Student Question

Does B essentially mean they took water to be sufficient? i.e. does “being the only necessary condition” imply they assumed it is both necessary and sufficient? thanks!

Tutor Answer

Yeah, this is pretty well put. I think that they assume that it's sufficient here, and if the answer were worded that way, I think this would be a much easier question. This is an example of a flaw question pointing out a secondary problem: not only are they treating a stated necessary condition as sufficient, they're ignoring any and all other necessary conditions that might be required for the development of life.

Classic LSAT stuff right here: the test could phrase the answer in an easier way, but they don't do that to challenge you. Well evaluated!

Student Question

What kind of flaw would this be under??

Tutor Answer

This is a tough one -- I would say it's almost a whole-to-part flaw, but not quite. It follows the same basic logical structure: we don't know the "whole" of what the author intended (the effects), therefore we cannot know that specific effects were not intended by the author.

It seems like it would basically be saying that, because we don't know whether a whole soccer team is good, we don't know whether a specific player on that team is good. That's a whole-to-part flaw, and it's pretty standard. The trick here is that it's about "knowledge" of a set of things, which makes it a little bit harder.

Great question!

Student Question

For AC(D). The written analysis provided mentions that the author is telling us that the anonymous writers are being hypocritical. How is this different from attacking the integrity of the anonymous writers, as mentioned in (D)?

Tutor Answer

This one is tricky, but here's my take: attacking integrity is different than accusing someone of being hypocritical. Accusing someone of being hypocritical doesn't mean you're accusing them of being unethical or bad -- it just means you disagree with the structure of their argument. Attacking someone's integrity is different -- you might be accusing them of making the argument in bad faith, or actively arguing for something that would be in their own best interest. The difference is that in one, you disagree with the structure of the argument but might still agree with the point (after all, I would argue that someone who lies saying "lying is bad" is hypocritical, but I would still agree with the underlying point).

Here, the author isn't accusing the writers of arguing in bad faith. Instead, he is saying that they're hypocrites, which isn't the same thing. The author might have a problem with their actions, but that wouldn't attack the underlying validity of the point the writers are making.

Student Question

I always really struggle doing the parallel questions under timed conditions. any tips?

Tutor Answer

The thing that worked for me when I was doing parallel reasoning questions was trying to generate my own hypothetical answer choice under time pressure. To do this, I would start by sorting the question -- that is, I would try to figure out what typical structure it follows.

Generally, parallel reasoning stimuli are either conditional or causal. The conditional ones were easier for me, because it was easier to see the structure and find an answer that mimicked it. However, if I decided that the stimulus was causal, I would then try to figure out how it was causal -- was it asserting causation on the basis of a correlation? Was it saying that when one thing stopped, another thing happened (inverse correlation)? Was it eliminating possibilities?

The next step for me was to cut time down as often as possible. That's a little bit trickier, but you have to find places to move efficiently. For me, that was always trying to be confident in removing answers. If I thought an answer was wrong, I would stick with my gut and get rid of it, and not think about it too hard.

The other option, of course, is to try to produce time for these questions by getting faster on the other question types. This is something I would practice by doing First Fifteen Drills: I would do the first fifteen questions of a section in fifteen minutes or less, giving me a full two minutes per question on the back ten (which is where the parallel questions are highly concentrated).

Student Question

i didnt pick d or e bc theyre confussing suff and necc

Tutor Answer

I disagree that AC (E) is confusing sufficient and necessary conditions. We know from the stimulus that:

• If this parking policy is unpopular with the faculty, then we should modify it. (If Unpopular w/ Faculty -> Modify)

• If it is unpopular among students, we should adopt a new policy. (If Unpopular w/ Students -> Adopt New)

• It is bound to be unpopular either with the faculty or among students. (Guaranteed to be either Unpopular w/ Faculty or Unpopular w/ Students)

AC (E) says that if this parking policy is popular with the faculty, then we should adopt a new policy. This is because if it is popular with the faculty, then it is not unpopular with the faculty. But we know that it either has to be unpopular with the faculty or unpopular with the students. Knowing that it is popular with the faculty guarantees it will not be popular with the students, and:

• If it is unpopular among students, we should adopt a new policy. (If Unpopular w/ Students -> Adopt New)

Student Question

Could you please explain B?

Tutor Answer

I'd be happy to explain AC (B) to you.

The argument concludes that the claim of the environmentalists should be dismissed without further consideration on the grounds that the environmentalists have raised environmental objections to virtually every development proposal brought before the council in recent years. This, according to the stimulus author, "indicates that their expressed concern for bird-migration patterns is nothing but a mask for their antidevelopment, antiprogress agenda."

Here's the thing, though: the argument is saying that the environmentalists' claim (that the development would be bad) is wrong. But all the evidence for that is about why the environmentalists are saying that. That would be like me arguing:

My friend John told me that I need to eat food. However, John is only doing that because he wants me to get food poisoning in advance of my important exam, which is graded on a curve. Therefore, what John said is clearly wrong.

Yeah, but John wasn't wrong about saying that I need to eat -- of course I need to! He might have had the wrong motivations, but that doesn't matter. That's not a valid argumentative tactic. You need to address what is said, not why it is being said.

That's what AC (B) describes, and it's the reason that the argument is flawed!

Student Question

I’m confused, why it is not C what is the difference between C and E the correct answer?

Tutor Answer

This is such a great question. I love this problem, and I'm glad I get the opportunity to talk about it here!

Okay, the place we have to start with this one is thinking about "grade ranges" (this will be important when you get to law school, too)! If I told you that 70% of the glass had at least a B-, that could mean two things:

(1) The overwhelming majority of the class had a B or better; or

(2) That entire 70% had a B-. That doesn't make functional sense, of course, because that's not what we would say in real life. However, it's logically sound, and that's what matters on this test.

Let's apply that principle to AC (C) versus AC (E). AC (C) says that most of the students received a grade higher than B minus. We know that:

• Most of the students who took Spanish 101 at the university last semester attended every class session.

• Each student who received a grade lower than B minus missed at least one class session.

So, to that end, we know that every student below a B- (meaning excluding that grade, and only talking about those with a C+ and lower) missed a class session. Logically, that might seem to mean that the entire class has higher than a B-, because most of the students attended every class session. However, that gets rid of the B- grade. You're now only talking about people with a B or better. We don't know that -- what we know is that they have at least a B-, which means that they could still have a massively high number of those grades.

AC (E) includes the B- level. It says that more than half of the students received a grade of B minus or higher, which is what we're looking for. We know that they were at least receiving a B-, but that doesn't give us leeway to cut out the B- part entirely.

Student Question

I literally cannot even understand how to break down the stimulus for question 25 in section 1 of PT 135. Even with the video explanation. The diagram is confusing me more I think. Can you break it down in other words or a different way?

Tutor Answer

This is a great question. I struggled with conditional reasoning when I was taking the test too, so I had to find a way to make it easier for myself.

Here's what I developed: you view the statements in the problem as rules, and you test your knowledge of those rules by asking questions about them.

So, let's do that here:

• All coffeehouses and restaurants are public places.

So, if I tell you that something isn't a public place, what do we know about it? Well, we know it can't be a coffeehouse or a restaurant -- both of those places are public, and they have to be!

• Most well-designed public places feature artwork.

Okay, so if I tell you that something doesn't feature artwork, then it's probably not a well-designed public place. I would also keep an eye on that "well-designed" part. I have a feeling it's going to come sneaking back in momentarily.

• If a public place is uncomfortable it is not well designed.

Pretty straightforward -- if I tell you that something is uncomfortable, that means it was not well designed. If I tell you it was well designed, however, that tells you that it was not uncomfortable.

• All comfortable public places have spacious interiors.

This means that if something is comfortable, it has a spacious interior.

Now we look for overlap between the rules. You'll notice that I've bolded "not uncomfortable" above -- that's important! The reason it's important is that we can use that to chain together some of the rules.

• All coffeehouses and restaurants are public places.

• If a public place is well designed, then it is not uncomfortable: translation, it is comfortable.

• If a public place is comfortable, then it has a spacious interior.

Notice how we now have a set of rules that flow from one to the other -- and we now have a conclusion: that if a coffeehouse or restaurant is well designed, then it has a spacious interior. That answer is best captured by AC (D).

Student Question

I would like to hear another route to solve this problem. I don’t think I fully understand the question, and that's why I did not get this answer right.

Tutor Answer

This is a great question. I think the first step in any complicated LSAT question is to sit down and really understand what the question is asking of us.

This question is asking us to find something that is a requirement for a group of people discussed in the passage (the scholars). So, what do we know about those scholars? We know:

• They have shown that close inspection of these documents resolves such doubts (about the reliability of documents) on two scores.

• (1) There are often multiple accounts [of very public events], allowing for cross-verification.

• (2) If the author is describing something that happened to them personally, you have to verify the story in other ways. Those other ways are asking whether there are "internal verifications within a text that suggest the author is describing a plausible sequence of events," and whether the character is "acting in accord with what is known of the writer's character."

So, it's clear from (2) -- above -- that one of the requirements to verify the validity of a personal narrative described by an author is that the characters must be acting in a way that's consistent with the author's personality. That's because if they weren't, there's a good chance the narrative isn't completely true.

Student Question

I am curious if this would have still been possible to get correct if you did not connect the two logical chains?

Tutor Answer

This is a fairly infamous question -- it's one I love to do with clients because it looks deceptively simple. I think generally, I lean in favor of thinking that there are multiple ways around a problem. I think this one, however, really needs to be diagrammed. It's very simple, but actually having command of the diagram is absolutely essential.

Student Question

I’m reading the explaination for question 8 of this practice section and I’m not understanding why B is wrong (the answer I picked) and why A is correct.

Tutor Answer

This is a great question. First, let's find the important part of the passage with regard to the question being asked. In my opinion, that portion is:

“Family members believed they used only English at home, but their taped conversations occasionally contained some Spanish, with no change in situational factors. When asked what the presence of Spanish signified, they commented that it was used to express certain attitudes such as intimacy or humor more emphatically.”

By my read, that means that the author is saying that even when situational factors stay the same, the family sometimes switches to Spanish to create rhetorical effects (like emphasizing intimacy or humor).

Now, let's look at the two answer choices.

(A) In a previous twelve-month study involving the same family in their home, their conversations were entirely in English except when situational factors changed significantly.

This casts doubt on the interpretation that the author comes to in the passage. If, in a longer and presumably reliable study, the family only used Spanish when situational factors changed, that means code-switching was in fact tied to situations, not to rhetorical effects. That directly contradicts the author’s claim that Spanish was used despite the situation staying constant, purely for rhetorical purposes.

Compare that to AC (B):

(B) In a subsequent twelve-month study involving the same family, a particular set of situational factors occurred repeatedly without any accompanying instances of code-switching.

This is basically saying that under the same situational factors, sometimes they [the family] didn’t code-switch. By my read, that doesn’t contradict the author’s point, because the author never claimed they always switched languages when expressing intimacy or humor. The author's only claim was that when they did switch, it was for rhetorical reasons, not situational ones.

AC (B) does not actually undercut the author’s interpretation. AC (A) does, because it directly ties all code-switching back to situational causes.

Student Question

The argument states that “this theory is opposed by many sociologists on the grounds that a complex phenomenon such as the rise of a political organization cannot be caused by a simple phenomenon”, I don’t quite understand how we can infer that sociologist would believe answer choice A.

Tutor Answer

The theory opposed by many sociologists is rational choice theory, which states that:

"... popular support for various political parties can be explained sufficiently in terms of deliberate decisions by individual voters to support the party whose policies they believe will yield them the greatest economic advantage."

This means that many sociologists believe that this network of popular support cannot be explained by deliberate decisions on the basis of economic advantage.

AC (A) says that we can infer that the sociologists believe that:

"economically motivated decisions by voters need not constitute a complex phenomenon."

That's basically the exact thing that's said in the passage. These decisions, even if they exist, cannot constitute the rational-choice theory phenomenon mentioned in the passage. This has been delineated directly by the stimulus author!

Student Question

PT150.S4.P4.Q24 - What does this question intend to mean? “Take issue with”. Like, based on a specific claim passage B made, we have to find something that passage B would disagree with in passage A which would relate to it? is that what they always mean? something they would disagree with?

Tutor Answer

This is basically the RC equivalent of a Point at Issue: Disagree question. You touched on this in your message -- basically, you want to find something that one passage talks about that the author of the other passage would have a problem with. In essence, you want to find something that they disagree on.

Student Question

What kind of flaw question would this be? I’m trying to map this question onto one of the flaw types we've established in the LR foundations and cannot seem to adequately map this

Tutor Answer

This is a cookie-cutter sufficiency-necessity flaw, masked quite well by the presence of some weird language and a little bit of LSAT magic. Let me break it down for you.

The stimulus says:

• The presence of bees is necessary for excellent pollination. (IF Excellent Pollination -> Bees)

• Excellent pollination results in abundant fruits and vegetables. (IF Excellent Pollination -> Abundant Fruits and Vegetables)

• Establishing a beehive or two near one's garden ensures the presence of bees. (IF Beehive -> Bees)

• Keeping bees is economical only if the gardener has a use for homegrown honey. (IF Keeping Bees -> Use for Homegrown Honey)

• Conclusion: Thus, gardeners who have no use for homegrown honey will tend not to have beehives, so their gardens will fail to have excellent pollination.

That conclusion stems from the contrapositive of some of the above statements, but not all of them correctly. The first part (gardeners who have no use for homegrown honey will tend not to have beehives) is totally correct, because the contrapositive of IF Keeping Bees is Economical -> Use for Homegrown Honey is IF NO Use for Homegrown Honey -> NO Keeping Bees).

The second part of the stimulus is a confusion of sufficiency and necessity, because it asserts that there are no bees (logically, because there are no beehives). We know that the presence of beehives guarantees the presence of bees, but the lack of beehives doesn't necessarily preclude the presence of bees.

Student Question

I’m noticing that I’m having trouble understanding the tonality of this passage. The passage writer seems to be concerned with how critics evaluate movies. Then makes arguments in support of how the critics review could be tainted by extraneous factors. (A) suggests that all of these extraneous factors should be removed. There is support for this within the passage, however I find this to require a heavy amount of assuming. I find that the same assumptions required of (A)- the elimination of most, if not all, extraneous factors, to be similar to the what could justify (C), I.E. the resignation to these extraneous factors. I say this because no solution is given, and the passage itself seems to just be a critical piece; rather than an article written about how we must try to purify movies to the will of the director.

Tutor Answer

I'm not entirely sure why you're dealing exclusively in absolutes here. This test is all about the gray area: you aren't trying to find an answer choice that's absolutely right -- in fact, with the elimination of Logic Games, the only question where there will be a 100% true answer generally features a question stem that says "Must Be True."

Here, you're correct -- (A) isn't explicitly stated in the passage. However, it's heavily supported by the idea that "some alterations, such as a subtle increase in the projection speed of a televised movie to obtain more commercial time, are almost imperceptible but nonetheless detrimental to the integrity of a film (end of Paragraph 3)."

In reality, it seems like you've gauged the tone of the passage well. What you're looking for is a strong answer choice, and I think that may have led you to pick an answer choice with the strongest language. Counterintuitively, this will actually lead you to having some issues. The stronger the language in the answer choice, the more evidence you have to bring to support it. For example, if AC (C) was rephrased to read:

"Film critics should acknowledge that mutilations of films during distribution and public exhibition are likely."

That's probably the right answer here. However, it doesn't say likely. It says inevitable. Inevitable means it will always happen, in every instance, from now until the heat death of the universe. Even if it doesn't mean that in common conversation, that's how you're supposed to read it on the LSAT.

With that knowledge, we simply don't have the information to support a claim that strong. Hence, AC (A) is a better answer than AC (C) here.

Student Question

Is C wrong because it tries to give India an advantage that we do not know if Brazil has as well? Also, as a rule of thumb, can we eliminate weaken answer choices that try to assume belong to only one group when we don’t know if they belong to the other group as well?

Tutor Answer

There are really two ways to read AC (C), as supported by the lightbulb under the explanation. I think your thought process here runs along the lines of the second method -- I do think that you could read this as assigning a strength to the Danish-Indian approach that the Brazilian approach doesn't have, which would seem to make it more likely that the Danish project "has a good chance of remaining competitive and profitable for the long run," not less likely.

I would be very hesitant to come up with strategies for Weaken questions that involve the elimination of entire answer choices on the basis of facial mechanisms of the answer choice. The whole reason Weaken and Strengthen are so difficult is that broadly speaking, what the answer choice says doesn't really matter -- what matters is the logical effect of that answer choice if it were true.

For example, if I argued that:

Football Team X has stronger players than Football Team Y. Thus, Football Team X will win more games than Football Team Y.

I could weaken it by saying:

Football Team X plays the most successful teams in the league this year.

That makes it less likely that Football Team X will win more games than Team Y, because it makes it more likely that X will lose games. I don't even have to mention Football Team Y to eliminate that answer.

Student Question

Stimulus is still confusing to me.

Tutor Answer

The stimulus is basically saying that there's two ways to manage existing transportation infrastructure (think: highways, railroad tracks, et cetera).

1 - You can continuously maintain it over a long period of time (think: small improvements over a very long time period).

OR

2 - You can occasionally rebuild the entire system (radical reconstruction).

The stimulus then points out that making small improvements over time means you don't have to rebuilt the entire system. This kind of small improvement system is cheaper, but then we're told something else: for some reason, these cheaper improvements are actually less common.

The question is asking us to explain why this is. We have all of these advantages to the small change method -- why don't we just do that?

The answer choice that best explains this is AC (E): "for long periods, the task of regular maintenance lacks urgency, since the consequences of neglecting it are very slow to manifest themselves." This means that because we don't see the consequences of neglecting small improvements, we don't make them: which makes perfect sense.

Student Question

How are we able to make the assertion that this is “morally obligated” though?

Tutor Answer

The correct answer choice here does not assert that there is a moral obligation. There is a legal obligation asserted, which is supported by the passage when the author notes that "CEOs are bound, as a condition of their employment, to seek a profit for the owners." However, I think that stating that there is a "moral obligation" would be an overreach.

A moral responsibility is different than a moral obligation. A responsibility is less strict, by my read. I certainly the responsibility idea is supported by the passage in the last line, where the word "responsibility" appears verbatim:

"The economic consequences that may befall the CEO for doing so, such as penalty or dismissal, ultimately do not excuse the individual from the responsibility for acting morally."

Student Question

I still don’t understand how the age is relevant

Tutor Answer

Great question. I think the easiest way to approach this question is to start from the conclusion and work our way backwards.

The author concludes that the new estimates of these stars' distances from Earth help resolve the earlier conflict between the ages of these stars and the age of the universe. The evidence for this is:

• These stars are much farther away than previously thought

• The farther away the stars are, the greater their intrinsic brightness must be, given their appearance to us on Earth.

• The previous estimates of their age would have put them well before the origin of the universe.

So, the author is fundamentally concluding that we know the stars are younger because they are farther away and we can still see them. Why can we still see them? Well, because they're brighter.

From that, we can conclude that if a star's brightness is related to its age, then these new distance estimates would, in fact, help resolve the previous confusion about the age of the stars.

Student Question

can you go into more depth on required vs suffiecient esp in this case

Tutor Answer

The argument concludes that the claim "the human species could not have survived prehistoric times if the species had not evolved the ability to cope with diverse natural environments" is false on the basis of evidence that suggests that "there is considerable evidence that Australopithecus afarensis, a prehistoric species related to early humans, also thrived in a diverse array of environments, but became extinct."

The claim being made is that unless humanity developed a specific ability, it would not have survived. It makes the ability to survive in those environments a requirement.

The evidence provided is of a species that had that ability but didn't survive. Okay, that's fine, because fulfilling a requirement doesn't mean you get to the end goal. It just means you're not precluded from getting there.

It would be like me saying that to get a 4.0 GPA, you need to get As. I then tell you that my friend got an A, and conclude from this that my friend got a 4.0. That's not good logic: my friend could have failed all of his remaining classes. The same is true here. We're looking for evidence of humanity not developing the ability and surviving, not evidence of humanity developing the ability and not surviving.

Student Question

I am practicing assumption questions. Level 1-3 questions click and I mostly get it right however, I blank out at level 4 and 5. In this case, C does not make sense to me. Negating A makes the argument fall apart. Please help...thank you!

Tutor Answer

I disagree that the negation of AC (A) blows the argument up. The negation of that answer choice would read "having stability in the production of goods and services is not the most effective means of preventing inflation or deflation." We're attempting to destroy an argument that concludes that the author's country "is very unlikely to experience significant inflation or deflation" on the grounds that:

• In any country, inflation occurs when the money supply grows more than the production of goods and services grows.

• Deflation occurs when the production of goods and services grows more than does the money supply.

• In the author's country, gold anchors the money supply, so the money supply is very stable.

Even if the stability isn't the most effective means, that doesn't mean there aren't other means that are equally effective. The argument can totally co-exist with the negation of A.

C, on the other hand, would read as follows if negated: the production of goods and services in the economist's country is likely to grow markedly. If we take all of the author's premises as true, then we believe that the money supply is stable. However, the author also tells us that deflation occurs when goods and services grow more than the money supply. If C is true, then the country is going to experience deflation, because the money supply will remain the same and the goods and services are going to increase.

The argument cannot co-exist with the negation of AC (C), making it the correct answer.

Student Question

I thought the answer would at least say something about the snake. how is A proving that the loss of birds are contributing to the spider population?

Tutor Answer

Strengthen and Weaken answers are under no obligation to share subject material with the stimulus. That's because we don't really care about what the answer choice says, we care significantly more about what the logical effects of it being true are.

This question is a good example of that. If birds compete with spiders for food, that would seem to make the scientists' hypothesis (that the spider population’s increase is caused by the loss of bird species) more likely to be true. If the birds go away, then the spiders have their food sources less contested, meaning that they have more food and their population will increase.

Student Question

Is D a good example of how a potential third factor is mentioned, “twice the quantity of fruits and vegetables,” but doesn't actually say what it does to make a difference. Veras A does mention that.

Tutor Answer

That's correct! I like AC (D) from a "third-factor-explanation" perspective, but I do think that it suffers from the problem you've just pointed out, i.e. that it doesn't explain the stroke element we're looking for.

Student Question

Are both C and E - necessary and sufficient conditions flaws?could you give me an example of both C and E.The wording in D makes me hesitant to choose it. Because it says "how people came to believe it" which im assuming it might mean how they started to have that belief? Either way I dont see E and C being the answer. so im going with D.

Tutor Answer

Yes, ACs (C) and (E) are both necessary-sufficient flaws, going in opposite directions. AC (C) is confusing necessary for sufficient, AC (E) is confusing sufficient for necessary.

Let's say I told you that:

If I have a cat, then I have a Porsche.

Confusing necessary for sufficient would occur if I concluded that I have a cat on the grounds that I have a Porsche. I'm treating the necessary condition as sufficient to prove the entire argument.

Confusing sufficient for necessary would be if I concluded -- on the grounds that I didn't have a cat -- that I didn't have a Porsche. I'm treating the sufficient condition as though it were necessary for the truth of the argument.

AC (D) is the correct answer, for the reasons that you described above. In fact, you did a very good job of explaining it. Let me know if you want it explained again -- otherwise, good job!

Student Question

How should have I known that A and E wouldnt be correct and that we didnt need it since the stimulus already had established that Mr. Kapp did know. I guess i didn't know where it exactly said that Mr. Kapp did know.

Tutor Answer

The last line of the stimulus says that Kapp "must have realized that his action would put people at serious risk." This tells us that he did, in fact, realize that his action would put people in harm's way. From there, we have to find an assumption that tells us why it was wrong for him to knowingly use the building materials that he did.

Interestingly, I don't think either of the answer choices you pointed out say that our friend Mr. Kapp actually did know. By your own logical path here, I think you could have gotten rid of ACs (A) and (E), because neither give you the definite thing that you want. AC (E) comes close, but "should have known" sort of gives away that it's the wrong answer here.