https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-53-section-3-question-13

I can't see the difference between the flaw in B and the the flaw in the incorrect answer choices....

See here: https://classic.7sage.com/lesson/the-embezzler-weaken-question

The Embezzler (weaken EXCEPT question)

This question gave a lot of people trouble, particularly regarding why answer choice (C) weakened the argument. After reflection, I believe I may have unpacked the reason why this is a clear cut wrong answer choice. However, I am wondering how C does not straight up contradict the conclusion of the argument, which we are not supposed to do in weaken questions. I am grateful for any input or feedback on this attempt. Let's begin!

minor premise: embezzler had special knowledge and access

sub-conclusion/major premise 1: embezzler is an accountant or actuary

major premise 2: an accountant would probably not make the mistake which revealed the embezzlement

main conclusion: it is likely that the embezzler is an actuary

Answer choice (C) states that there are 8 accountants and 2 actuaries

This is where things got dicey. Many people felt that the premise that "an accountant would probably not make the mistake" affected the probability that answer choice (C) was hinting at. However,there seem to be two major assumptions made to jump from the premise that "an accountant probably would not make the mistake" to the conclusion that "it is likely an actuary is the embezzler." First, the assumption that, because an accountant probably would not make the mistake, that therefore an actuary probably would make the mistake. Second, and this is a huge unstated assumption, the person who made the mistake is the person who committed the crime.

For example, even if we accept that an actuary has a greater likelihood of making the mistake that led to the discovery of the crime, is it not possible that an actuary could make the mistake but not have committed the crime? Therefore, the likelihood of committing the mistake and the likelihood of committing the crime are separate and distinct from each other. Conflating the two is a major assumption of the argument and a major reason for confusion on answer choice (C).

If we separate the assumption that the person who committed the mistake is the person that committed the crime from the conclusion that an actuary likely committed the crime we can use simple probability in looking at answer choice (C). Granted, this requires us to assume that of all accountant and actuary employees at XYZ Corporation, each person had an equal chance of either committing or not committing the crime. However, this lets us avoid introducing confusion of who was more likely to have committed the crime versus who was more likely to have made the mistake that led to the discover of the crime. Then the answer choice weakens the argument by stating that we would have to concede it seems there is greater probability that an accountant was the person who committed the crime.

That solves it for me.

However, I would really appreciate insight on how this answer choice does not both (1) directly contradict the conclusion and (2) avoids the assumptions that provide the support from premise to conclusion.

Regarding (1), C in English becomes It is likely that an accountant is the embezzler; this is in direct contradiction to the stated conclusion in the stimulus that "it is likely an actuary is the embezzler." Maybe it depends on the definition of "likely?" In other sources, I see it means, possible to be true, but I also see at as being used as probable (that is, in probability we could not say that it is probable if there was actually only a 20% chance, as is the case of actuaries being the culprit in answer choice (C)).

We accept the premises and conclusion as true, as we must for weaken questions. Now if I told you that there is an 80% probability of an accountant being the embezzler, how could you seriously hold on to the truth of your conclusion that "it is likely an actuary is the embezzler?" Unless likely is meant as "could be true?"

Regarding (2), the support provided by the major premise that an accountant would probably not make the mistake ties into the conclusion by (a) assuming the person who commits the mistake also committed the crime and (b) that the actuary is more likely to commit the mistake. Answer choice (C) doesn't go after any of these. It instead focuses on the probability of the person who committed the crime, which seems just attacks the conclusion directly and changes it's outcome.

In other words, looking at the unstated assumption which conflates those who made the mistake with those who committed the crime, the main conclusion really just states a probability that has no relation to the rest of the argument except via extreme assumptions. Then answer choice C directly changes this probability.

After further parsing this, I would actually say the major conclusion does not follow from the premises and that the argument has made the flaw of confusing likelihood of committing the crime with likelihood of making the mistake. The detective spent all his time discussing the likelihood of the mistake but then expressed his conclusion as one of likelihood of committing the crime (which we know nothing about). C introduces information about the likelihood of the occupation for those who could have committed the crime. But this entirely shifts the detective's erroneous conclusion.

Thanks!

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-53-section-1-question-02

Hey! Can someone explain to me why for (section 1 Q2) the answer is B? Frederick does not comment on representing genres at all......or did I miss something?

Dear 7sage community,

Could someone please explain to me why answer E is correct? I can justify eliminating answers A,B,C,D, but not picking E. Most of all, I cannot comprehend how to apply the 'can be false' principle to a statement containing 'some' and a negation ('not'). By now my brain hurts from all the theories I tried to convince myself of.

Thanks a lot!

I started taking the course in January and am now two PTs in. The first was on Monday, a 153 which was 6 points higher than my diagnostic, giving me a much needed confidence boost. However, my LG score was -10, definitely a black spot. Yesterday, however, I scored an abysmal 150 mainly because I scored a -15 (!) on the LG section. The worst is that when I watch the video explanations I can immediately tell why I messed up: my diagramming. I simply did not illustrate the rules well, which was disheartening since once I knew how to diagram I can get almost every question right obviously.

I don't know what to do right now. Do I stop my PTing until I have a firm grasp on LG? If so, how exactly do I go about improving? Should I still take my PT next week? My self esteem and confidence have sunk. My goal is to break the 160 barrier by test day, a score that I hope is within my reach. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

"the author assumes one reason when others could be plausible"

Can you tell me the name of this flaw? Thanks in advance!

So I just received my results and ended up with a 163. My gpa is a 3.1 and I've been out of school for about 2 years. Worked for a year right after graduating and then stopped working to study for my LSAT. If I apply now, is there any shot of me getting into Fordham, Brooklyn, Yeshiva, St. Johns or even Iowa (ranked high but lsat and gpa are not as competitive), or should I retake the LSAT again? This was my second time taking the LSAT. the first time i canceled my score cause my nerves on test day interfered with my ability to take the test.

Ok, there has to be a better (more merciful) way for LSAC to release the scores. This is what I mean:

1) It takes more than three weeks to receive your score. Seriously? I know it's a paper-based exam, but come on!

2) Inconsistency. Release dates vary from year to year. It looks like we can expect scores to be released 1-3 business days before the official release date, but there've been cases when scores have been released on the official release date. How helpful is that when you reload your email/LSAC account every 5 minutes?

3) More inconsistency. Score notifications are released in batches. So that means if you hear your friend has received their score already, you can expect to receive yours on the same day (?). There is no inherent order to the release of scores, so go figure if it's going to hit you first thing in the morning or right as you were about to drift into another blissfully clueless LSAT-score-less night.

Anyway. Just some random thoughts as I'm waiting for LSAC to show some mercy. Anyone else want to share their anxieties, fears, hopes as we approach the big moment? I'm pretty sure I will have to retake, but I'm hoping for a score that won't depress me too much.

In the existential quantifiers lessons, JY explains how to negate statements with the universal quantifier "all." The conclusion was that "some are not" was the negation and that the new set contained 0-99 items, whereas the original "all" represented 100 items.

In the comments section there was some confusion about why the "some are not" statement included 0 items in the new set and some contributors suggested the statement encompassed only 1-100 items.

After diagramming the all statement and its negation, I think I see where some (myself included) may have become confused. The important distinction is that the new set of 0 to 99 items is comprised of items with the same property mentioned in the all statement. My reasoning is below and I welcome any input on its accuracy. Thanks!

Example: All cats (C) are pretentious (P)

For simplicity, let us assume that there are only four cats in the world. The total number of cats which are pretentious and not pretentious must add up to 4.

P | /P

4 | 0 <-- every cat is P; the all statement we negate

---- <-- the binary cut

3 | 1 <-- min. condition to contradict our all statement

2 | 2

1 | 3

0 | 4 <-- often thought of as negation of all; "No cats are P"

In the above table we see that in the 5 possible groupings based on our 4 cats, one represents the all statement and the other 4 cases together represent the negation of that all statement. The set which represents 0 through 3 inclusive (comparable to 0 - 99) is the set of pretentious cats. I believe this is where many became confused and thought the set of 0-99 was made up of unpretentious (that is /P) cats. However, above we see that our unpretentious set always contains at least 1 cat and therefore follows our definition of some (it is comprised of one, possibly all cats, but not 0).

As I was reviewing my old notes, I've noticed that I wrote the definition of "few are" as some are/SOME ARE NOT but "few not" as most are/some are not.

Shouldn't "few are" mean some are / MOST ARE NOT?

I can't believe I'm still confused about this concept..wow. English.

Do all method of reasoning questions contain flawed arguments? Or are there some valid arguments out there? I'm getting confused whether I'm suppose to look for the flaw or just how the argument functions as a whole or even BOTH. I'm not sure what kind of mindset to have for attacking method of reasoning questions.

For the purpose of ruminating on my mistakes after reviewing few recent (post 65) PTs before February LSAT this Sunday,

I would like to share my thoughts on some noticeable tendencies in newer reading comprehension questions.

(For the record, I was usually scoring -3~-5 on reading comprehension sections during 40s~lower 60s PT,

and dear God I am scoring -7~-11 in newer PTs.)

1. There is more wiggle room for choices of words in answer choices.

Particularly among those newer suggestion/inference questions,

i found that answer choices that might have been easily regarded as wrong or overstretching inferences

getting to become an answer choice after the process of elimination.

In addition, some answer choices in non-inference questions are sometimes themselves written in a twisted way,

forcing me to take another step to see them as valid answer choices.

2. For reference questions that ask the purpose or meaning of certain parts in a paragraph,

answer choices are starting to make INTRA-passage inferences.

Previously on eariler LSATs, i guess it was safe or generally correct to focus your choices of answer on a specific paragraph for reference questions. However on recent questions there have been few instances where the answer choices were inferences made outside a specific paragraph but made within specific passage, connecting ideas from other paragraphs in a passage.

As a non-native English speaker i have felt that these changes in a more pronounced way, but I have to admit that I may have been wrong since I do not have a firm grasp on every nuance of the language. And some recent passages like Dodo extinction and mirror reflection have been brutal on me regardless of shifts in questions.

Any feedback is welcomed!

"The editorial board of this law journal has written on many legal issues. Tom is on the editorial board, so he has written on many legal issues."

It sounds like a valid reasoning... Why is it flawed?

Thanks in advance!

Hey gang,

I’ve been working through the Sufficient Assumption question bank, trying to turn my Level 3 and 2 questions into Level 1 questions (for terminology check this out this webinar: https://classic.7sage.com/webinar/timing-and-levels-of-certainty -- props to @c.janson35 and his brilliant Timing Webinar).

This question bothers the you-know-what out of me because the answer doesn’t seem to justify the conclusion. It just seems like it’s like it’s blocking other potential explanations, which would make it a good necessary assumption or strengthening answer. I’d love people’s input on this.

Please commend below or Inbox if interested!

I'm redoing some questions that I marked when I first went through the ciriculum, and I came across this tricky one. I fully see why answer D is correct, but I can't figure out what makes B incorrect. Doesn't answer B deny an alternate cause?

Link: https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-33-section-3-question-20

This is a strengthen question.

G is a protein in the brain. In an experiment, rats that preferred fatty foods over lean foods had a lot more G in the brain than did the rats that preferred lean foods over fatty foods. Therefore, G causes rats to crave fatty foods.

What I am looking for: This is a cookie cutter causal flaw. In my mind, a plausible weakener would be that eating fatty foods might cause an increase in G. We need to deny this.

Answer A: OK, so sometimes the rats choose lean foods. So what? Our facts say that the rats "consistently" choose fatty foods. Is this answer choice just sort of restatement of one of our facts? I think it is.

Answer B: This is hard to eliminate, and I think it's wrong because it just isn't relevant. We don't care about the fat in the brain, but rather, a protein in the brain. Part of me still thinks this denies an alternate cause though: the rats didn't prefer the fatty foods due to a fatty brain.

Answer C: So what? We only care about G in the brain, not the food. For this to work, I think you need to assume that the G in the food then goes up to the brain, but that's a weird assumption.

Answer D: This is perfect since it tells us that the rats that like fatty food had higher amounts of G in their brain before they ate the food. This denies that reverse cause scenario that I anticipated.

Answer E: So what? We don't know anything about the efficiency of metabolizing fat.

Damn, PT52 has some pretty tough LR sections, and even after a retake, I missed many of the same question again (like this one). I don't see how answer A weakens the argument nor how B doesn't.

Link: https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-52-section-3-question-19

One theory that explains dinosaur extinction is that the dinos OD'd. Angiosperms have psychoactive agents in them. Most plant-eating mammals avoid them since they taste bitter. Mammals also have livers that detoxify the drugs. On the other hand, dinos couldn't taste the bitterness nor detoxify the plant. Lastly, this theory explains why so many dinosaurs were found in weird positions in the fossils.

What I am looking for: Did the dinosaurs actually eat the plants? What if some other theory (like an asteroid) explains the sudden extinction better? Also, we don't even know if the plants were bad for the dinosaurs; we know that angiosperms are bad for some mammals, but what if they were net healthy for dinosaurs? Sure, dinosaurs couldn't detoxify the psychoactive agent (which is bad), but what if the angiosperms provided such large amount of nutrients and other good stuff, that it was worth eating still? Also, we have no evidence that the comparison between the mammals and dinosaurs is even a good comparison; what if the two are so different physiologically any comparison doesn't hold? There is so much wrong with this argument.

Answer A: I just don't see how this weakens the argument. First, it's incredibly weak: we found 1 fossil of a large mammal in a contorted position. But so what? What does this have to do with dinosaurs? Even if you take this to the other extreme: 1 million large mammals were found in contorted positions, you still have the same issue. It doesn't shed any light on what happened to the dinosaurs. Second, the passage never even talks about "large mammals," and the comparison to the mammals in the passage is dubious already, so I don't see how adding this potential third group of mammals to the argument weakens anything.

Answer B: This is what I picked (and I chose this during both my takes of this exam, and kept it both times during BR). Doesn't this point out one of the things I anticipated? If angiosperms provide nutrition, then doesn't this mean they may have actually been GOOD for dinosaurs? In my mind, this not only weakens the argument, but it strongly does so.

Answer C: I think this strengthens the theory. This shows that not only vegetarian dinosaurs ate the angiosperms, but also the meat eating dinosaurs indirectly did as well (which could account for the fact that theory explains the extinction of ALL dinosaurs).

Answer D: OK, but we are talking about angiosperms only. So what if poison ivy doesn't have this stuff in it? This is entirely irrelevant.

Answer E: I think this also strengthens the argument. This shows us that it's possible that animals can actually die from eating angiosperms, so it strengthens the idea that maybe the dinosaurs died from the plant as well. This is a pretty weak strengthener, but it strengthens nonetheless.

I'm not sure why 1) negating morally right to mean morally wrong is incorrect and 2) negating right to mean wrong is incorrect. Please explain!

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-june-2007-section-2-question-23

I've noticed that I've been getting 100% on logic game sets that have a difficulty of 1/5 or perhaps 2. I get 1-2 wrong on anything above 3....

The bright side is that I'm getting sets correct but I'd like to ask what the usual distribution of difficulty is on actual logic game sections? Like... 1 easy, 2 medium and 1 difficult or is it always random?

While working on main point of argument i noticed that some do not have conclusion indicators but i might see counter premise indicators (However is one that i see) i noticed in some videos that but was also a indicator.. are there any videos or can anyone on here help explain what to do when you comes across these types of words.

Thanks!

Even though the question stem doesn't explicitly say "which one of the following could be a *COMPLETE AND ACCURATE* list of people selected" like what most of other questions do, do I still need to automatically assume that the list needs to be complete? Are they the same thing?

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-9-section-3-game-3

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-75-section-1-question-19

Hi everyone! I am really confused on this question.. I understand how the correct answer (B) explains why the average in the country as a whole went down, but I don't understand how it explains how the average in each region went up.

Any help would be awesome!

Thank you!

Hello 7sages,

I'm confused about such rules as shown in the title, and I will use some of the examples from the PTs

(Spoiler Alert)

1. Exactly twice as many of the film buffs see the Hitchcock film as see the Fellini film

2. At least many French novels as Russian novels are selected.

3. At least twice as many roses as orchids must be used.

I'm quite confused which one is more, hope you can give me some advice, thank you!

Hi guys I am trying the Fool proof method and doing like 3 copy of one game back to back, when I reach 6th try it feels like not only I memorized the inferences but I also memorized questions' already. I will write out all the inferences under timed condition and eliminate all answer choices before reaching the correct answer. But when hit target time (normally one minute less than that) I feel its more memorizing than learning. Am I doing something wrong?

Please advise me to how to get the most out of Fool Proof Method.

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-56-section-3-question-21

I understand Jon's explanation on this question, but I was tricked by the question's word choice "revival" in the answer choice (D).

Doesn't "revival" imply that the ballroom dancing had been once popular before?

The passage doesn't mention anything about this.

Probably, I was too nitpicking, but could you clarify this?

Thanks!