Working on this solution like the cure to cancer as we speak.

I'd use the one that fits your learning style as well as plays to the writing style you most prefer. The Trainer is conversational. The Bibles are more to the point and mechanistic. 7sage has a unique forum on which it feels like JY is speaking to you directly through videos.

However you learn best will dictate which resource to use. They're all targeted to teaching you the same stuff, but I will say, 7sage is probably the most comprehensive, especially because it even touches on things like grammar which I found to be immensely helpful in parsing LR arguments.

Agreed with @ . A buddy of mine used his writing center at his undergrad and he churned out some solid statements - albeit they were for a PhD program, not law school, but I think that's irrelevant.

I'd say go for the people who are good writers and will be 100% honest regardless of your feelings and ego. You don't need to be complimented on your writing, you need to get into law school.

I'd agree with @ . The more you write out explanations the more you'll begin to notice if your explanations seem repetitive in that you'll notice that you keep having to write out explanations for "flaw types with abstractly worded answer choices" or "lengthy parallel reasoning types replete with formal logic". You'll just start to notice yourself having to do this with similar types of LR arguments.

#25 Question:

Line 20 of the passage mentions just compensation being eroded, but doesn't the jury set this level of compensation which would imply that they intended the plaintiff to receive a certain dollar amount, which would finally be eroded by a lawyer's fee coming from that? Their intentions do matter, no?

I chose E under timed conditions, but I'm justifying it's incorrectness not based on the irrelevance of the jury's intention - which I argue is relevant - but on the notion that we aren't given information about jurors even thinking about what the lawyer should receive in these kinds of cases. We know they think about what the plaintiff receives (this is suggested, but who else awards the money in a case like this, so is this not a reasonable assumption to make on my part?) but we aren't told about whether they also think about what the lawyer should receive and that's where this answer choice goes too far. What do you all think? Is my reasoning sound? #help

You're essentially saying that if a necessary condition is affirmed, its sufficient condition must also be affirmed which is something we know we can't do because there could be other necessary conditions involved that aren't mentioned in the stimulus.

By applying fertilizer (FA), we can't infer that (SPW -> FB) like you mentioned, because there could be other necessary conditions involved with planting seeds in the winter in addition to fertilizer being applied that must occur before the flowers can blossom.

Maybe you have to water the plants too. Maybe you have to plow the land before you plant the seeds. There could be other necessary conditions in addition to fertilizer being applied which is why your translation doesn't work. We just know that if you plant seeds in the winter AND they blossom, along with all the other potential necessary conditions being satisfied above, we know that fertilizer being applied was among them.

Check out the second and third sentences. The inference behind the verbiage is that 51% of the largest number ever, will always be greater than 50% of any smaller number.

For my explanation to make sense, we first have to agree that more cookbooks were sold last year than in any previous year. The stimulus doesn't explicitly say this, but I took the pairing of the first and second sentences to mean this. If anyone disagrees, let me know because I'm not 100% sure this is the correct interpretation (I'm thinking the second sentence would mean the same thing if we changed it by tacking on, "...than in any previous year," to the end.

Secondly, I wanted to change the wording of the phrase, "a cookbook not intended for beginners," to, "intermediate cookbook." I hate mouth-full terms and it's just easier to reference, "intermediate cookbook."

Finally, we have the second and third sentences really just saying, "There were more cookbooks sold last year than in any previous year, and for the first time ever, most of these were intermediate cookbooks." The 'first-time-ever' reference implies that in all the years prior to last, less than most of these were intermediate cookbooks and if you add this to what we already know which is that there are more cookbooks last year than ever before, we know we sold more intermediate cookbooks last year than ever before which is what, A, says, and what my first paragraph above mentions in a more abstract manner.

This made a lot more sense in my head...

Thanks @ !

Understood on the contrapositive/converse explanation. I believe Powerscore calls it "mistaken" because in the context of conditionality; if given A implies B and then we're given B by a premise, it would be "mistaken" - at least logically - to conclude A. We'll leave that alone, though, since for one, I'm not trying to adulterate the forums with P-score terminology which might complicate things, and two that's something everyone can agree on!

I wanted to touch on the conditionality vs causation debate. I just realized that I was confusing something said about causal conclusions with causal premises. Causal conclusions carry with them the assumption that there aren't other causes to the effect, thereby rendering them flawed. For example, I got sick after eating shrimp and grits. Therefore the shrimp caused my sickness. I'm assuming the grits didn't make me sick and therein lies the flaw.

However, the actual causal relationship between A and B (more specifically, A causes B ), and knowing that A doesn't always have to cause B - thereby differentiating it from a sufficient condition - applies to causal premises and that's the distinction I failed to make. I agree. A causing B, when expressed in a premise, could lead to sometimes A not causing B in exceptional cases.

Thank you @ ! I meant to say I thought this was a mistaken negation flaw, NOT a mistaken reversal.

I thought the flaw was stating that since neutering usually leads to improper bone development and that definitely ("in turn leads to" implies a causal result every time) leads to arthritis problems later on, then concluding that, "not neutering will solve this problem," is flawed logic, since there could be other reasons for why a dog has arthritis problems (i.e. there could be more than one sufficient condition).

However, I think you both are correct in that this stimulus is wrong on both counts: one due to my misunderstanding of "protect", and secondly, the weakness of the language doesn't make way for universal conditional statements.

Not sure why, but JY's mentioning of me and Julio tearing shit up at a party made me bust out laughing.

Anyway, it took me a while to realize the second sentence wasn't imperative to the argument. It really just gives us a causal form of the first conditional statement (which is a level of analysis unnecessary to getting this question correct). I was trying to figure out how the hell that mapped out onto a preexisting flaw. The actual flaw of intending something that is just a mere consequence to an action didn't hit me until I came back to the problem.

The lawgical implication stems from, "necessarily accompanies." This is the only indicator phrase in the whole sentence so that's where your focus should lie. Next, determine which variable that phrase is modifying. I.e., which of the two variables is that phrase talking about; A or B?

Once you determine which variable that phrase is talking about, next decide what it means to necessarily accompany something else? I.e. are you on the left side of the conditional arrow (sufficient) or the right side of the arrow (necessary). I think only one of these is obvious...

You should now have a good idea of which one of the above interpretations is right. If I were you, I'd lean heavily towards your hunch.

@ Oh wow, excuse the typo! My comment should have had the "ski-related" incidents going from a hypothetical 30 to 12, not the alcohol-related incidents. My comment must have been mad confusing.

Either way, I agree in that the relationship given is one way and won't allow us to infer anything about alcoholic consumption.

I think you had it right in that the author is saying that capricious enforcement is unlikely. He justifies this prediction by saying that although capricious enforcement could occur, since some acts are illegal according to some overly broad law, legislative oversight would prohibit that from happening a lot, since presumably, such acts which were never meant to be outlawed specifically and therefore wouldn't be pursued. This would keep the metaphorical agency focused on the conduct for which the law was intended to prohibit.

We're asked to weaken the politician's argument. Its structure is based on an analogy between two industries: the national parks and the telecomm industry. We then are told that doing something - privatizing - to the telecomm industry brought a benefit by way of allowing competition among companies, which brought cheaper prices and better services - and so privatizing the national parks will bring a benefit to visitors as well.

The assumption among a majority of analogous argument structures, is that what worked in one scenario, will work in the same way in another. In this case the benefit in the telecomm industry consisted of allowed competition and that same benefit will manifest itself in the national parks industry as well - in the same way - so competition will be allowed in the national parks.

Our job is to eliminate that "competition" link which is the one thing connecting the benefit in the telecomm industry to the benefit that is argued for in the national parks if privatization is adopted. E eradicates this competition component by saying it'll be much less in the national parks, thereby weakening the analogy. In other words, there is a stark difference in the two industries so the analogy isn't as analogous as the politician thought.

I think E is saying the opposite of what we need. Here's what I mean. We are told that our minds make up images for what our eyes see by forming mental constructs. We are also told that these mental constructs are usually accurate, but in the case of mirrors, they aren't. This is the theory of how our primary perceptions work. Our "understanding" of how primary perceptions work has to do with what I mentioned above - that our minds form mental constructs of the world indirectly. Our understanding of this is just knowing that.

What our minds do in the case of a mirror is actually a great example of this, so this front-to-back phenomenon really serves as an example of our minds doing this. An example of a theory certainly doesn't interfere with our understanding of that theory. It does the opposite. It supports our understanding of a particular theory by providing us with an example.

The example, however, is just one where our minds have it wrong, since mirrors are different than most objects in the world.

I'm not sure there are cookie cutter structures specific to Art and Law, but if you try and read from the author's perspective throughout the entire passage, regardless of subject, you'll find them a lot easier to digest.

Myungsook says converting observations into numbers is the hardest and last task and can only be done when you have thoroughly explored the observations themselves. That sentence implies that careful observations (to be synonymous with "thoroughly exploring the observations") occur before the observations are converted into numbers. In other words, these carefully considered observations are not stated precisely in numerical terms yet, since by the time you are considering them, according to Myungsook's timeline, they will not be converted into quantitative terms - which is to come later since the task is so difficult.

I feel like my response was poorly worded, but I'm going to let it ride in the hopes that it made some sense.

But, like I said, this begs the question as to what type of movement creates the error?

I think the kind of movement that creates the error you're referring to is the kind that occurs without their being light to hit the molecule before the movement happens. If a temperature increase causes more non-light movement to occur, we would then have the case where more movement is occurring without their being light to provoke it, thereby increasing the instance of error.

You might be wondering why I'm deeming movement without light an error at all, but I'd argue that it is stated for us in the stimulus by the statement, "...rhodopsin molecules sometimes change shape because of normal molecular motion, thereby introducing error into the visual system."

We can ignore the math - sort of - and get this question right!

I think the main thing to focus on is how the change in rate (regardless of whether we're talking about gas price or electricity rate) affects us, assuming we're using the "better" product. In the stimulus, let's assume we're using the upgraded efficient vehicle that costs more. In a.c. B, let's assume we're using the better freezer. Lastly for C, let's assume we're using the Roadmaker.

In the stimulus, if we're using a fuel-efficient car, that car is as valuable on a unit-by-unit basis as the price for a gallon of gas. So if gas prices are high and we have to visit the gas station less often, we get to keep more money in our pockets. Our savings go up, and therefore the value of our fuel-efficient car goes up because we're saving more money by using it. If gas prices drop and we're only saving a tiny amount of money per gallon, then the value of the car goes down. That's why we have to drive more to reach the same amount of saving. If we're saving less due to lower gas prices per mile driven, we'd have to drive more to reap the same saving amount. The drop in rate in this case, hurts us. Keep this relationship of being hurt by the drop in rate in mind because that's what differentiates C from B.

B and C are similar, but they are dissimilar in how we, the consumer of the better product, are impacted. We need the rate change to hurt us, not help us and B's rate change helps us. That's not what we want in the context of this parallel question. If we are using the better product as we are in B (the better freezer), which uses up more electricity, then a drop in electricity rate would help us. The conclusion is actually spot on.

In C, the better Roadmaker vehicle uses less staff, so it's value is derived from the amount of wages being saved per worker, since we don't need to hire as many people. However, if labor is dirt cheap, then the value of using a product that doesn't require as much labor lessens, since its value, again, is derived from the per worker cost saved from not having to hire that worker. We're saving less in a world with cheap labor. It's conclusion also gets this wrong, concluding the opposite of what actually happens, just like the one in the stimulus does.

I like how there are different ways to view stimuli!

I interpreted this as a "percentage" to "absolute amount" error. We know the rate went from 10% to 25%, but that doesn't mean the nominal/actual amount of those injuries increased. We would actually expect that if less injuries are happening on the slopes due to the technology increase.

Maybe in 1950 there were 3 of these alcohol-related injuries out of 30 total injuries (10%), but due to the tech update, those total injuries now amount to only 12, with the alcohol-related injuries remaining at 3 (25%).

@ of course! He'll be missed.

I think of Purpose answers as the low-res summaries of MP answers

e.g.

MP a.c. - The author thinks the economists are wrong in assuming the manufacturing industry will soon be gone in America.

Purpose a.c. - To refute an assumption held by a group of people

I'd talk to attorneys if I were you to get an idea of why people hate BigLaw and whether that much debt is justified for that kind of school.

I personally think people hate BigLaw, not necessarily for the hours or hostile work environment, but because of how boring it is at times. Checking page numbers and formatting the table of contents until midnight probably stiffens any excitement you first get with your initial paychecks, especially for the kind of person attracted to law school (intellectually curious, philosophy-loving, creative thinking, literature analytic,etc. types)

In terms of that amount of debt being justified, I've been told that you can service it with a BigLaw paycheck just fine (granted you land a job which is where the risk is involved), but as others have alluded to, make sure you actually want to practice BigLaw for the foreseeable future. Make sure you go in with accurate expectations and choose a firm that fits you socially. Those things matter.

I was thinking that since we had the same necessary condition for both conditional statements, we could say that a necessary condition for one sufficient condition, is mistaken to be sufficient for the other. I guess D's answer choice is strictly talking about losing things and doesn't allow us to infer that its "sufficient" word is referencing "irritable".

Y'all are too kind :smile: