My intuition initially tells me to choose A, but during BR, I have changed to D. After reading the stimulus several times one day and a ton of times another day, I finally find a way to rule out D, (if you want to know how to rule out D, jump to the second part) and find there are some other flaws in the argument.
Here is full analysis:
hospital patients' immune system grew stronger when the patients viewed comic videos
intermediate conclusion (this indicates): laughter can aid recovery from illness.
here are two concept shifts: view comic videos---shift to----laughter ; stronger immune systems ---shift to---better recovery from illness;
one common flaw: a correlation --shift to---causation (these are all areas which test writers can choose to test but they do not at this time)
second part:
much greater gains in immune system strength occurred in the patients whose tendency to laugh was greater to begin with. (greater gains in immune system--correlated with-greater tendency to laugh)
conclusion: my own understanding
tendency to laugh is more strongly correlated with more recovery from illness than the frequency of laughter
Actually, the premise just focuses on correlation, so does the conclusion. There is no causation involved, so AC D is ruled out.
This may come late. I had the same question as you. I looked up the word "revival" in the Oxford dictionary. In my previous understanding, revival means the process of something becoming popular or fashionable again (the second definition of the word "revival" in the dictionary, which also comes into my mind in the first instance). I cannot find any evidence that ballroom dancing was popular before the 1980s. That may be the reason why you feel puzzled. However, "revival" also means that an improvement in the condition or strength of sth. I think here the Lsat writer uses the word "revival" to convey that the interest in ballroom dancing is stronger than hibernation. Hope this helps.
For Q13, the reason why answer choice D is wrong, in my opinion, is that the court-ordered liquidation is not a harsh punishment at all. The harsh punishment is imprisoning the debtors. If you look "liquidation" in wikipedia, it will tell you that "liquidation" is a modern bankruptcy law term. That is why I quickly eliminated D.
Another reason why I think B is wrong is that the harsh penalties for some crimes already existed in the beginning of last year. ( this is indicated by the sentence that prior to the enactment of mandatory sentencing law, judges had for many years already imposed...). If at the beginning of a year, the harsh penalties already existed, and it also existed existed in the end of last year, this is unlikely to directly weaken the argument without other supplemented information.
For simplicity, I want to generalize an abstract pattern: A happens while B; A still happens while B.. A is unlikely to be a cause of B, if no other information about A is supplemented.
I think D is wrong because the last half sentence. "the psychiatrist also has a duty of condifentiality to her patients."
The psychiatrist reports to the police about the dream, which means he does not fulfill his duty of confidentiality, which requires him to have overwheming confidence that fulfilling such a duty will have disatrous consequences. Overwhelming means very great or very strong. Notice that the patient may have broken the law. It cannot reach the bar for overwhelming confidence. (this is very similar to the "beyond resonable rule" in criminal cases)
The aforementioned reasoning is also suitable for AC A. Notice that the lower grade might harm the student's chance of obtaining an internship. Even if you regard harm to the chance of obtaining an internship is a disastrous consequence, might cannot reach the threshold for "overwhelming"
there is a big assumption here missing: these two groups consumed the same calories before the study.
I chose C at first, but then I realized there is a subtle change in the answer choice C. My support for AC C is the last sentence: these nesting boxes so crowded with extra eggs. Being crowded means that there is Little Space Per Egg. we cannot infer the total space of nesting boxes from that each one has.
During BR, I think about the propriety of the wording "historical fact" deeply in order to get crystal clarity about this question. After thorough consideration, I believe this phrase is a very good paraphrase of the sentence that otherwise photography would have entirely displaced art as an art form. This sentence is subjunctive and "would have done sth" is a hypothetical case of the past (historical is related to sth happening in the past). This sentence suggests that photography actually did not displace painting as an art form. (this is the fact).
Hope this can help some guys who split hairs about the words and phrases like me.
Actually answer choice B and E are not perfect answers. As JY has said, the number of applications could decrease substantially (AC B), and the decrease of percentage does not necessarily mean the decrease of number (AC E). These questions have perplexed me when I do blind review. ( I have to admit that I sometimes split hairs, and I just want every question to be crystally clear.) Just when I listen to music and wander in my room, an insight comes into mind. For weakening questions, the probative weight needn't be too strong! We only need those answer choices that raise a sniff of reasonable doubt about the argument. This strategy can be used in criminal cases, where evidence should be proven beyond a reasonable doubt and a slight trace of doubt may rule out the evidence. For answer choice B and E, although not perfect, they include the circumstances under which we have more, even slight, doubt about the argument (although the argument is crap). The underlying principle applies to strengthen questions.
Hope this can help!
I get this question right by thinking about a real-life situation. In my primary school and secondary school, there were students absent from school every day, but those absentees were not always the same students (this is what this argument takes for granted). Several students asked for a leave because of ailments on one day, few students went to attend their siblings' wedding ceremonies on another day, and some students just overslept. Let's suppose those students who had a history of being absent, even once, had been expelled from school. Would there be no students absent from school? Of course not, there would be other students who were absent for various reasons. I hope this analogy helps.
#help. I have slight doubt about the right answer choice A, and maybe I just split hairs. Negating answer choice A means that encountering an emotion-provoking situation is sufficient to cause non-repressors' heart rates to rise sharply. If both of emotion-provoking situation and inhibiting displays of emotions should play a role in the rising heart rates, does the conclusion fall apart?
I think the main problem for answer choice E is the way it phrases. It is not the typical characteristics of a bipolar system ( that would be a good answer choice), but the typical characteristics of the MAJOR MEMBERS of a bipolar system. If answer choice E were the right answer choice, the final paragraph would talk about the characteristics of the Soviet Union and the United States after the cold war. However, the author uses a comparison and only generally describes the principal attributes of bipolar systems, which may be the reason AC E is less accurate than AC D.
@mark11249 said:
We're allowed to use 5 sheets of scratch paper. It can be used on any section you want.
Thanks a looooooot!
@ccabre10342 said:
u get 5 sheets of paper
Am I allowed to use scratch paper to diagram in the LR. Some people have said that scratch paper can be only used during LG sections.
Hey, guys!
I have not taken the Lsat yet. I am wondering whether I can use the scratch paper to diagram in the LR section. I have heard from somewhere that some test-takers are not allowed by proctors to use it during the LR section.
Thanks in advance!!!
I have a little disagreement with JY’s explanation here. This is a phenomenon-explanation pattern question. The conclusion should be the reasoning instead of the phenomenon. Note that the stimulus “mentioning the reasoning assumes that…”.
I agree that this argument assumes that the world’s major powers at the second world war were permanent major powers. That some nations that were not among the major powers at the end of the Second World War would become major powers cannot prove that past major powers are not major powers anymore. The negation just means that there are more major powers.
The core in the argument is that the former major powers have SOLE authority to cast vetoes. Why? Because if they find enforcing some decisions repugnant, they do not need to assume the burden BY CASTING VETOES.
If there are more major powers, UN will deny its veto powers (because only those 5 nations have sole authority). This is against the charter’s principle. These major powers have to assume the burden of maintaining world peace, but cannot case vetoes.
Sorry to reply late. I don't think answer choice C is a sufficient assumption. The author has made several assumptions.
1. there was no prior warfare before the paintings or engravings were first created
2. we will not find engravings or paintings dating from before the Neolithic period.
3. chronology => causation ( Even though engravings or paintings of warfare and the transition to an agricultural society happened at the same time, we cannot infer that the latter is the cause of the former)
I find your explanation is extremely helpful. It helps me realize the paradox, which I do not engage with too much. This question gives me some clues about how to solve this set of questions. Give an explanation to the counterexample to the seemingly convincing opinion, which is sometimes subtle and difficult to spot.
Thank you soooooooooo much!!!
#help I have a disagreement with the explanation about AC D, although the outcome is the same. I think "not well designed " does not equate with "poorly designed", and this is a invalid binary cut. There are some bridges that are normally designed ( not good and not poor). The scope of not well designed bridges are bigger than the poorly designed bridges. Therefore, the diagram should be like this:
1. PB←s→ not WD
2. PD←s→OD
3. PD→not WD
From 2 and 3, we can get. OD←s→not WD.
-----
OD←s→not WD ←s→PB
I wanna mention 2 fine prints in answer choice B. The first sentence can be translated into: Jenny's birthday party --> have lots of balloons. But that there are no balloons around yet does not negate the necessary condition. We cannot make sure there are no balloons in the rest of the day. The other one is that today is not her birthday (not her birthday party). Even if there was no difference in the first half of the sentence, we cannot equate no birthday party with birthday. Otherwise, we would have to make an assumption that in every Jenny's birthday, there is a birthday party.
I think you guys may misunderstand the word "recollection", which means your memory of something rather than collection of materials. Actually, there is a clue mentioning recollection --you may recall that, but we cannot tell whether these are incomplete recollections. Even if these recollections are incomplete, we have to assume those recollections having been blurred are associated with my decision-making on the power plant issue. For example, the blurred information, like the location of jail or the expense of jail relocation, is tangential to the decision-making on power plant issue.
In this sentence that "these prices settle the issue", the issue is whether these paintings are inferior (director's view) and first-rate (critic's view). The assumption here is that price is the only determining factor of art's quality.
I wanna write something different about answer choice C. I narrow down to B and C. The plural form of explanation puzzles me, which has been explained very well and in detail by JY. I can see how perfect this answer choice is! After listening to JY’s explanation, I have not fully understood JY’s reasoning of answer choice C. I read all of the comments below about answer choice C, and an insight which has convinced me has come into mind. Here are my reasons:
The stimulus is very typical of “phenomenon—hypothesis” pattern. At my first glance, phenomenon is that mother bats can find their pups at night. Hypothesis is that each mother bat can find their pups through call. However, the language answer in answer choice is so abstract, so there are two possibilities to dissect it.
First, a certain phenomenon in answer choice C denotes that mother bats can find their pups. Obviously, this is not the hypothesis in this stimulus.
Second, the hypothesis of a certain phenomenon denotes that each mother can recognize her pup through call. If it describes the mechanism of this phenomenon, it should describes how ultrasonic and echo operates in bats’ call. Even though mechanism encompasses a lot of meanings and we regard the sentences between “since….., it is clear” as a mechanism, it becomes redundant that “although the mothers all leave the cave nightly, on their return each mother is almost always swiftly reunited with her own pup”.
Both of these two possibilities are unreasonable and inappropriate, so I believe answer choice C is not a dreadfully awful answer choice.
I think "analogy" and "example" are very similar in the method of reasoning questions, which takes me painstaking efforts to dissect the subtle similarities and differences between them. To the extent of LSAT questions I have ever met, both of them require us to use the method of reasoning of other people, but what comes after the "analogy" or "example" in the answer choice is more important. Here, answer choice A notes an untenable conclusion ( is sometimes termed an absurd conclusion in other questions), which means the conclusion is silly and against our common sense. Answer choice B, however, mentions counter -- the opposite conclusion from the previous one ( sometimes counterexample is referred to in other questions).
I try my best to understand this weird and crazy argument. Whittaker just says that students cannot drop out before the second year ( something hasn't happened yet).
Therefore, by the same token, Hudson asserts that I cannot die before I have a million dollars in the bank ( concept shift as i become rich). It just means that if i cannot become rich, I can't die. But we all know humans are mortal, so I cannot help but become rich.
Another background information is that melody has two basic elements: pitch and rhythm (timing). Without this piece of information, how can a tone-deaf person without musical background know there is a potential causal relationship? I am wondering whether the lsat writer just writes the question willy-nilly in order to make me petrified and show off fancy knowledge?
#help (added by Admin)