Premise 1: Clark brand name parts are made for cars manufactured in this country.

Premise 2: they satisfy all the government's automotive tests.

Premise 3: for foreign made parts, you never know which one might be cheap look-alike and reliable.

Conclusion: you should prefer Clark brand name parts to foreign made parts.

The question is asking for the necessary assumption of the stimulus. I picked the right answer. But, upon second look, I think even the right answer, strictly speaking, seems to be wrong....

Answer C, the supposedly right answer, states that "parts that satisfy our government standards are not as poorly constructed as the cheap foreign-made parts".

It doesn't seem to me the negation of this answer choice necessarily undermines the original argument. For I read the premise 3 of the stimulus as only implying that, in contrast to foreign made parts, you COULD KNOW which one might be cheap look-alike and reliable in the case of Clark brand name parts, which means Clark brand name parts could contain cheap and unreliable parts just as foreign made ones do. The only difference is you can tell the difference in the case of former, but not the latter. For answer C to be the necessary assumption of the original argument, however, we need to read that premise 3 as implying that Clark brand name parts are INDEED NOT cheap look-alike and reliable, which seems to me a bit too strong an inference to be made.

Furthermore, nothing in the stimulus implies that cheap and unreliable foreign-made parts cannot satisfy the government automotive standards.

Can someone help point out if I miss anything? Am I reading too much into the stimulus?

hi, i am taking my lsat in june, and recently my game scores have plummeted for some reason, so i am trying to get my scores back up –– when i was doing ok on them, it was right after i did the games part of 7sage, and i guess i was doing like 2 at a time over and over again, but i am wondering if anyone who has super improved on the games noticed which strategy is better (doing the same game a thousand times in a row or like alternating 3 sections over and over again)?

Please share your thought process and how you get the correct answer!

I am unable to access the video explanation for PrepTest February 1997 - Section 3 - Question 16

Do you guys go in order when answering RC questions? Would be appreciative if someone could give me examples of their strategy. At a bit of a RC slump.

Could someone explain their thought process in getting the correct answer? I debated between A and B and eventually settled for B because I thought the very last line is the Conclusion. #help

Hi! Could someone please explain why E is the correct answer? I would love to see everyone's understanding/explanation! Here is what I thought, which turns out to be incorrect but I still don't get why E is right.

PaI - Disagree over Interpret which news is newsworthy

S: Reporters pick which events they want to report (newsworthy) and for how long is the reporting, so they always interpret the news (preliminary)

Ramon: Reporters -> /Interpret the news. Once they decide a news is newsworthy, they better give me the full info.

So Sarah says the act of considering which news is newsworthy is already the beginning of interpretation, Ramon says the interpretation begins after a news is decided to be newsworthy.

A. Every time they report it? They might or might not, this is digging too deep

B. Sarah disagrees, Ramon agrees “once they deem a story to be newsworthy”

C. Irrelevant

D. Ramon no comment, he only cares about newsworthy

E. Ramon no opinion

I’m currently working through the MSS drills in the main curriculum. I’ve been taking my time make sure my accuracy is good, but when should I be concerned about getting the target time? I’m so worried about waisting questions. Is it okay to take 2+ minutes per question while drilling or do I need to pick up the pace?

I was wondering if anyone had any tips on getting better ta finding the assumptions in strengthen an weaken questions?

Hi All,

I'm hoping to find the section where J.Y introduces the idea of piecemeal analysis. I kept hearing him talking about it during the flaw section but I can't remember where he introduced the idea of peicemeal analysis. He suggested that he introduced it in Method of Reasoning.

If anyone has the lesson, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you

I personally find this the hardest LR question in PT 14; it is (1) bizarre on the level of content, (2) very long and overloads test takers with information, and (3) at the very end of the fourth section, thus hitting you at a point of the test where you already spent 2+ hours intensively thinking about stuff and are mentally exhausted.

In paraphrased form, the stimulus says:

(1) Phenomenon: In the Peruvian desert, there are different sets of lines in the sand. These lines occur in different layers: On the top layer, there are lines that branch out from a single point. Beneath that, there are lines that form a bird figure.

(2) Hypothesis: An investigator argues for the conclusion that both of these sets of lines were brought about by aliens, who supposedly used the Peruvian desert to land their space ships. To support this conclusion, the investigator evokes the premises that the lines in the sand would have been useless to Incas.

The first thing to do here is to figure out what the stimulus is even about: The phenomenon itself is not immediately clear – it is crucial to note that there are TWO sets of lines, not just one –, and the investigator’s hypothesis is counterintuitive to a degree that it becomes all too easy to disregard the glaring selective attention fallacy in their reasoning (Aliens or Incas, not Incas; therefore aliens). So the first hurdle here is to even figure out what is going on, and to throw out one’s common sense intuitions out of the window (How can you even identify the different layers of ancient lines in the sand? How did the lines stick around for so long? All of these questions become irrelevant).

The next hurdle then is the question stem, which again seems bizarre: Here, the test writers tell us that we seek to establish the conclusion that the lines are supposed to refer to astronomical phenomena, and that we are supposed to block an alternative hypothesis to the effect that the lines are non-astronomical. So at this point this seems to become a sort of strengthen question. The question stem is unusual to an extent that it becomes hard to pre-phrase or anticipate how a right answer might look like. Thus process of elimination seems to be the best approach:

(A) North American natives arranged stones in ways that allow for the measurement of astronomical phenomena. This seems to strengthen a little bit in that it points out a seemingly analogous case (It is not only in South America but also in North America that people used geological means to keep track of astronomical phenomena). However, it seems unclear how this answer choice would also have the blocking effect that the question stem is asking for. Thus keep around as a candidate but expect that one of the other answer choices might well be better.

(B) The straight lines indicate positions at which astronomical events could have been observed ‘at plausible dates,’ and the bird lines could represent a constellation. This gets at both sets of lines and associates both of them with astronomical phenomena. The answer thus is fairly specific. Furthermore, the answer itself postulates its own plausibility (‘plausible dates’), which seems like a massive hint, though again unusual. Like the rest of this question, (B) thus again seems wildly counterintuitive, but in the scenario we are supposed to explain, (B) arguably makes the most sense. In particular, (B) approximates the desired function more than (A). Thus far this thus is the least bad answer choice.

(C) The lines form patterns. This answer choice is worse than (B), due to its lack of specificity and its apparent disconnect from the question stem. Worst answer choice thus far.

(D) Central American Natives used rocks to measure astronomical phenomena. This answer choice seems almost identical to (A) and thus provides good grounds to dismiss both (A) and (D): There can only be one correct answer choice, two virtually identical answer choices thus are likely to both be false.

(E) The bird lines might be older than the straight lines. Again irrelevant; (B) must be right.

Takeaways: This seems to be a question where the LSAT really tries hard to make test takers focus exclusively on reasoning structures, not on common sense intuition or plausibility. In this sense, the question is similar to other early LR questions that seem weird content wise but make syntactical sense on the level of formal logic. Focus on getting a clear understanding of what is going on in the stimulus and the question stem; I spent four minutes on this and still felt overwhelmed. Get a clear grasp of what the phenomenon is, what the explanation attempt from the stimulus is trying to say, and how the two alternative explanatory directions from the question stem relate to another. Then use process of elimination to get through the answers.

Conservative: Socialists study history, and they do so to identify trends that inevitably lead to a socialist future. However, this undertaking is certain to fail, because it is only retroactively that historical trends appear inevitable.

Socialist: Socialists do indeed study history, but the purpose of this is practical rather than theoretical: Instead of trying to identify historical trends that themselves bring about socialism, socialists try to identify trends that inform the kind of work that socialists need to do to bring socialism about. Socialism thus is not the inevitable outcome of historical trends, it instead must be worked towards and deliberately brought about.

Under timed conditions this Point at Issue / Disagreement question had me genuinely confused: The conservative and the socialist agree in maintaining that socialists study historical trends, but they disagree about the purpose that these studies are supposed to serve: According to the conservative, these studies are a purely theoretical undertaking, the socialist deems them practical. This thus would have been the issue to anticipate.

The pertinent answer choices are (A) (“[A] socialist society is the inevitable consequence of historical trends that can be identified by an analysis of history”) and (E) (“Socialists analyze history in order to support the view that socialism is inevitable”).

In the case of (E), we do get at a version of the anticipated answer; (E) gets at the conservative’s portraying socialist analyses of history as purely theoretical undertakings, which the socialist rejects.

(A) is more tricky. If (A) said “Socialists believe that a socialist society is the inevitable consequence of historical trends that can be studied,” this arguably would be a right answer choice: The conservative does ascribe this view to socialists, the socialist does not. However, (A) is a claim in itself, not only a belief that socialists may or may not endorse. In this context, the situation is more straightforward: We have no reason to think that the conservative deems the creation of socialist societies inevitable, and the socialist explicitly denies that they are inevitable. So as it stands, the speakers actually seem to agree that (A) is false. This thus can’t be the point at issue.

Takeaways: It is crucial to distinguish clearly between the two viewpoints here, as well as between facts and beliefs. Do not interpret (A) as a belief that the conservative ascribes to socialists; it is rather a claim that the speakers themselves are supposed to endorse or reject.

Hi is someone able to walk me through this LR question? In general, I struggle with sufficient assumption (SA) and pseudo-SA questions (even though I know JY calls them freebies), so I would love to have general tips for getting these right as well as the one pertaining to PTB S4 Q4 (the one that talks about political self-determination). Thank you so so so much in advance!

PTB S1 Q16

Hey! I remember reading somewhere or learning from an explanation video that in disagree questions each author must explicitly state the answer choice in order for it to be correct. Therefore, an answer choice wouldn't be correct if only one author discusses it.

Here is the question I am stuck on: https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-33-section-3-question-19/

The correct answer is B. I eliminated all of the answer choices discussing emigration because Raphaela doesn't discuss emigration. Could someone provide more insight into their method for disagree questions?

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On my diagnostic LSAT, I scored a 148 score -- but I completely skipped every logic games question due to how foreign and confusing it was to me. If I master logic games without improving on any of the other sections, how much of a score increase can I expect? Thank you much!!

I hate to start a new thread for PT June 2007, but related threads seemed so old I wasn't sure if anyone followed those. I've been here since February, decided to get a feel for the curriculum first and took the 2007 PT today. Syllabus wise I am only through the Causation and Phenomenon-Hypothesis section. On the PT, I ran out of time in the LG section and did not even complete 8 of the questions. Therefore, I did not see a reason to BR the LG section as I do not even know how to attack these questions yet. After I work through LG eventually on the syllabus, can I go back and BR this section of the exam? Or once I "complete BR" there is no going back and would I just have to retake the exam?

When should I take my next practice test after this one listed in the syllabus? Should we not move on to other practice tests until we've been through the syllabus first? After seeing my performance on this baseline, I want to maximize my efforts on any future tests. I am determined that there really is no place but up from here.

I think I've started to notice a pattern in my wrong answer choices. The answer that I get wrong on LR is often the one most people choose when they get that answer wrong. So am I just falling for the top trap answer, or something more deeply concerning? Often the correct answer choice is a better articulation of the wrong answer that I find myself thinking "that's what I thought WrongAnswerChoice was saying," it just turns out that I fall into the trap.

How can I overcome this?

Just a friendly reminder to read every single word throughout the stimulus and the answer choices. I blind reviewed this question for FAR too long and ended up not really seeing a clear difference between any of the answer choices. When something is not adding up and you feel like you are just throwing a dart between two answer choices - you are doing something wrong. As obvious as it sounds, misreading something or glossing over, just as I did, will be detrimental to the whole question.

What I did was gloss over the word "urban" several times while reviewing and my brain just translated it to "rural" for some reason. This one word completely changed the entire questions for me.

But anyways, READ EVERY WORD.

What is the difference in process & identification between these two question types? I feel like in parallel method you identify the flaw as a means of finding its match - so i dont really see how they are different. Can someone help me understand?

i dont understand why this is E

Hi, I noticed that I am unable to see the difficulty level on the logic games I had done on PT. Is there a way I can figure out the difficulty levels?

Pseudo-PSA

Political self-determination from external force -> /truly free

Maintaining freedom -> political virtues earned during the struggle for freedom

The bridge here is about linking political self-determination from external force + virtues necessary for freedom

A. Not true, its the opposite

B. Who cares what other virtues they achieve

C. Free -> develop political virtues… maybe

D. Remain truly free -> political self-determination, but this is missing the virtue part.

E. Imposed?

Admin Note: Edited title. Please use the format: "PT#.S#.Q# - brief description of the question"

Hi! Recently started learning about formal logic and it's kicking my butt to be honest. I'm still a little confused on how you even identify a conditional statement (I was going through some of the exercises and was like seriously, this is a conditional statement?).

More importantly, I'm still a little confused about how to deduce sufficient vs necessary conditions. I don't want to rely solely on indicators as LSAT is a test about understanding. If you guys could share your tips/explain, I would appreciate that so much, thanks!!

Hi all! What is your thought process/explanation as to why A is wrong?

Admin Note: Edited title; please use the format of "PT#.S#.Q# - [brief description of stimulus]