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I am having trouble understanding why answer choice A is a necessary assumption. I eliminated this answer choice because of the word ANY. I think it may be due to how I negated this answer choice, focusing of the "quantity" and not on the word "work well."

The way I negated it was: A type of school system that works well in one country will NOT work well in SOME countries." Even if this was true, I don't believe that the argument would be wrecked, as a country could just defer to the next best possible choice of system.

However, if I were to negate focusing on "work well": A type of school system that works well in one country WILL NOT ALWAYS work well in any country. Were this to be true, I can clearly understand why the argument is wrecked.

How are we to go about negating such necessary assumptions? I thought negating "all" was to simply state "some are not." Is there a rule to when we are to negate quantity or note?

Thanks in advance!

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-54-section-4-question-03/

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For those of you who found the RC difficult from the June '17 (PT 81) test and want more practice like that, you should check out PT 5's RC section. I thought it was structured in a really similar way to PT 81 with a similar distribution of difficult among the passages like PT 81.

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Hi all,

For question 8, I confidently picked answer choice E and was stunned that this was correct. Upon looking into the explanation for this it seems that the line reference was at 47 to 48. While doing this timed, this was the exact line reference that I thought made answer choice E the correct answer (unsupported from the text).

Lines 47 to 48 state that : For drilling deeper wells, OBM is normally used.

I thought answer choice E was too strong as it states "required." Normally just states that it is more generally used, while required states a necessary condition. While a different mud recipe can be used (or may be more preferable) for deep oil wells to that of shallow oil wells, I thought "drilling deep oil wells REQUIRING the use of a different mud recipe than shallow wells" was too strong. Who is to say that there aren't other conditions for a specific deep oil well that makes the mud recipe for shallow wells more preferable for a specific case?

Thank you for your help in advance!

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-54-section-1-passage-2-passage/

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-54-section-1-passage-2-questions/

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link to JY's explanation video: https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-66-section-4-question-14/

Hey guys,

This is a PSA question that I'm having difficulty with. I can't seem to understand why A is not correct. What is it about the language here that fails to make this the contrapositive of the principle? I understood A to read: "A uni denies a grant application... because the math puzzle has no practical concerns. But isn't this exactly the contrapositive? Aren't we justifying the action "denying the application" (which equates to NOT promoting research, back in the principle's language) specifically because of the math puzzle's impracticality?

That being said, I clearly see that (E) is the correct answer. But during the PT, I was confident A was the contrapositive, chose it, and moved on without glancing at E. A hard lesson that I'll be learning from for sure.

Thanks!

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For the last week, Ive been having a really hard time focusing on my PTs, my mind starts to wander after the first section and I want to take a day break or two but Im also nervous of doing that so close to the test date, does anyone have any advice on what I should do or any tips?

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I got the MP but I wanted to further analyze... Could someone review my thought process please? (This is a question in CC!)

Part of the stimulus: "But there is a positive role to be played even by these extremists for the social &political inertia that attends environmental issues is so stubborn that even small areas of progress can be made only if the populace fears environmental disaster..."

Does "only if" introduce necessary condition? Thus would the diagram be the following: Small areas of progress can be made --> populace fears environmental disaster (or the other way around...?)

Since it's a conditional statement, it's wrong for A to assert that "little progress that HAS BEEN MADE in improving the environment is mainly due to the fear created by radical environmentalists." We don't know in the stimulus if the progress has actually been made-- it just gives us a conditional. Is it safe to say that (A) requires you to assume something that we have no basis or support for?

Someone had commented, "(For the sake of practice) Notice the gap in the argument – author assumes that the radical environmentalists incite fear in the populace through false extremes (possibly about unlikely environmental disasters) and thereby, allows the possibility for small progress to occur (this is the positive role)." Is this correct? Could someone shed more light into this gap in the argument/ any other flaws?

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-34-section-2-question-18/

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Hey guys,

Got a great question from a student that I thought you could help with. Here it is!

Do you mind answering a question I have about "accurate and complete list" type Qs on the logic games?

So, if I'm not mistaken, for a question like: "Which one of the following is a list of variables, any one of which cannot belong to group A?", we have to check ALL possible worlds and come up with a complete list of all the variables from all the possible worlds that cannot go in A.

--as opposed to: a question like "Which one of the following could be the list of variables that go in group A?" Because this question doesn't have the phrase "any one of which," it would suffice to find an answer choice that matches just ONE of the possible worlds, right?

So my question is:

For a question like "Which one of the following CANNOT be the complete assignment of paralegals to the Thompson case?" (PT 69 G4 Q22), would we have to check ALL possible worlds or just ONE possible world? I'm thinking that because it's not phrased as "Which one of the following is a list of paralegals, any one of whom cannot be assigned to the Thompson case," it would be enough to circle the answer choice that matches just ONE of the possible worlds. Is my intuition correct?

Sorry, this is so much to read through, but it would mean so much to me if you could help me out with this, as I am really confused!

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Hey everyone,

So, even though I get most of the SA questions included in the 7sage drills right, I end up taking 2-3 minutes (sometimes even more) on them (barring the really easy ones: i.e., 1-3 difficulty rating). I think converting the sentence into lawgic consumes a lot of the time. As a point of contrast - I was wrapping up the PSA questions within 1:24, and wasn't diagramming for any of those.

Any suggestions on how I can improve my speed?

PS: I didn't print the questions and was drilling directly from the laptop, which meant I couldn't immediately underline key words and diagram. I'm not sure if this was an obstacle in completing the question within the allotted time?

Looking forward to everyone's suggestions!

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Hi friends,

I keep having trouble with questions such as #5 section 4 on PT 72 that say something along the lines of "The order of _____ is fully determined if which one of the following is true?"

Any tips on how to solve these? I think I'm really in my own head when it comes to these questions.

Thanks!

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Hi guys, Im having trouble setting up this type of game. Not sure where to put what elements, what the elements are and what the base is. Does anyone have any tips? Would reading the advanced linear games in PS help with the set up? Im good once I get to the set up.

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I'm a bit confused about the technical differences between the errors of (1) mistaking sufficiency or necessity and (2) mistaking necessity for sufficiency. I realize the instances in which the errors arise may be different (i.e. mistaken negation and mistaken reversal, respectively), but aren't the 2 mistakes essentially the same error described in two different ways? If you were to switch the necessary and sufficient conditions of a conditional statement (mistaken reversal) would you not be able to describe the error using either one of those descriptions?

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Hello fellow 7Sage students! I am taking the December LSAT and wanted to see who else is, and if you wanted to form a study group! I am aiming for a 155-158, but I welcome all that are really serious about getting it done the next few months! Who's with me?

5

So I've been at the LSAT for over a year now. I've struggled and plateaued. I've wanted to give up, I've felt motivated and defeated. The September test is right around the corner so I wanted to prove something to myself. I sat down and took my original diagnostic test again. I took this test in May of 2016. It's been over a year since I touched this material.

PT 63

May 2016 score: 151

September 2017 score: 174

While I know there are some factors here, like memory, the feeling of seeing pure progress is amazing.

If you want a confidence boost before the September test, and you are okay with retaking a test, I say give this a shot. It really helped me see that some of my work is at least paying off haha. Just a thought for my fellow September testers out there!

2

Hello! I was hoping to get some clarification on this question.

So clearly our right answer should link the reintroduction of rock salt to a disproportionate burden on low income people.

I put B, and the correct answer is D.

My understanding is that you're supposed to use the part of the prompt that says "Although the city claims that cars are now better protected from salt's corrosive properties than they were as recently as five years ago" to pair with the text D, which says that low income people are more likely to purchase older vehicles.

My issue is that I think not a large leap, but a nonsensical leap to interpret the prompt portion as referring to new cars in comparison with old cars. The text merely says that "cars are now better protected from salt's corrosive properties." There's literally one subject in that sentence: cars. The sentence makes no distinction about different groups of cars within the general "cars" umbrella. The distinction, grammatically and logically speaking, is between how "cars" handle salt now, and how "cars" handled salt before.

Maybe "cars" better handle salt because of some trends in humidity levels. Heck, you could just as easily and fairly interpret the opposite of what you were meant to. Maybe the older a car is, the more resistant it becomes to salt corrosion because they develop a layer of dirt and debris that keeps the salt from penetrating as deeply as it does in new cars which are exposed.

Deriving the necessary assumption is ludicrous and arbitrary, in my view.

On the contrary, D requires but a small, feasible leap. We're told that sales tax disproportionately burdens low income people. We're told that road maintenance is primarily funded by local sales tax. This appears to have all the ingredients we need to make a perfectly in-tact chain of logic. All we have to do is check to see if rock salt re-introduction counts as road maintenance.

Rock salt is applied to roads in order to maintain a safe, drivable road. It is undoubtedly a road maintenance matter. We weren't using it for several years, we are now. Sure, maybe we have a vast reservoir of rock salt in an underground bunker that will spare us any additional expense, but that's terribly farfetched and extreme. At the very least you're going to have some costs associated with the switch, if not also the highly likely case that you're going to have to buy some quantity of rock salt, the money of which is coming from sales tax that disproportionately burdens low-income people.

B seems to be all but iron clad, while D is all but impossible. We need but the smallest, likeliest set of circumstances for B to work. We need the biggest, most ridiculous, most ambiguous crapshoot of an assumption in order for D to make a drop of sense.

Am I missing something here?

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-67-section-4-question-08/

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Okay guys, I need your help figuring out my next step.

I have finished CC, Manhattan LR and Trainer and I do believe that I have a very strong sense of LR arguments and question stems. My strategy was to do LR from PTs 17-36 untimed and really take my time to analyze the questions. So far I did 17-19 and my average is -6.5 per section. I need to bring it down to at most -2 and I do not know how to achieve it.

The way I did the questions that I did was to

  • Identify the question type

  • Open my notebook and read about that question type, what to look for, how to approach, what the trick answer choices are etc (notes are taken from CC, Trainer and Manhattan). I know it already, yet I am determined to drill every single detail to look out for as much as possible hence rereading my notes for EVERY single question

  • Identify conclusion and premises

  • If there is a flaw and question type requires me to identify it then do it

  • Eliminate wrong answer choices while justifying to myself why they are wrong

  • Pick the answer

    • Now two things happen 1) either i am down to two answer choices (most of the time one of them is correct) and i pick the wrong one because somehow in my head i overthink it and all of the sudden it becomes somehow attractive or 2) i do not read careful enough and misread the right answer in a way that it becomes a wrong answer, so even though i take my time to understand the argument, i rush with understanding the answer choices.

    My question is, should I stick with my strategy and keep going with the rest of the PTs in hope that after enough bumps along the way I will be able to learn better what my weaknesses are and spot the wrong answer choices easier?

    Should I employ a different strategy?

    P.S there is not one specific kind of questions I miss the most. I am pretty decent at all of them according to 7sage trends, with SA and Flaw being my best and Strengthen, AP and MBT being the worst.

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    I'm taking the Sept exam and was wondering how I can get better at deciding whether to split the game board, solve by brute force or just make a basic diagram and move on to the questions. I usually rush towards the end because I spend too much time trying to split the game board or too little time making inferences. How do you guys approach different problem sets? I kind of have to get -0 in order to get the score I need...

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    Hey all.

    I've noticed the more recent exams have a lot of difficult necessary assumption questions. Another thing I noticed was that these questions frequently have conditional statements as wrong answer choices, while the right answer choice is most often just a direct statement.

    If I'm choosing between two good sounding ACs on a PT, but one is conditional and the other is a direct statement, do you all think the direct statement is more likely to be true?

    It seems to me that the conditional statements are very often sufficient assumption answer choices, while the direct statements are necessary.

    Thanks

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