I went into this question pre-phrasing an NA that sounded like there are no birds with curved claws that are not tree dwellers (curved claw-> tree dweller).

I almost picked C because it sounded like that, but C is saying the opposite. C tells us that curved claws are necessary for tree dwellers. If we negate C, saying, there are some tree-dwelling birds without curved claws, then that has no effect on the argument. Okay cool, there are some birds with flat claws who are tree-dwellers, but we do not have to assume this at all in order to believe that if the Archeopteryx had curved claws, it must have been a tree-dweller.

It took an extensive analysis of the stimulus to understand why E is correct and you won't get there till you identify the assumptions and terms in the stim.

• Over the last 25 years, the avg price paid for a new car has steadily increased. This means that that 25 years ago, of ALL NEW CARS SOLD, the average price was say 15k.

• ... in relation to avg individual income. This means that the proportion or the fraction representing new car price / avg income has increased. So 25 years ago, the average price of a new car was 15k and average individual income was 40k. For avg price paid for new cars to increase in relation to income means that proportion is steadily getting higher each year. So 15k/40k (37.5%), then 20k/43k=46.5%. The average price of a new car is taking up more of the average income (so we think).

Remember, we don't attack the truth of the premises. The proportion has increased and we have to accept that. What we can question though, is the assumption behind the proportions- the average price for a new car represents the average price paid by for a new car by an INDIVIDUAL. In order to casually say, "oh yeah, we are just going to infer that if the proportion has steadily increased, that means when my uncle an individual goes to a buy a new car today he will be spending more than an individual spent on average 25 years ago, you would have to assume that individuals are the only ones buying new cars. Why? Imagine a big pizza where each slice represents a category of people buying new cars.

• Some slices represent individual buyers.

• Other slices represent businesses, governments, and rental fleets.

The amount of pepperoni on each slice represents the price paid for a new car.

Now imagine that 25 years ago:

• most slices belonged to individuals,

• and almost every slice had around 3 pepperonis.

So when we average the whole pizza, we get:

• about 3 pepperonis per slice.

Today, however, something changes:

• the business/government slices now have HUGE amounts of pepperoni,

• maybe 15 or 20 pepperonis each,

• while the individual slices still only have 3 or 4.

Now when we average the whole pizza, the average pepperoni per slice shoots way up.

But does that mean the individual slices suddenly have way more pepperoni?

No.

The overall average increased because the non-individual slices became much more pepperoni-heavy and make up a larger share of the pizza. It's the same thing with this argument. If sales to individuals make up a smaller proportion of all new-car sales, then we don't know if its going to be the case that when an individual goes to buy a new car today and average new-car prices and income have increased, that they will be spending more money.

Here are the actual numbers instead of pepperoni. Twenty-five years ago, on average, individuals spent 15K on a new car and they made 40K (37.5%). Today, the average price of a car is 60K (because governments and businesses have driven that price up when they buy really nice fancy cars) , but when individuals go to buy a car, they only spend 20K on average and average income is 60K (33.3%). In this scenario, individuals are spending less in relation to their income than individuals did 25 years ago.

This is dreadfully long, but I hope this helps. This is one of the hardest questions I have taken so far, but it's also brilliant.

When you first read D, it is tempting to be critical of it on the grounds of, "Okay, cool you have more fire pits in caves in the early period than in the period, but what does that tell me about the number of lamps?" You have to understand how the stimulus introduces the function of lamps. Lamps are used for light in caves. It is a perfectly reasonable inference to draw that a greater number of firepits (which provide light) would diminish the need for lamps in caves.

Similar to a strengthen/weaken question, the burden of proof is not that high. We don't need each answer to be an SA that offers total validity to an argument about why there were more lamps in the late period. The key is recognizing that each answer that is capable of contributing an explanation works with the reasoning structure of the argument. That is why E is wrong and A, B, C, and D are capable of some kind of explanation.

A) - lamps count as artifacts and if they are are harder to identify in the early period compared to the later period, that may explain the skewed distribution. There may be just as many, it's just hard to identify them because they resemble a rusted piss bucket.

B)- Similar to AC A. We have found more archaeological sites from the late period than the early period. Turns out the early period cultures were super protective and buried their lamps hundreds of feet below ground.

C)- More efficient can reasonably imply greater production of lamps. Why? Efficiency = ease. This is more related to quantity than variety of lamp.

D)- See above.

E)- Has nothing to do with the reasoning. Imagine more lamps means they take way longer to make because the production process is inefficiently split between eight small workshops. The stimulus has nothing to do with variety so E doesn't explain shit.

@soleluna883 I totally get you. I think because there are so many question types and nuances to each question, it's second-nature to drift away from the argument. That's one of the biggest battles in the LSAT- sticking to what is there between the premise and conclusion.

My thought process the first time I took it was to search for an alternative explanation which is why I actually chose A the first time I saw this question. I thought to myself, well maybe Moore's satisfied customers (the ones who didn't complain) have thousands of raving reviews. That's something that would cast doubt on the conclusion. But, that process is straight up weaken/strengthen strategy and it can screw you over on flaw questions if it comes at the cost of missing the weak support structure. I did have an intuitive sense that the argument didn't consider if there were any other plumbers in town, but I thought that alternative explanation was strong. The intuition that we want to develop, I think, is more about where does the premise not fully support the conclusion. Finding those loopholes or assumptions are where the meat is. The alternative explanation will only make sense after you spot where the support is weak. Hope that helps and let me know what you think.

@soleluna883 The flaw lessons talk about this and from what I see, it generally isn't a good strategy to rely on what does the argument overlook. Arguments overlook a hundred things. This argument overlooks whether Moore's wife started cheating on him and it negatively impacted his ability to be a good plumber for a few months, but overall he's a decent, reliable plumber. It's silly, but the point is, the argument doesn't have to mention every possibility. Our job on this question is to spot the alternative hypothesis/reasoning/evidence that the argument overlooks which make the conclusion unsupported. B is the right answer because it gets at the relationship between the support and the conclusion. The overlooked possibility I mentioned had nothing to do with the support. That's why it makes no difference. B, on the other hand, attacks the jump from "every complaint filed about a plumber's work was filed against Moore" to "there is good evidence that Moore is a poor plumber..."

I think your asking about why B describes the conclusion's shortcoming. If there are few or possibly zero other plumbers around, the evidence we have (100% of complaints are against Moore) doesn't say anything about Moore's work. It just says that he's the only plumber and he's bound to have a few unhappy customers.

I chose B over A and here is why. All the support in p4 for why I thought A might have been right falls under B. The author says, the ultimate difficulty with IR is that it defeats its whole purpose (a theory is supposed to acquire knowledge and it renders that task impossible). The critique of IR not truly being able to know an entity because of the difficulty to know all of its relationships is not based on the principle that entities must be defined in order to have an adequate theory. We are told in p2 and p3 that we can define entities by their relationships with other entities, but those relationships are not always significant enough to change an entity. If you think the author is basing the rejection of IR on the "prerequisite impossible to satisfy", then look to what the points to. It goes back to support the claim that IR defeats its own purpose of acquiring knowledge.

The question stem is asking for a principle that covers the author's argument against IR. All of the points that make AC A attractive are apart of those "consequences" that contradict the basic purpose of IR.

Woah, this turned my brain into mush for a second. AC A is the necessary assumption because it gives us the link that makes the conclusion make sense. If the most beautiful artworks are always the best, then it makes sense to say that beauty does not equal truth. Because the most truthful art is the same as the most realistic art. Sometimes, the most realistic art is not the best, thus sometimes the most truthful art isn't the best. But, if the most beautiful is ALWAYS the best, then it would be impossible to say that beauty = truth because we know of a situation where the most truthful art (the most realistic) is not the best art.

@RajwantKaur I was also swayed by C. It's tempting because you are looking for something in the argument that says following the advertisement's diet may not result in losing weight. I was thinking well, this study is about a group of people already trying to lose weight. How do we do the weight loss was a result of the diet and not a result of other things they might have been doing such as exercise in an effort to lose weight?

I think your question is asking would C be correct if it said that the people who ate more calories from protein rather than carbs and ate their biggest meal of the day for breakfast AND exercised lost MORE weight than those who exercised but didn't follow that same diet. The answer would still be no because the argument is still overlooking the fact that some people in the study may have followed the diet and still lost NO weight or maybe even gained weight. The premise that the conclusion is based on is about a very small subset of people. It's about those who lost the MOST weight. Okay so we know out of this unknown set of people who lost the most weight, they followed the more protein breakfast diet. However, it is still possible that some people followed the diet and didn't lose weight, even if they did exercise. The conclusion is that ANYONE who follows the diet will lose weight and we can't make an anyone claim based on a claim about a select group.

Those who lost the most weight did X is not the same as most people who lost weight did x. Also, most does not imply a more-more correlation. What I mean is based on the argument we can't say yet that the more you follow the diet, the more weight you lose.

I find it very helpful on questions like this to ask yourself what is missing or what link assumptions does the argument make. We know low-watt bulbs cost more and their advantage are enormous. The argument then concludes that everyone should use them. If you think of this as a PSA or SA question, we need a rule that says if something costs more and has massive advantages, then you should use it.

A- Separate the premise and conclusion. Premise- infers a factor is sufficient for a result

• Lost-> /Jenn (take the contrapositive to make it fit the premise)

• Jenn-> /lost

Conclusion: The absence of that factor is necessary for the result. Does the argument conclude that based on Jenn's presence in the past being sufficient for not losing, that the absence of her presence is NECESSARY for the OPPOSITE result. The opposite result of /lost is lost.

• Lost-> /Jenn

NO. The argument doesn't conclude that Jenn's presence is NECESSARY for anything. The argument is actually A's premise and conclusion reversed. It infers that the absence of a factor (Jennifer) is necessary for a result (losing) that the presence of that factor (Jennifer) is sufficient for the opposite result(winning) . I know this can feel like word vomit when you are translating everything, but A is wrong right when you read that the argument concludes that the absence of a factor is necessary. The argument's conclusion is about the presence of a factor being sufficient.

@LayalBazzi4 There's a lot of great strategies and each has it's time and place (flaw prephrasing, refusing to choose wrong answers, negation tests, abstracting, etc), but if you don't have the stamina to take in hundreds of arguments and thoroughly comprehend them, then there's no use beating yourself for not using strategies well enough.

Building up your stamina and valuing good studying over mindless word slop is invaluable. Simple habits like reading dense academic journals and pausing every 5 minutes to summarize what I just read have helped me have increased clarity in reading comprehension and argument analysis. Feel free to DM me if you want to chat about studying! I'd love to hear about your journey.

Finishing LR questions with a 5/5. Let's keep moving!

In order to quickly shallow dip eliminate ACs, I found it very helpful to immediately translate the stimulus argument into abstract concepts.

• uneducated pop-> weak ep

• educated pop-> committ

• conclusion: commit-> /weak ep

Abstract form:

• A->B

• /A-> C

• conclusion: C-> /B

So, as I read the ACs I translated into A, B, C form and it really helped on timing.

5/5! I can't stress how important it is to build the habit of explaining why every wrong AC is wrong like J.Y. does. It's completely changed my ability to see through the forest to the correct answer.

When I started this NA chapter, I felt like it made no sense to me. I hit a wall and burned out from unsustainable study habits. After a needed break and redeveloping my study strategy, I feel very confident in my understanding of necessary assumptions and scored 5/5.

Recently, as I read the ACs I ask myself, what does this has to do with the argument's support structure. Most of the trap answers here ignore the support structure of this argument that reasons if our application pool has shrunk, and we want to increase that pool, and students and parents correlate tuition and quality, and we charge a low tuition, then we should increase our tuition.

The power of A is that it says, the facts actually apply and are real. Negating this could mean the university doesn't have a shrinking pool or maybe students and parents actually don't correlate price and quality. If what was said bears no relevance anymore, then the argument is screwed. AC A works within the support structure in the stim.

The way I see this in actual questions is having a set of facts which might include the following: Most people have an irrational suspicion of pasteurized milk. Then the stimulus says the set of facts is proven to be false by some new study and it will ask us what conclusion can be made.

When a most statement is negated, you have to remember that it is improper to assume that most people don't. In this case, saying most people don't have an irrational suspicion leaves out the possibility that half of the population doesn't have the irrational suspicion. If half the population is suspicious and the other half isn't that is still a negated version of the original premise, "most people have an irrational suspicion of pasteurized milk."

Changing poopy diapers on time makes one a good parent.

So if change then good parent. change-> good parent.

To negate this or to deny the relationship we can say it is possible to change poopy diapers on time and not be a good parent - change and /good parent. This is different from the contrapositive form, because the contrapositive is still logically equivalent. Negation disrupts the relationship between two conditions. Its not the case that changing poopy diapers makes one a good parent. This means you can be in the sufficient condition without being in the necessary condition which if you think about is completely different from the rule I laid out in my first sentence.

All A are B. To negate this claim we must deny the relationship, not the existence of a set. The way we think about this relationship is the quality of being "all". To deny the relationship, we would say some As are not B.

All jackfruit is splendid. J->S

Negated: J <-s->/S meaning some jackfruits are not splendid.

Every time I see my baby cousins at the pool I think, we must teach them to swim.

@Dbarsemian Hey, so I believe it is general in the sense that we don't know what the harm is and if children are actually being harmed. All we know is that children consume more. That doesn't mean that they are being more harmed. They might be, but that's an assumption.

Also, what are the measures taken? Is using TMD a new measure the government implemented because a previous measure caused harm? We don't know. I think it's easier to see how E is wrong based on how it is really hard to trigger this sufficient condition because of the lack of information in the stimulus and how the conclusion in the end doesn't get us closer to knowing that the practice is unacceptable. The generalization is just a part of that bigger picture.

I was so stumped as to why B is the correct answer choice, but now it helps me to see it in this analogy.

Once a month, the well-being of Mr. Fat Cat's first-grade class is surveyed and some months, it is reported that well-being is very low. It is a well-known fact that bullying causes some students to feel sad and being sad is a symptom of low well-being in the class. Every day, Mr. Fat Cat's class goes to recess. Sometimes Mr. Fat Cat's shredded, intimidating brother, Mr. Yoked Cat supervises recess.

Furthermore, several students bully the rest of the class by calling them names and refusing to play with them. This causes those students to feel sad.

Answer choice B which says A-Acid slows down the deterioration of cognitive abilities which is a symptom of Alzheimers is like a key that unlocks the puzzle.

The equivelant of answer choice B in this Mr. Fat Cat argument is if I added this information: The presence of Mr. Yoked Cat on the days which he does supervise has the effect of restraining the bullies from their typical mean behavior. See how adding that information demonstrates the relevance of that premise to the idea that sometimes the students bully other students which causes sadness which causes low reports of well-being?

Pack your bags boys, it's breeding season. We're going home for a family reunion!

@landonekatz I agree. I was about to write down this comment, but saw you already did. I chose correctly, but felt like J.Y. missed the most clear reason why we can't choose E. Sure, I guess it is possible that the antibiotic is in the exception, but that is much more confusing since the stem says no antibiotic right now is in that exception.

If my cigarettes are paid for, SIGN ME UP