"Purchase points when they're sold at a good price"

chefs kiss

The stim says that the relationship between allies became "more difficult" after the war because of economic negotiations. C almost says the opposite in that "agreement between them on economic matters is more easily reached", implying their relationship did not get worse and maybe even was improved after the war

Ditto. My only thought is that while what you said is an accurate implication or conclusion to be drawn from what Stephen said, taken literally he did not say that. He just said hey this thing happened sometimes and we filled in the rest. Therefore, Stephen isn't denying anything but rather implying that Zachary could have overlooked something.

Don't make unnecessary comparisons. Retail businesses do not affect bookstores as described thru either readership or profits. And bookstores being left unaffected tops it off. Explanation doesn't have to be a slam dunk, it can merely help one aspect of the puzzle.

I initially took D to say that by not commenting on the quotes the author/journalist allowed the reader/public to debate the issue for themselves and therefore it helped explain the trend. I see now this is a bit of a stretch assumption and that B lines up that reporters are reporting on more and more subjects but their knowledge base is lagging behind and requires less assumptions

Don't be like me. I couldn't see what needed explaining because I assumed that the increase in the conviction rate caused the decrease in car thefts; as in, because you're more likely to get caught less people are doing it

Read the stim like J.Y. does.

"Artists have different ways of producing (producing what?) contours and hatching, (okay) and analysis of these stylistic features (what features, oh producing contours and hatching) can (do what?) help to distinguish works by a famous artist (those two things can help tell artists' works apart) both from

forgeries (fakes) and from works genuinely by other artists (works mistaken as someone else's not meant to deceive as such)"

Yes, it's the indicator words. As someone who has taken the LSAT once already, you truly need to memorize them to quickly identify and map them. And no, causal logic is common in MBT questions, but it can appear in any question type. For example, in strengthening questions, the stim might say A caused B and the correct answer choice could say that C didn't cause B, therefore reinforcing that A caused B

Today is Decmber 31st, 1991, the day you tally our nation's total available coal supplies: the coal leftover from this year. You count 30 metric tons of coal. You think to yourself, "wow, last year today (December 31st, 1990), I tallied 50 metric tons of coal."

It's above your pay grade to go researching how much coal was mined each year, or how much was consumed. All you know is the total leftover.

So, how do we have less coal this year given what you know? Well, starting from 50 metric tons last year (1990) and ending up with 30 metric tons equals 20 less metric tons today than you had one year ago. To end up in this deficite, this year you must have overspent. In terms of coal, that means you mined less coal than you consumed, or in other words, you consumed more coal in 1991 (this year) than you mined (Answer Choice B).

Agreed. I'm more lost now than before

Yes. Let's use question 2.10 as an example:

"Unless the students study, they won't pass the exam."

J.Y. says to pick one idea, negate it, and make it sufficient. So I'll pick "students study" and negate that to get /S and I'll put "won't pass the exam" in the necessary to get /P (because it's easier to understand won't as a negation than saying in the positive. I didn't negate it though. To be clear I just translated it). So we get:

/S -> /P

P -> S

Likewise, if we had just substituted "unless" with "if not", we would get the same, but it seems more intuitive to me to read the sentence as "if not the students study, they won't pass the exam"

if not equating to negating "if". So if not students study = /S, and leaving the other alone but translating to make it easier to understand = /P.

You can do the same with without and until anytime you see them as a conditional.

As far as inclusive and exclusive "or" goes, the LSAT focuses on inclusive "or", so i'd go over this lesson again with a highlight on that, and always be thinking to yourself (in games especially), when you see an "or", that unless it says "but not both", that both is always a possibly. In other words, at least one, maybe both

Hope that helps!

Try reading without and unless as "if not". Helps a ton

The switch we're asked to make is not to change the necessary or sufficient condition to read as we did in the previous lesson, it's to translate for better compression only in English

Using your example from the previous lesson, we looked at the statement “Students are cited as late only if they arrive five minutes or more blahblahblah”

We translated this to lawgic: Late -> 5+ and /5+ -> /late

What we're asked to do in this lesson as well is to read the lawgic in English as an if,then statement. Meaning, "if you're late, then you arrived five minutes or more..." (Late -> 5+) and "if you did not arrive five minutes or more (after the bell or whatever), then you are not late (/5+ -> /late).

You tried to switch the lawgic to the if, then structure by saying “Students are cited as late if they arrive more than five minutes late.." but we don't know anything about what happens if you arrive more than five minutes late. We only know what happens when you're not more than five minutes late and what happens when you're late. That's because those are our sufficient conditions and they trigger something to happen.

Hope that helps!

Yes and no. As someone who finished the CC and is returning, you will always write down lawgic—even on test day

"Some cultivars of corn are much more closely related morphologically to sorghum than to most other cultivars of corn"

Wouldn't the two things actually be 1) some cultivars of corn and 2) most other cultivars of corn

The point of comparison is "more closely related morphologically to sorghum" or at least just "more closely related"

And the winner would be "some cultivars of corn".

"Generally accepted by the public" does not equate to "demonstrated to the satisfaction of all skeptics". The bars are very different. Waller thus days nothing about AC B.

I also saw someone say that Waller does not use the word skeptic, as proof that he has no opinion on it. While that works for this question, I'd note that because the question is implicit, the exact words might not be in the right answer anyways. If Waller said "accepted by everyone in the world" that would imply all skeptics and would not be cause to eliminate B. But because a general acceptance could mean 75% of the population, if even one skeptic is in the other 25% we can't assume the two mean the same population.

I think the issue with A is also that it assumes that the cultures didn't come up with them on their own. The interesting part about the study alludes to the idea that despite these groups being continents apart or hundreds of years removed, they still told/tell stories about the same things

The issue with E is that it doesn't really tell us anything. "Each candidate should be allowed to spend as much money on a political campaign as any other candidate choses to spend".

If politician A spends $100, politician B can also spend $100. But, if B increases to $200, A can spend $200—and on and on and on.

As someone else in the tread stated, E only tells us what they can spend, not what they cannot spend. And what they can spend is a moving limit that anyone can raise

For all question types, anticipating the right answer choice is the key to not getting tricked

Self-reminder that LSAT arguments are still arguments, meaning they are trying to prove a point. If we think about E alone, "it is very difficult to breed green carnations", we wonder why this matters—or maybe say so what? But if we think about A, "It is a good idea for florists to stock up on white carnations before St. Patrick's Day", we can see what they are trying to prove.

I use a code to keep track of and check my identifications:

Yellow - Conclusion

Orange - Context

Pink - Premises

Underline - transition words (but, however, etc.)

I don't highlight the first time I read it, but on the second pass. Might help!

Exactly. Plus, E is taking the critic's argument against advertising companies and instead saying that it is the critics who are committing this flaw.