1 person picked 1984.

PT 31 #3: Flaw

"Announcement for a television program: Are female physicians Admin note: please review the Forum rules "Do not post LSAT questions"

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-31-section-2-question-03/

PT 34 #13: Necessary assumption

"Essayist: one of the claims of laisses-faire economics...

Admin note: please review the Forum rules "Do not post LSAT questions"

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-34-section-2-question-13/

For the conclusion to hold, the fast-food restaurants must be representative of the industries in general.

Note: although representation is a big thing that test makers will test you on, there are a lot of wrong answer choices that try to trick you into thinking the flaw or assumption is about. Don't bother too much with it unless there is a glaring representation issue. Example: 40 fourth graders took lessons in reading, and all of them improved their reading skills. Thus, lessons in reading can help fourth graders improve their reading skills. The conclusion is weak enough for the 40 fourth graders to be sufficient evidence. Would more students help? yeah probably. But as it stands "it shows reading classes can help students on their reading skills." Here is 40 students where it did.

Is there a control aspect to the experiment?

Control parts of the study are crucial aspects of conducting experiments because they allow you to eliminate and isolate variables.

PT 31 #9: Strengthen

"During the three months before and three months after Admin note: please review the Forum rules "Do not post LSAT questions"

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-31-section-3-question-09/

What are we missing? To find out whether or not earthquakes had an effect on California student's dreams, we would need to control for what they dreamed of before the earthquake, and monitor the change.

Was there a difference in the results of a laboratory experiment vs the same experiment tested out in the real world?

One way a study/experiment can be flawed is if they only study it under laboratory conditions. Imagine you plant seeds in a testing center, and they grow amazing. Out in the world the seeds grow like shit. Well there are a lot of reasons why the seed did not grow as well in the real world. It could be because in the lab they got more water, or they weren't vulnerable to insects, etc...

How long was the study? Did it need to be longer?

There was a really tough parallel flaw question that hinged on you understanding of the timing concept in the study. It was something like they asked a bunch of young kids if viewing a cigarette pack made them want to smoke, and concluded that because the kids didn't want to smoke it at the age of 9, it had no impact on the desire to smoke. The obvious flaw is why are you asking kids this? They are not representative. But the more subtle flaw is that the experiment should have taken longer, maybe come back to them when they are a few years older and can buy cigs and ask them again.

Your job is to strengthen, weaken, point out flaws, or explain experiments. Remember to ask yourself these questions when you see informal statistics, it will allow you to be able to better pre-phrase the correct answer choice.

I hope this lesson has been helpful for anyone who took the time to read it. Statistics is such a big concept that i'm sure that there is stuff I missed out on. Please let me know if there is anything I should add on, or change, to make this better!

Hello 7sagers!

@Christopherr and I have been working on a project for you. Given that the May 2020 LSAT-FLEX is now up on 7sage, we know that students will be taking it in preparation for the January LSAT administration. It will still be a little while until the official 7sage explanation videos are up, but we want students to have a reliable way to have their questions about the PT answered in the meantime.

So, @Christopherr and myself both took the May-2020 FLEX under timed conditions and blind reviewed the test. Christopher has written out explanations for every question and answer choice from the RC section, and I have done the same for the LR section. Attached below are links to all of the explanations. Both documents have an outline that can be opened from the column on the left side of the document. This will allow you to select the particular question or passage you want to look at without having to scroll through the entire document.

Hopefully these will help some students who are struggling with some of the confusing language in this PT. If you have any questions about any of the explanations feel free to post them below or shoot either Christopher or myself a DM!

RC Explanations Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1et6ww1nf9GlK2ZvfjUA72RyI6BQdDtDMqTd_BW92AhA/edit?usp=sharing

LR Explanations Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d3nrTS7Pe4pE7j5c8O60uJwtf7-vrUsg_aakivEH0zY/edit?usp=sharing

Don’t forget to give @Christopherr a big “thank you” for all his work with the RC section on this test. That was a beast!

I'm confused what the passage is actually saying here, and while I can vaguely see why AC E is the correct answer choice, I'm wondering if someone could explain what the LR passage is saying. Is the passage suggesting that the fossil record tells us Beetles developed earlier than the pollen? Not sure if I am allowed to post the whole question here or not...

I'm completely lost on this question; the stimulus is short but I don' know what to even look for

Someone help! There aren't any explanations available online

Hey y'all. I went through the entire logic games curriculum several months ago and I'm currently making my way through every logic games section of the PTs on LawHub. I take a timed section each morning and then immediately go over it with the videos. I notice that sometimes I don't make inferences as quickly as should for how long I've been studying and I feel like I'm going to need to "warm up" the day of the test. Which games would you recommend taking the morning of to prepare myself to make inferences as quickly as possible?

#help

Hi everyone! I've been having some trouble with certain Assumption questions and I was wondering if I could get some quick help on them. The questions typically state "Which one of the following is an assumption required by the argument?"

Are these typically NA or SA questions?