Student Question

I solved this mathematically, and wanted to know if this is correct aswell as how I could’ve done it without using math.

Tutor Answer

No, I do not believe that you could solve this question without math. A baseline level of mathematical capability is necessary to solve certain LSAT questions. To be clear, you'll never need to solve differential equations to succeed on the LSAT, but the ability to work with averages, percentages, and fractions is absolutely critical to correctly answer certain questions (including this one).

Student Question

Im confused on this question why you cant take the contrapositive and get D as the answer

Tutor Answer

The argument says:

• If Valid Contract -> One Party Accepts Legitimate Offer from Another

• If Reasonably Believe Made in Jest -> NOT Legitimate Offer

The answer you're referring to says that Hal made an offer such that Lea could not believe it to be made in jest. I actually agree that this indicates that Hal made a legitimate offer to Lea and that she accepted that offer, based on the contrapositive of the second statement above.

Here's the thing: even if we have acceptance of a legitimate offer, do we have a contract?

The answer is no: acceptance of a legitimate offer is a requirement for a contract to be valid, but there might be other things the contract lacks. For example, Hal's offer to Lea might have been utterly legitimate, but Hal also could have included a clause stating that Lea had to set fire to her house upon signing. That would clearly have been coercive, and would likely have nullified the contract. Just because you have a necessary condition (acceptance of the offer) doesn't mean you have the sufficient condition (a contract). All you have is one of the requirements that might indicate that you aren't precluded from having a valid contract.

Student Question

For this question I thought “since” would indicate a sufficient condition which caused me to get the answer wrong.

Tutor Answer

I don't want to automatically preclude "since" from ever indicating the presence of a sufficient condition, since I guess it could happen on an advanced question. However, anecdotally, I have never seen a sufficient condition prefaced with "since" on the LSAT. Generally, sufficient conditions are prefaced with "if," which indicates the presence of a causal relationship.

Student Question

Can you give me a better reasoning for why A is correct and B is wrong

Tutor Answer

The passage tells us that objectivism has supported most Western intellectual systems (Paragraph One). That means that these systems are all rooted in objectivism, meaning we can equate a problem with objectivism to a problem that arises in those systems.

The author states that a "serious flaw in objectivism is that there is no such thing as the neutral, objective observer." AC (B) states that the aforementioned intellectual systems "have generally remained unskewed by particular points of view." Clearly, this can't be true. If there is no such thing as a neutral observer, then the systems cannot be unbias: they are, after all, operated by non-neutral observers.

AC (A), on the other hand, states that the systems "have long assumed the possibility of a neutral depiction of events." This is supported, because the passage tells us that the position of objectivism is that there is a "single neutral description of each event that is unskewed by any particular point of view and that has a privileged position over all other accounts."

Student Question

Why couldn’t “the way” in E refer to their maintaining their moderate political ties?

Tutor Answer

I don't really think that "the way" could refer to the maintenance of political ties, simply because that kind of choice probably doesn't factor into the negotiation that the leaders made to end the campaign (which is what the rest of AC (E) says).

Even if it did, I don't think there's enough in the passage to find "approval" of that concept, which is what you would need for the purpose of the question. The maintenance of moderate political ties is certainly mentioned, but I don't see any language that makes me lean towards "approval" on the part of the author.

Student Question

What words in AC E make it comparative? It talks about nut eaters, but doesn’t comment on non-nut eaters explicitly.

Tutor Answer

AC (E) doesn't need to be comparative to be the correct answer. Even though it only talks about nut eaters, if it's true, it shows why eating nuts prevents gaining weight. That's all you need to solve this problem: people who never eat nuts doesn't need to be a factor, you just need to explain why people who do don't end up gaining weight.

Student Question

I don’t understand how we can choose e because it relies on outside info and also rejects the opening premise. I thought we need to accept the premises given to us...

Tutor Answer

AC (E) does not rely on outside information. It is not relying on outside information to describe what occurs in a passage. If I showed you a video of a bunch of people walking around in tuxedos, and said "that video showed you people walking around in black tuxedos," that wouldn't be outside information -- it would just be a description of the events. The argument does set out anarchy and totalitarianism. It is not outside the scope of the LSAT's available information to simply describe that.

AC (E) does not reject the opening premise. An answer choice that does this might look like "history actually doesn't show that government control of all facets of human life destroys the spirit," which would call the validity of the second sentence of the stimulus into question. That doesn't happen in any of the answer choices.

This is a flaw question, which means pointing out that the argument does something flawed doesn't constitute attacking the truth of the stimuli: it's an attack on the way the argument is structured, which is -- and always will be -- fair game. This is a pretty textbook argument: you argue that the only two things that people can choose between are polar opposite ends of an extremist spectrum, even though there's absolutely middle ground in between.

Student Question

Are all stimulus (that include arguments) philosophical arguments? Would there be a case where an argument is presented that is not philosophical so the word counter-intuitive wouldn’t apply. I think the wording is confusing me.

Tutor Answer

There are many stimuli that are philosophical arguments, but some are not. This is a very case-by-case question, so it's difficult to give you a specific answer.

The wording here is confusing -- if you want, you can tell me what about it has given you trouble. From there, I would be more than happy to break it down for you!

Student Question

Could I get more clarification on why C is incorrect and why D is the correct answer? I’m still confused why we are allowed to assume that professional musicians are equal to the increase in professional bands.

Tutor Answer

AC (C) says that the number of professional musicians in some bands has increased. The argument in the stimulus actively makes this unlikely. It says that the "average number of musicians per band has decreased." Sure, AC (C) is possible, but we're looking for something with active support.

AC (D), on the other hand, says that the total number of professional bands has increased as a result of electrification. As discussed above, we know the average number of musicians per band has gone down, but we also know that "electrification has increased... the overall number of musicians who play popular music professionally."

So, how can the total number of musicians go up, but the number of musicians per band go down? The answer is pretty direct: the number of bands has to have increased. That's literally the only way the math works!

Student Question

I don’t get the correlation between answer B and the premise.

Tutor Answer

The stimulus tells us:

• An ancient stone building at our excavation site was composed of three kinds of stone: quartz, granite, and limestone.

• Of these three, only limestone occurs naturally in the area.

• Most of the buildings at the site from the same time period had limestone as their only stone component.

• Most of the buildings at the site were human dwellings.

The stimulus concludes that the building being studied was probably not a dwelling.

AC (B) says that most of the buildings at the site that were not dwellings were made, at least in part, from types of stone that do not occur naturally in the area. If this is true, the conclusion of the argument is infinitely more likely to be true. The stone building has multiple different stone components, two of which do not occur naturally in the area. AC (B) says that this is exactly what we would expect of non-residential buildings at the site: we should expect that they are not made from stone that occurs naturally in the area.

Student Question

I thought that we were supposed to take the premises as facts and not challenge them. I think E challenges the premise and that is why I eliminated it

Tutor Answer

This answer choice does not challenge the validity of the premises. All of the argument's premises are still true. An answer choice that does the thing you're describing might look like "history actually doesn't show that government control of all facets of human life destroys the spirit," which would call the validity of the second sentence of the stimulus into question. That doesn't happen in any of the answer choices.

This is a flaw question, which means pointing out that the argument does something flawed doesn't constitute attacking the truth of the stimuli: it's an attack on the way the argument is structured, which is -- and always will be -- fair game. This is a pretty textbook argument: you argue that the only two things that people can choose between are polar opposite ends of an extremist spectrum, even though there's absolutely middle ground in between.

Student Question

Still not sure why (B) is incorrect.

Tutor Answer

The judge concludes that the defendant cannot argue that he should not be penalized because of uncertainty over which code applied, on the grounds that the defendant violated national codes as opposed to local ones. The judge insinuates that this excuse would have worked had the defendant been charged with a violation of the latter, as opposed to the former.

AC (B) says that local codes may be less strict, but not more strict, than national codes. Let's pretend this is true. If the defendant were charged with a violation of national codes, and argued that he wasn't sure which codes applied, would the excuse work?

The answer to that hypothetical is yes, and that's the reason AC (B) is wrong. Clearly, the defendant could have argued that he wasn't sure -- if local codes applied here, then the defendant wouldn't have been breaking any rules. That's a perfectly logical excuse. He didn't know that the stricter laws applied to his behavior and had he known, he might have acted differently.

We want the answer to roll the other way: that local laws can only be more strict than national laws. That way, if you're breaking a national code, you're definitely breaking the stricter local code. At the very least, we want to get an answer that says that the codes are identical (which is what AC (C) gives us)!

Student Question

I am confused why the first sentence of the stim is not the conclusion. What signals that it is just context?

Tutor Answer

I like to test conclusions by restructuring the argument. Theoretically, if I attach a conclusory word prior to something I think is the conclusion and toss all of the evidence before it, it should make sense. So, does this argument make sense?

Older adults control more of this nation's personal disposable income than does the rest of the population combined. Advertising agencies can maximize their clients' profits if they gear their advertisements mainly to older adults. Therefore, advertising agencies are willfully neglecting the most profitable segment of the market: older adults.

That doesn't make sense -- we don't know where we're getting the "willful" part of the conclusion. Why do we think the advertising agencies are willfully ignoring thie segment? Why is that middle sentence (the one about the agencies maximizing profits) even in there, if this is the argument?

If you're looking for an easier way out, there's a conclusion indicator on the last sentence. Those aren't always dispositive, but they can be helpful!

Student Question

I am still unsure what makes D an incorrect answer in this question “In most cases, a victim of theft is harmed no more than a victim of bribery is harmed.”

Tutor Answer

This is a good question. Basically, AC (D) indicates that the lawmakers might be making the right choice -- i.e. that they are correct in believing that the penalties should be the same. However, even if this is true, it doesn't make the lawmakers believing something more likely to be true.

For example, I could say "the sky is blue," and then argue that some politicians who banned a free speech bill about the sky being glittery and pink must not believe the sky is, in fact, blue. However, the fact that the thing being litigated on is true doesn't affect an argument about what people believe about that thing.

Student Question

since we dont know that the number is negative therefore we have no basis to know that more coal was consumed than mined in that year (which is the correct answer) the only properly inferred answer would be that relatively between the two years country q consumed more on a percentage basis of what the mined. where am i going wrong here?

Tutor Answer

I think that you're probably making this a little too hard for yourself (although in fairness, this is an infamous question and deserves the kind of thinking you're putting in here)!

Basically, we know two things:

• In 1991, the amount of coal that was mined but not consumed in Country Q was significantly lower than it was in 1990.

• There aren't any external effects on the coal industry.

You say that we don't know that the number is negative, and that we don't have any reason to know that more coal was consumed than mined in 1991. The easiest way to see why that's wrong is to flip the answer around.

Pretend that AC (B) read the other way -- that the amount of coal consumed in 1991 was the same or less than the amount of coal mined in 1991. If it were the same (all things equal), then the total at the end of 1991 would have been identical to the amount at the end of 1990! The country would have just broken even, not changed in either direction.

If the amount consumed was less than the amount mined, then the coal supply would have gone up at the end of 1991. The country would have gained coal because they wouldn't have mined it all.

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.