Student Question

How should I understand from the question that the tally includes previous year’s surplus? This was not clear to me when I was trying the question.

Tutor Response

I think there are a few clues that can help you identify this fact!

1. The tally is made up of the country's total available coal supplies. Let's think about what "available" means using a comparison. Imagine you earn $500 this week at your job. If I asked you how much money you had available, you wouldn't just tell me $500. You would tell me about all of the money you have, whether it's from last week or last year.

2. They tell us how much money was left over in 1990 compared to 1991. Why would this information be relevant unless it was factored into the equation? If you are ever struggling to answer a question, and there is information that you haven't yet used, try to think about how that information could be relevant to the question. You might discover that you've been thinking about the question in the totally wrong way!

Sometimes, we will miss important information. But careful reading of the stimulus and higher-level test-taking strategies can help us find the answer.

Student Question

Why am I questioning whether wanting to do something is of importance? In my head I am thinking, maybe they do not want to but they feel a need to. I think this answer choice is obviously the best, but there is a hesitancy for me here.

Tutor Response

I see what you're saying. But is it possible that even if they are unhappy to do so, if they feel a need to and decide to, that still means they want to.

Take, for example, the trolley problem — a classic philosophical thought experiment. You can either let a trolley run over 5 people, or pull a lever, causing the trolley to switch tracks and run over just one person. No empathetic person would take joy in pulling the lever. But if they think they are obligated to, and choose to do so, they still want to make that choice. In summary, I don't think "wanting" to do something necessarily means you are happy about it.

Even if you disagree with this reasoning, though, I think this is a semantic confusion, and I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you can decisively eliminate the other 4 ACs, you can be confident that AC D is the best answer.

Student Question

Need additional assistance on how to translate the argument.

Tutor Response

Of course! Abstracting the argument can be super challenging. Let's break this argument down into formal logic.

No one who works at Leila's Electronics has received both a poor performance evaluation and a raise.

Work at Leila's Electronics --> not poor performance OR not raise

Lester has not received a raise...

not raise

...so it must be that he has received a poor performance evaluation.

poor performance

Let's put this all together!

Work at Leila's Electronics --> not poor performance OR not raise

not raise

--------------------

poor performance

Diagramming this argument makes it significantly easier to spot the flaw: just because he has not received a raise doesn't mean he has received a poor performance. An OR can be inclusive. In other words, both parts of an OR statement can be true.

Student Question

I still dont understand A for this one. Even if there is a negative correlation between smokers who drink caffeine and HD and smokers who don’t drink caffeine and HD, there could still be some correlation between caffeine and HD itself. Maybe smoking caffeine users use it for different reasons/in different ways than then general public.

Tutor Response

You're right — it's possible that there is a correlation between caffeine and heart disease. However, we don't know this for sure. Just because A is correlated with B and A is correlated with C doesn't mean that B is correlated with C.

Let's think of this with an example! Hot temperatures are correlated with ice cream sales and shark attacks. However, ice cream attacks and shark attacks are not correlated. How do we know this? Because if we compare ice cream sales to shark attacks when the temperature is consistent, the correlation disappears.

The same thing applies here. If we compare caffeine and heart disease when smoking is consistent, and there is no positive correlation, then we cannot draw our conclusion. The argument fails to take this into account. They fail to consider that it's possible that when smoking is consistent (i.e. everyone is a smoker), caffeine drinkers are actually less likely to develop heart disease than those who do not drink caffeine. This is contrary to our conclusion. Therefore, AC A is correct.

Student Question

Hello! I got this answer (AC D), but I’m confused about the P → C bridge, is “soley” a group 2 logical indicator? I thought this AC mapped out like “value of jewel should derive → aesthetic pleasure” and I think that kept/keeps confusing me. Thank you!

Tutor Response

I don't think formal logic is the best way to break this down considering this question does not heavily feature conditional reasoning. Let's just focus on the argument itself:

When the naked eye cannot distinguish between a real diamond and a counterfeit diamond, they bring the viewer equal aesthetic pleasure

-------------

Both jewels should be deemed of equal value

What is the gap? That the value is only determined by aesthetic pleasure. What if something else contributed to the value of the jewel? Then this conclusion would not follow. AC D best bridges the gap by ruling out these other potential factors.

In general, solely could be a group 2 indicator, so long as it means "only" in that context.

Student Question

I still don’t get why C is wrong. If true, it would break the logic chain even if not specific to humming.

Tutor Response

Good question! It doesn't break the logic chain unless it refers to humming, and we just don't know if it does. Let's think of this with an example. What if the involuntary action in question is chewing loudly? Maybe Marianne isn't aware that she chews loudly. But who cares? Our argument is about humming and tennis. We don't care if someone breathes heavily, bites their nails, or performs any other involuntary action without being aware of it. Since there are so many ways this AC could be true without affecting the argument in the slightest, it is not a good weakener.

Student Question

I understand the logic and the flaw but having a hard time understanding how Answer Choice C correctly describes that flaw.

Tutor Response

Great question! Let's break this argument down. We are told that at least 1 out of 4 bicycle traffic accidents are caused by a failure to obey traffic laws. We are also told that inadequate bicycle safety equipment causes at least 1 out of 4 bicycle accidents. From this, the author concludes that bicyclists are at least somewhat responsible for at least 1 out of 2 bicycle accidents.

Where does the number 1/2 come from? The author is adding together the 1 out of 4 accidents caused by failing to obey traffic laws and the 1 out of 4 accidents caused by inadequate safety equipment. But what if some of these accidents were one and the same? In other words, what if some of these accidents were caused by both failure to obey traffic laws and inadequate safety equipment?

Let's think of this with some placeholder numbers. Imagine there are 100 bicycle accidents. 25 of them are caused by traffic laws and 25 of them are caused by safety equipment. But if 10 of those accidents are caused by both, then when we add the accidents together, they don't equal 50 accidents — they only equal 45 accidents (15 purely caused by traffic laws, 15 purely caused by safety equipments, and 10 caused by a combination of the two).

Evidently, if more than one factor can contribute to an accident, than we cannot be certain that these numbers are discrete. Therefore, we can't be sure they add up to over 1/2 of the bicycle accidents.

Student Question

Can you provide more context on PT136.S4.Q5? For each given stimulus isn’t the author’s claim perceived as True?

Tutor Response

You're right that we should always assume the premises are true. However, we don't need to trust the author's conclusion. We also don't need to trust claims from 3rd party sources. For example, if a premise states, "the director claims that sales are increasing", we don't need to trust that sales are actually increasing — we just need to trust that the director said they were.

In this stimulus, the author introduces a 3rd party claim (a famous artist once claimed that all great art imitates nature). From this, they conclude that if the famous artist is right, then any music that is great art would imitate nature. In other words, either the artist is wrong, or all great music imitates nature. Finally, they provide counter evidence to the artist's claim (most great music doesn't imitate anything).

In this argument, we don't need to assume the artist's claim is true. We only need to trust that the author made this claim.

Student Question

I liked A because I thought it was descriptively accurate- I understand how the analogy is flawed. But I don’t understand how failing to take this dissimilarity into account affects the argument. Even if the analogy is flawed (logicians need to be logical), you still have physicians as an exception. The conclusion isn’t that logicians don’t need to be logical.I also liked B because if physicians stood as the exception and they are not, the analogy comparing logicians to physicians would fall apart, meaning there are no exceptions. This would mean the conclusion would fail and would make the reasoning questionable.

Tutor Response

Let's think big picture about this argument. The author's claim is that sometimes, people don't need to practice what they preach. To illustrate this, they provide an analogy between logicians and doctors. However, if this is a bad analogy, then the evidence is no longer trustworthy. You're right that we still have one exception, even if it is a bad analogy, but we don't have exceptions (plural).

As for AC B, this wouldn't necessarily mean that the physician example is not good evidence. Maybe it's true that a physician with seriously deteriorated health might not be able to treat patients effectively. Surely, a physician on their death bed wouldn't be able to treat a patient. But this doesn't mean that the physician didn't have a healthy lifestyle. Therefore, we don't know if the the author's evidence is false. After all, the stimulus never says that a physician doesn't have to be physically healthy to treat patients.

Student Question

PT151.S3.Q18 Is “A” person logically equivalent to “every” person? I think in normal English it would be like a generalized statement that applies to every person, but here it seems to be less equivalent to every (or else answer choice B would be right)

Tutor Response

Your initial instinct is right! When this stimulus says "a person", they are in fact making a generalized statement. This doesn't mean that every single person's mood starts out happy, declines, and then improves again. Rather, it means that, in general, a person's mood will follow these changes.

B is incorrect, despite this. It's true that the stimulus ignores this possibility. However, this isn't a flaw. The evidence only focuses on people who do post words with "positive" and "negative" associations, so leaving out people who don't isn't a problem. After all, if those people do not make posts that indicate their mood, then we probably shouldn't use their social media posts to measure their mood. For example, if they just post pictures of their dog, their social media posts won't be super helpful. Why should we focus on them? Since AC B is not a flaw, it is not the correct answer.

Student Question

Hello! For AC E, I’m confused about the word “because” - wouldn’t that be introducing a premise? So that last line is a premise? Thank you!

Tutor Response

You're 100% right. "Because" is a premise indicator, and the final line is a premise. In fact, the entire AC is made up of premises! Since you are choosing which AC violates the principle, you (not the answer choice) are making the conclusion.

Student Question

I thought A could be correct because it says “After 4000 B.C., hundreds of new token forms developed, as a rise in industry boosted the token system” - how can we rule that out? I understand C as well but figured A was more evidenced because of this?

Tutor Response

When AC A says that "there were many tokens that designated more than one type of item", they don't mean that there were lots of tokens that each conveyed a different meaning. Rather, they mean that there were many tokens that by themselves represented multiple different items. For example, imagine there was one token that had both a symbol that meant "sheep" and a symbol that meant "metal". There is no support that such a token existed, so we can rule AC A out.

Student Question

I am really confused on this question! The conclusion is that most mail takes longer than 2 days to arrive. Why does this mean that a large proportion of mail must be incorrectly addressed? This majority of mail that takes longer than 2 days to arrive could be taking long because it is damaged. Why does it HAVE to be because its incorrectly addresssed?

Tutor Response

Great question! Almost all correctly addressed mail arrives within 2 business days. Despite this, most mail takes longer than that to arrive. Why would that be? It could be damaged, like you said. But this is already accounted for in the stimulus! Because again, even despite the damage, almost all correctly addressed mail still arrives on time. So what else could explain this? Only one thing: a large proportion of the mail is incorrectly addressed. This isn't to say that that mail isn't also damaged in transit. We have no idea. All we know for sure is that lots of the mail must be addressed improperly.

Student Question

I see why B is correct here but I overlooked it initially because it says to interfere with someone, so I thought it is a jump/assumption by promoting a folk remedy that a person is interfering? To me this doesn't make sense because it's a big jump. and I understand why d is wrong because we dont care about the responsibility of the person, we are trying to establish harm and what's considered harm. Also what makes E wrong as well.

Tutor Response

You're right to be cautious of making big assumptions. However, this argument does not require a jump. We are explicitly told that if you promote a folk remedy, people who are convinced by you will continue using that remedy in place of treatments that would help them. In other words, you are interfering with their receiving proper treatment. To interfere simply means to prevent a process from continuing or being carried out properly, which is necessarily occurring in this stimulus.

AC E is wrong because our conclusion has nothing to do with responsibility. We need to justify the fact that promoting a folk remedy causes harm — not that you are responsible for the harm caused. This principle therefore has no effect on our actual conclusion.

Student Question

After watching the video, I see why B is correct, but I still don’t see why E is a bad answer, so much so that the video didn’t bother explaining it.

Tutor Response

Great question! E is wrong because the argument does not make any causal claims. The stimulus doesn't say that "having a university degree causes you to adopt a cat". It simply asserts a correlation: that people who hold university degrees are more likely to have a cat than a dog. Since there is no causal claim, it does not matter that the author ignores the possibility that two things can be correlated without being causally connected. This simply is not relevant to the argument.

An argument that commits this flaw would take a correlation to necessarily mean that two things are causally related. Take the following argument, for example:

There are more murders on days where people buy more ice cream. Therefore, buying ice cream must cause people to commit murders.

Since the argument does not do this, AC E is wrong.

Student Question

for AC B if you negate it then it will break the conclusion, because is someone else discovered it first then the conclusion that they discovered it independently doesn't track because then 3 people discovered it.

Tutor Response

It's great that you're negating. This is an awesome strategy to reliably tackle necessary assumption questions!

When the stimulus says that a person "independently discovered" calculus, it doesn't mean that they are the first person to ever discover it. It simply means that they discovered it without outside help. For example, a child could "independently discover" that flowers grow when you water them. This doesn't mean that the child is the first person to ever discover this fact — it just means that they weren't told this fact, and still came to this conclusion.

Therefore, it does not matter if a 3rd person independently discovered calculus. It's possible that 100 people independently discovered calculus, so long as they didn't share substantive information about these findings with each other prior to the discoveries. Thus, this does not destroy the support structure of the argument, and consequently is not a necessary assumption.

Student Question

Could you explain a realistic approach to a question like this? I feel a bit confused on how to approach in a timed environment, as both Kevin and JY caution against diagramming, but then ultimately do in order to explain the question (which I totally understand the utility of, but is leaving me feeling a little lost). I have missed a few questions like this or that have a rule type aspect during timed tests, but get them correct on BR and understand them crystal clear. I try not to diagram in order to save time, but I think that is where I am getting messed up. Thank you.

Tutor Response

I definitely don't think a diagram is necessary for this question, so long as you can keep track of the conditions. It might be helpful to highlight by rule. For example, you could highlight "right to clear", "covered more than 24 hours after", and "it will bill" in the same color. You could also highlight "48 hours", "will receive citation", and "result in fines unless" in the same color. This helps to keep track of the separate rules and their conditions.

After that, you just need to check each AC against the stimulus. For AC A, when you see "the city clears", you know the first highlight color is relevant. This tells us that the person will be billed, since this happens 100% of the time when the city clears a sidewalk. When you see "50 hours", you know the second highlight color is relevant as well. This tells us that the person will be given a citation, since this happens 100% of the time when it takes 48+ hours to clear the sidewalk. Therefore, we can tell that AC A is wholly supported by the stimulus.

If this isn't helpful, then this might be a question where you need to dedicate the time to diagram.

Student Question

Because digital music replaced LPs, digital music has no visual art? I thought the conclusion is about rock music?

Tutor Response

You are right that the conclusion (that rock music has nothing going for it) is about rock music. However, it is also referring to visual art. How do we know that rock music has nothing going for it? Because the only thing that was good about rock was the album covers of rock LPs. And now, the production of rock LPs has almost ended. In other words, the only good thing about rock — the visual art — is almost gone.

But what if digital music also has visual art? Then rock music should still have something going for it. This is why AC A is a necessary assumption.

Student Question

For answer choice D, wouldn’t it have to be greater, not just at least as great?

Tutor Response

You are totally right — it will be greater. That's why AC D is supported. We know that as you progress upward in the stratosphere, the temperature increases. Therefore, the temperature at every point in the stratosphere must be at least as high as the temperature at the top of the troposphere. Even if you think we can take AC D further, it doesn't make it wrong. In other words, even if you think the temperature must be greater, this is still encompassed within "at least as great". For example, if there is a fruit bowl with 5 fruits in it, and I say, "there are at least 3 fruits in the bowl", my statement is still correct. As a result, AC D is still supported, even if we could make an even more extreme supported claim.

Student Question

I do not understand why we know that the necessary condition implies the two sufficient conditions. This does not make sense to me.

Tutor Response

Great question! Let's break down the argument into formal logic:

fail to appear on time OR miss two general meetings --> suspended

suspended

not miss two general meetings

---------------------------------

fail to appear on time

This argument is flawed. Just because failing to appear on time or missing two general meetings leads to suspension doesn't mean that there is no other way to get suspended. For example, assaulting another member would surely lead to getting suspended. We can't say that just because someone is suspended, they must have either failed to appear on time or missed two general meetings.

The argument is assuming just that. The stimulus argues that because the officer was suspended, then they must have either failed to appear on time or missed two general meetings; since they did not miss two general meetings, it must be true that they failed to appear on time. This is confusing the sufficient and necessary condition.

Student Question

If D talked about the temperature change, would it have made a big difference? How would you approach this question?

Tutor Response

Yes, I think it would make a difference! We know that cosmic rock is entering the Earth's atmosphere, but we don't know how this impacts the temperature. If the AC specified that the Earth would get colder when this happened, it would better support our conclusion.

I would approach this question by looking for and eliminating answer choices that strengthen the relationship between the presence of dust and colder temperatures. Any AC that bridges these two phenomena will strengthen our causal claim. Since A, B, C, and E all support this relationship, and D doesn't, I would chose D.

Student Question

Is a good rule of thumb in the future that an answer choice that restates something from the stimulus is neutral? Still trying to figure out what to really take from this question.

Tutor Response

You are totally right – if an AC restates something from the stimulus without adding anything, then it will not strengthen the argument. However, this isn't the problem with AC A.

The problem with AC A is that it doesn't make our conclusion more likely to be true. We don't care if UV-B is the only radiation that can damage genes. Imagine that another type of radiation that is blocked by ozone (let's just call it UV-A) can also damage genes. Does this matter? Is our conclusion now less likely to be true? No. We don't care how ozone depletion causes the decline of amphibian populations. We just care that it does.

The most important takeaway from this question is that on weakening and strengthening questions, you should focus on the conclusion itself. If an AC strengthens/weakens the premises in a way that strengthens/weakens the conclusion, then it could be the right answer. However, if it has no impact on the likelihood of the conclusion being true/false, it will not be correct.

Student Question

In the case of option c, the number of issues has steadily increased since 1980 and recently reached its peak. Nevertheless, is it wrong to conclude that paying low wages is undesirable? In the case of option b, I thought that training could be valuable even for reporters who have been working for more than 10 years.

Tutor Response

You're probably right that training could be valuable, even after 10 years. But there are certainly diminishing returns. 10 years in, you likely aren't learning anything that new from doing routine assignments. Remember, weakening ACs don't need to make the conclusion necessarily false; they just have to make it less likely to be true. Surely, if an employee has been working at a company for 10 years, it would be less justified to pay them less with the excuse that assignments provide valuable training.

As for AC C, this just has no impact on whether the pay is justified or not. Who cares if the newspaper was selling more copies? Who caries if the circulation is plateauing? Unless this leads to additional benefits for the employees, which the argument does not say, it has no relevance to whether the pay is sufficient or not.

Student Question

How is the premise a contrapositive with the words like “no” and “without”? I understand that they are double negatives and cancel out, but the “no one is allowed” and “without subsidy” match the conclusion. To me, it seems like an A>B, B>A

Tutor Response

This question is super tricky, so I definitely empathize with your confusion. Let's translate the stimulus into formal logic:

It is an absurd idea that whatever artistic endeavor the government refuses to support it does not allow...

(absurd) no support --> no allow

...as one can see by rephrasing the statement to read: No one is allowed to create art without a government subsidy.

allow --> support

To translate this second part, I wrote "government subsidy" as "support", since this is what a government subsidy is. This sentence is a group 4 conditional because of the "no", which means that we can pick either term, negate it, and make it the necessary. If we negate "without a government subsidy", it becomes "with a government subsidy" (aka support). Remember, the "no" at the start doesn't mean that the first term means not allow. The no just tells us how to translate the sentence into formal logic. It doesn't refer to that term in particular.

Student Question

Why would E be considered no change/different from D given the last paragraph about things changing in this regard?

Tutor Response

The final line of this passage states, "Canadian courts will gradually recognize that native Canadians, while they cannot demonstrate ownership as prescribed by the notion of private property, can clearly claim ownership as prescribed by the notion of collective property, and that their claims to movable cultural property should be honored." The correct answer should therefore describe a reason that courts currently decide against native Canadians, but will be less likely to use as evidence in the future.

AC D does just that. An inability to prove ownership due to a lack of documentation, as discussed at the start of the last paragraph, is a reason that courts currently decide against native Canadians. The passage suggests, however, that these claims are more likely to be honored in the future, even though they cannot demonstrate ownership with documentation.

While it's true that native Canadians do not belong to a tribe that uses the legal concept of private property, this has never been a reason that cases are decided against them. The passage does not say that they are disadvantaged in court proceedings because they don't personally use this legal concept. It simply states that because they don't have this concept, they don't have written documentation of their ownership. In other words, the courts don't care about this fact; they care about a consequence of this fact. Since this has never been a compelling reason to decide against the native Canadians, it's not possible for it to become less compelling.