Hoping someone has some advice on this for me. When JY goes over strengthen/weaken questions on LR, he identifies the conclusion and looks for an answer choice that either provides more support for or weakens support that the premises provide for the conclusion. I've been trying to practice answering questions in under 1 minute/20 seconds, and to do this I feel that I can use this approach pretty successfully in general. In general, should I try to come up with an assumption of the argument before I approach the questions? Or would having an assumption in my mind potentially distract me from thoroughly examining the answer choices?

Appreciate any suggestions!

Jeff

Hello all! I was hoping I could get assistance with the order in which I should study for the LSAT! I am taking the exam in September but I thought it's better to study earlier since it's my first time taking the exam! I have been studying logic games for 30 minutes a day for a week now. I was wondering if that's a good amount or the right thing to study first. Should I start with logic games then reasoning then comprehension or is there a better order? I am going to try and do an hour a day for the remainder of the time I have before the exam I just want some good tips starting out so I am best prepaired! Thanks so much!

Even though this question is old, it has several lessons built into it. I was able to parse this question out mainly because of the lessons on 7Sage. The first lesson I see with this question is the importance of being attuned to the grammar of the LSAT. The stimulus begins with “since.” This should reference back to the core curriculum grammar lessons: “since” generally introduces something that we will be using to build towards a conclusion. In other words, we are hurled by the first word of this argument into a premise. We also have an additional premise that is introduced by the word “and.” We then have a comma and the conclusion is given to us in conditional language. I sometimes feel on LR that what I am given in a stimulus is like joining a conversation mid-talk and I am expected to piece together the information into the way the authors want us to. This is a perfect example of that phenomena in my estimation.

The second lesson in this question is the heavy use of conditional language. You have to know your conditional indicators in order to map this question correctly. What we end up getting when we map this question is:

P 1:If you support the new tax plan——>no chance of being elected.

P 2:If you truly understand economics——>Not support the new plan.

C:If you have a chance of being elected——>truly understand economics

The third lesson from this question is the idea that questions are often related in the task they set out for us, a deep understanding of this sits at the bottom of the case for reading the stimulus before the question stem: if you can tell what is wrong from the stimulus this thinking goes, the question stem shouldn't have to be read first (I am not a proponent of this view.) When I lined those conditionals up, out of habit I wanted to find the sufficient assumption. Well it turns out that if we look at this question through a sufficient assumption lens, we can actually garner quite a bit. Lets take the contrapositive of that first statement:

P 1: If you have a chance of being elected——>Not support new tax plan

P 2:If you truly understand economics——>Not support the new plan.

C:If you have a chance of being elected——>truly understand economics

So insofar as the premises supporting the conclusion this isn’t a valid argument. But why? Above there is simply no way to get from the premises to the conclusion. The forth lesson dawned on me when I was BR’ing this question: This is where the flaw really is: as currently stated, the premises do not support the conclusion. Familiar terms are used in the premises and conclusion as a way to distract us, but the conclusion might as well be something about football or motorcycle maintenance. There is simply no support for the given conclusion from the given premises. The relationships between the elements do not support the given conclusion.

This is when we take a look at the fifth lesson embedded in this question and that is to take a close look at the question stem. This isn’t actually asking what the flaw is in the way we are all used to. Instead, this question is asking us for something that the argument ignores the possibility of. More specifically, that the argument ignores the possibility that “some people who _____” The fifth lesson here is how to deny a conditional relationship. So if I were to give you the conditional relationship: All cats are mammals, you would deny that by saying “some things that are cats and not mammals.” The existence of a thing that is both a cat and not a mammal is enough to deny the sufficiency of something being a cat triggering the necessary condition of being a mammal. With this knowledge in mind lets take a closer look at what we are given in the stimulus.

chance of elected———>Not support new tax plan

+

Understands economics——>Not support new tax plan

Conclusion:

Chance elected——>Truly understands economics

How could we make this valid? We could say that Not support new tax plan——>Understands economics!

99 times out of 100, if we have gotten this far and we are stuck, it was actually our translation of the logic where we have gone wrong. Meaning if this was a sufficient assumption question, I would bet that I had translated something wrong. But, we didn’t. The only other possibility is something very peculiar: it appears that our author has given us: Understands economics———>Not support new tax plan, but has interpreted this statement in logic to mean: Not support new tax plan———>Understand economics! If we (wrongly) interpret the second condition as Not support new tax plan———>Understand economics, we have a simple A——>B——>C argument.

This is an incredibly difficult step to take. I am open for correction here, but the idea that we are given a conditional statement, that we translate correctly, but have to take a leap in judgement to conclude that the author might have interpreted that conditional statement wrong is hard enough. Finding where the author’s translation went wrong and then negating that translation to point out the flaw makes this, for my money, the hardest flaw question of all time. The author's assumption here is actually a mistranslation of the logic to: Not support new tax plan———>Understand economics The denial of this is (D)

I look forward to a correspondence with members of this community about this question. Has anyone come across something like this elsewhere? Would it behove us to classify this flaw under the umbrella of sufficient/necessary flaws more generally? Thank you!

David

**Admin note: edited title**

I saw something in a comment somewhere about logic game sets of similar questions to do, and I saw on one explanation JY had "if you struggled with this type of question, here's a bunch more". Are there multiple of these lists/ do these lists exist?

73.4.20 https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-73-section-4-question-20/

This is a phenomenon-hypothesis Strengthening question, so we are looking for an answer choice that strengthens the hypothesis or an answer choice that prevents an outside factor from weakening the hypothesis.

The passage is basically saying that the process goes like this: When nerve cells are damaged after a stroke, glutamate can leak from them and can kill other nerve cells. We are left to reasonably presume that this is included in the definition of continuing nerve cell deterioration. Therefore glutamate is present in blood of those whose nerve cells continue to deteriorate after a stroke.

Answer choices (it came down to C and D):

A – incorrect because saying that any neurotransmitter that leaks from damaged nerve cells will damage other nerve cells does not strengthen the relationship we want. It doesn’t give us any more reason to think that glutamate in particular is impacting surrounding nerve cells.

B – incorrect because it’s irrelevant

C – This was very hard to eliminate, but it is incorrect for a couple of reasons. 1) Knowing that it is the only one that leaks from damaged nerve cells doesn’t necessarily impact the relationship. If it does, we have to stretch it with a bit assuming in order to do so (for instance, you have to assume that it actually DOES leak from those nerve cells). 2) It doesn’t rule out the possibility that glutamate could come from five billion other locations in the body. It therefore definitely does not strengthen the statement that glutamate from damaged nerve cells is a cause of brain damage. Just because it is the only neurotransmitter that leaks from oxygen-starved or damaged nerve cells does not mean that it only leaks from those nerve cells. In fact, it leaves the door wide open to think that it could leak from a long list of other places, and we know from the stimulus that we don’t care about those other places. We just want to know if leakage from oxygen-starved or damaged nerve cells causes brain damage, and this answer choice doesn’t give us enough security and clarity for us to be able to do that.

D – This is the correct answer, because it specifies that glutamate can ONLY come from damaged or oxygen-starved nerve cells. This enables us to say (or at least makes it possible for us to say) that glutamate very well could cause brain damage/long-term nerve cell deterioration, since the way it can get into the blood stream in the first place is from oxygen-starved or damaged nerve cells.

E – incorrect because 1) we don’t need to know anything else about nerve cells to conclude that glutamate causes brain damage, and 2) it doesn’t matter that they can leak glutamate and still survive intact. This has no impact on the relationship we are trying to strengthen, since if they were destroyed, it wouldn’t do us any harm or any good.

[Admin edit: replaced with link to question. Please don't post full questions, thanks!]

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-76-section-2-question-24/

We are looking for a necessary assumption.

The conditional for the first sentence is: write in order to give pleasure  /impart truth. However, the conclusion of the argument is that this conditional is not true. They say that if this conditional was true, then you could take any popular book on the shelf and the conditional would be: popular  gave people pleasure  /impart truth. To do this, you would have to assume that if a book gives people pleasure, then it would have to have been written in order to give people pleasure. Just insert the original conditional in right in front of the “/impart truth” part of the equation.

This was counter-intuitive for me because I was immediately looking for a bridge to the conclusion of the stimulus, which is that those who write in order to give pleasure CAN impart truth to their readers. This one is tricky because it is asking you to look for the NA in a part of the stimulus that you’re not used to looking for it.

[Admin edit: Replaced with link to question. Please don't post copyrighted material, thanks!]

So, I've done this question many many times. And I've never felt great about it. Can some run it down for me?

Specifically, answer choice A.

Here's what A looks like:

A:

Writer has right ---> Author granted writer the right

I believe A is incorrect because "Writer has right" should not be in the sufficient condition.

Rather, to be correct, A should look like this:

Author granted writer the right ---> Writer has right

Is this accurate?

(if you want to add anything else helpful, it'd be greatly appreciated).

Hi Guys,

I don't really know how to address overconfidence errors. So far, I have been taking my PT's and BRing just the questions I circled, and then BRing the rest of the section. However, it has come to my attention that it is more important to BR the questions that you circled first and then address overconfidence errors.

My question is this: what do you do to address the overconfidence errors? Do you look at your test booklet and see the question you circled and try to see what your reasoning was? What if you don't remember it? I took a PT on Friday and am now reviewing the test bc I was busy yesterday. Do you just try to reason why the one you chose is wrong and all the other answer choices? Or do you look at the answer and then rationalize why that is correct and the others are incorrect.

I'm really confused about the process for the overconfidence errors and would be most appreciative of any insights or help someone can provide me.

I like to spend time up front by solving for all the boards. This makes me more confident for selecting the correct answer and I can get through the questions faster.

However, some games have so many possibilities that it takes a significant amount of time to solve for all the boards. So, to save time, I do not solve for all possibilities. I finish the games a lot faster, but I may miss 1 or 2 questions.

My questions are: when should one simply brute force their way through the answers to save time?

Is it better to compromise accuracy to save time?

What is a happy medium?

I like to spend time up front by solving for all the boards. This makes me more confident for selecting the correct answer and I can get through the questions faster.

However, some games have so many possibilities that it takes a significant amount of time to solve for all the boards. So, to save time, I do not solve for all possibilities. I finish the games a lot faster, but I may miss 1 or 2 questions.

My questions are: when should one simply brute force their way through the answers to save time?

Is it better to compromise accuracy to save time?

What is a happy medium?

I know (A) is correct since it points out there may be no relation between jury decision and testimony. Yet, I'm still confused about (B). Is it descriptively wrong since the stimulus only says one fact instead of two facts?

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

Thanks in advance!!

Hello fellow 7sagers,

There is no right or wrong answer to the question at hand. I know 7Sage's method is to read the question stem first. However, I am curious to hear from individuals who have tried "both" approaches. Which made your task of comprehending the stimulus and answering the question easier?

Thank you in advance.

Hey All,

So this is a PSA question. I selected answer E when timed and I didn't even circle this question to BR because I was so confident in my answer. It wasn't until I was reviewing with some others during a BR call that this error was brought to my attention. I got some great feedback from those on the call, but upon further solo reflection, I'm still not 100% confident with this.

This is how I interpret the stimulus. There are two categories of people mentioned: adults and children. There is this technique to address chronic nightmares that works on adults. Children who are nightmare prone are likely to suffer from nightmares as adults. Therefore, we need to identify these children and treat them.

The conclusion specifies efforts towards identifying nightmare-prone children. I'm thinking to myself- well, why not utilize this technique with ALL children? Why are we putting the effort into identifying then treating these children. I chose E because it addresses this issue. I interpreted E as justifying the conclusions claim for focused effort.

The correct answer is C, which says psychologists should do everything to minimize the number of adults troubled by chronic nightmares. My issue with C is, by accepting that we must do EVERYTHING (bold statement to begin with, but we are looking for an PSA, which allows for that I guess), then shouldn't we also teach ALL children this technique? The stimulus doesn't set up the necessary condition that, if you suffer from chronic nightmares as an adult, then you did as a kid. The stimulus says it is more likely for nightmare prone children to suffer as an adult. So since this isn't a determined, 100% relationship, in order to do EVERYTHING (like C says), we should be addressing this margin of potentiality for non-nightmare prone children to develop chronic nightmares as an adult.

In short, my issue is C seems to inherently contradict the conclusion.

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-59-section-2-question-13/

I have an issue with the negation of this answer choice, if someone can help me--I would be most appreciative:

Most of the trade goods that came into western Mexico centuries ago were transported by boat.

Lsathacks says the negation is this:

Merely half of all trade that came into Western Mexico came by boat.

But, I think the negation should be this:

Between 0-50% of the trade goods that came into western Mexico centuries ago were not transported by boat.

Am I wrong in this thinking? Please help out!!

Hi

I've been studying for logic games for about 2 weeks or so, trying out the fool proof method.

As I was covering the games from Pt18~28, I was averaging about -3 or -1 in the earlier ones.

But I got completely destroy by Pt 27 then scored perfect on Pt 28 on time. (BTW I did both on thr same day)

I'm not sure how confident I should feel with the game section.

To think that the score can fluctuate so much between 2 Pts was a bit shocking.

Does unorthodox games also become more predictable after continuous practice?

I'm hoping that someone might be willing to check my thinking/analysis before I go to the explanation. It has been suggested that if we write out an explanation for our thought process that it helps to solidify our learning. This is my attempt to follow that suggestion. Also, could someone tell me if it's advisable or not to attempt to do what I've done prior to viewing the video explanation, or am I complicating things too much? Should I just skip all this work and go right to the video explanation first?

PT 38.1.19

Answer selected during test: (E)

Answer selected during BR: (A)

Correct answer: (C)

Notes:

Since it has been a few days since I took the test and performed my BR, my original thinking is somewhat fuzzy. However, I think the reason I selected E on the test was because I thought that if people only deserve happiness according to the happiness the provide others, then a truly bad person couldn’t deserve happiness because they don’t bring happiness to others.

I think I selected answer choice A on the BR because I was thinking there was a disconnect between the idea that we only value the happiness that is deserved and that we only deserve happiness according to the happiness we provide to others.

Now, how did I miss answer choice C? I think the reason that I missed the correct answer and selected wrong answers twice is because I wasn’t appropriately identifying with the argument. In the first place, I wasn’t looking for a conclusion. I was just looking for a statement that “fit”. I see now that the word “therefore” indicated that I was to be looking for a logical conclusion that appropriately rested on the premises. Also, the question stem indicates that I need to complete the “argument”. Since an argument is a premise + conclusion, and since there is no conclusion in the stimulus, I needed to identify the proper conclusion. I think I wasn’t appropriately identifying the premises in the argument; all of the extraneous statements boggled me a bit. So without the proper understanding of the premises, it’s understandable that I wouldn’t be able to identify the conclusion. I’m still struggling to clearly identify the premise (in fact, I think there is only one), but here’s what I think it is:

P: The happiness people deserve is determined by the amount of happiness they bring to others.

Which would then couple with the proper conclusion:

C: The judgment that a person deserves to be happy is itself to be understood in terms of happiness.

So, if I understand this problem now, the reason I selected the two wrong answers is the same reason I missed the right answer: I didn’t properly identify the premise in the argument.

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-38-section-1-question-19/

Hi everyone,

I'm taking the LSAT on Feb 19 and I'm start to panic a bit. For each practise LSAT I've taken my Logical Reasoning scores hover around 65%. Comparatively my Logic Games are around 95% and my Reading Comprehension is around 85%. I'm completing all the sections comfortable timewise. I really need to improve the LR sections but I've got no clue how to.

I've gone about halfway through the powerscore bible. Do I keep going through that even though it seems I haven't grasped basic concepts? Do I buy another book? Do I just practise a lot?

Help!

I'm confused why the arrow splits for PT 22 GAME 4 RULE 4 and the arrow doesn't split for PT 31 GAME 2 RULE 4 even though they both contain the words NEITHER NOR.

I thought the arrow can't be split for NEITHER NOR statements.

Hello!

I'm going to take the February LSAT in a few weeks and obviously I'm freaking out. I have 6 Fresh PTs left (the most recent ones) but I just don't know how to space them out.

Problem is I was hitting an average of 171~3 on my timed PTs but devastatingly, today my score dropped to 167 (I bombed one LR section - 7 wrong, I usually get -2, -3 and Reading was little more difficult than usual). That's almost close to my starting score (165) and I now fear that I haven't been studying the right way. My target score is around a 175, which so far I've only managed to get with BRs.

Should I space out my 6 remaining tests so that I do about 2 tests per week till February, or save most of them till the last week before the test and hope for a jump in my score?? ANY ADVICE WOULD BE INCREDIBLY HELPFUL! Thanks!!

With regards to the second rule, does anyone know why we can't simply place both F&G in out group? JY's explanation suggests placing G (Out) in one world and F (In) in the second world.

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-19-section-1-game-3/

I know answer choice B is not supported but I can't explain to myself WHY it's wrong.

Is it wrong because the terms "apple" and "citrus" should be switched places? Could it be a right answer choice if the answer choice actually read:

[McElligott's citrus juices are less likely to contain infectious bacteria than is McElligott's apple juice]

Because McElligott's citrus juices HAVE NOT BEEN LINKED TO ANY BACTERIAL INFECTIONS, can't I assume that they contain less infectious bacteria than M'S apple juice?

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-52-section-1-question-24/

OK, so my battle with RC and been brutal, long, and very emotionally draining. I originally was going like -16, now I'm going -5ish. In RC I have seen the biggest gains. I have done really well and learning to "see the forest" before I examine the trees. As @"J.Y. Ping" put in a RC webinar, you have to be able to understand the passage at the 10x level, the 5x level, and the 1x level, 10 being the forest, 5 being individual paragraphs, and 1 being the individual trees.

Questions related to the 10x and 5x level are starting to become very easy to me, even for some of those level 5 passages. What still to this day trips me up are those 1x level questions where you have to understand certain parts of the passage at the 1x level. Out of the 5ish questions I usually miss, almost all of them are 1x, fine detail level questions. When I BR and grade my PTs I always see the right answer and I'm like, "Ahh! Damnit. It says it right there in that one tiny sentence! How did I miss/forget that part?"

My question to all of the RC gurus out there is how did you learn to remember things in the passage at the 1x level under timed constraints? For me, I almost always have to return to the passage, and I usually just don't have enough time to make it happen, so I circle the question and skip. The questions I miss are generally due to not remembering a specific detail from the passage, and not having quite enough time to return to the passage. When I come back to these questions, I usually just POE because I am at my last 2-3 minutes of the section. It's so frustrating because I am so close to going -0 on some sections, and the questions I miss are really not that hard, it's just remembering the fine detail.

As always, thank you for the feedback!

Hello all,

For the June 2007 Prep Test, for Section 4 (RC) and question #13 ("Which of the following principles underlies the arguments in both passages?") I see why E is correct, but why is D incorrect ("The discovery of the neutrological basis of a human behaviour constitutes the discovery of the essence of that behaviour.") A detailed explanation would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-june-2007-section-4-passage-2-passage/

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-june-2007-section-4-passage-2-questions/

Hey Guys,

I am very confused on this question. I thought the answer would be A.

The paragraph says in the first sentence that there are two kinds of horror: mad scientist and monstrous beast. The last sentence then says that both kinds of horror stories describe violations of the laws of nature and are intended to produce dread in the reader. Therefore, why would the answer not be A?

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-42-section-2-question-16

I just drilled the LG section from PT 18 and it totally threw me for a loop! Train lines? The random promotions game? What was that? I'd happily take snakes and lizards. For those of you looking for weird games, look no further :).

Off to drill them until I hit time... it was such an odd section I felt it deserved a shout out.