Review:

Question type: NA, Causal reasoning

Summarize as question:

Q: Why is the actual spending of the people who still have their jobs not going down (undiminished)?

A: Because there has been no unusual increase in the amount of money held by those people in their savings accounts.

Context: Staff reductions in a certain economy are said to be causing people who still have their jobs to cut back on new purchases as if they were the ones who lost their jobs.

Prephrase (using the negation method to destroy the argument): Causal explanation weakeners can be alternate explanations or something that decreases the plausibility of the argument. The conclusion connects actual spending to what is in a person's savings account, basically making this the only metric that matters in explaining the phenomenon. Essentially, because there is no increase in money, it assumes they are still spending it from that account. However, you could keep the money amount stable by using a different account to spend.

A.) Negated: If people in the region who continue to be employed have debts, they are NOW paying them off at an accelerated rate. Negated, this could provide an alternative explanation for the phenomenon. There is no increase in the account because they are focusing on paying off debts, not necessarily spending on new purchases. A debt is something you already have, a new purchase is something you don't already have and are buying.

B.) Negated: People in the region who continue to be employed and who have relatives who have lost their jobs DO NOT commonly assist those relatives financially. This is saying they are not paying for things their relatives need. This would actually strengthen the argument, by ruling out an alternative explanation.

C.) Negated: If people in the region who have lost jobs get new jobs, the new jobs generally DO NOT pay less well than the ones they lost. This means they pay the same amount or better. I don't think this would do anything to the argument, we are focused on saving and the amount that is spent by people WHO STILL HAVE THEIR JOBS.

D.) Negated: People in the region who continue to be employed are NOT pessimistic about their prospects for increasing their incomes. I don't understand how this would do anything to the argument.

E.) Negated: There exist SOME statistics about sales of goods in the region as a whole. And? This doesn't give me enough information to apply it to the argument.

Therefore, A is the correct answer.

Review:

Question type: Flaw

Reasoning type: Conditional

Argument summarized:

indicted -> 50% resign

35% resign -> convicted

Conclusion: indicted > resign

Flaw summarized: Confuses sufficiency and necessity

A.) A is wrong because we know nothing about the population the survey was pulled from. We don't know how many people were in the survey, and we don't know how this compares to the population amount in total.

B.) Yes. The argument confuses sufficiency and necessity.

C.) The argument never makes any of its terms ambiguous. If anything, it keeps the terms consistent throughout the argument and leading into the conclusion. This is a trap answer that is trying to bait you to believe the argument was being ambiguous with saying someone is indicted for a crime or someone has been convicted of a crime. Those terms are clear and they are different from eachother.

D.) D is wrong because I don't think the argument actually does this in its conclusion. The conclusion functions as a comparison of what more people believe in, not about a specific belief in itself.

E.) How do we know this? The argument never gives me any reason to believe that the premises cannot all be true. It is pretty clear on the information that is provided in the survey results.

Review:

I got this wrong in both timed conditions and BR review. I honestly could not understand why I got this wrong for awhile. I tried to go back into the stimulus and analyze everything that I could in my own words.

Question type: RRE

Phenomena/paradox in need of explanation:

Study #1: While studying grass species X, 70% of the plants studied were reported as having patterned stems.

"Of the plants studied" does that mean the overall set is only grass species X specifically, or something bigger? What if the overall set of species studied is grass species X, and other different grass species Y and Z?

Study #2: Done in the same area as study #1 was done, 40% of grass species X were reported to have patterned stems.

What does this imply? That they found less of grass species X? Why?

Prephrase:

What if their criteria for finding patterned stems was broader because the overall set of a plant species studied was bigger in study #1 than study #2? It would make sense they found a higher percent of patterned stems because their criteria for identification was less specific than study #2.

This is the way I tried to justify D being right. However, I don't know if I could pull out this level of abstraction on test day.

Answers:

A.) A says the first study found more of grass species X because this species are at their highest population amount during the time study #1 was carried out. However, does having a high population = having patterned stems? What if the patterned stems do not occur at the same time, or they show themselves in times of the year that don't match any populating increase. I chose A in my timed review, because I made these faulty assumptions without identifying them. The right answer choice for an RRE question will have you make the least amount of assumptions possible to bridge the gap.

B.) B is also vague in the same way A is. It requires you to assume a lot as well. For example, the information they collected about patterned stems in other plant species was included in the test results of study #1.

C.) 15% more individual plants...this answer had me stumped. It is not specific enough to really give me an answer that would solve the gap because I need the total amount of plant species studied in order to determine how this percent affects the argument. I am also focused on the occurrence of patterned stems.

D.) Yes, this matches with my prephrase. Ugh, but so hard! This answer choice is deceptively simple because it really makes you analyze the argument and specific language used.

E.) This doesn't help, and this seems like a fun fact added that does not help bridge the gap or solve the paradox.

I got this question right in timed conditions and in BR, so I'm going to give a quick guide on my thought process for how I got it correct under timed conditions.

I summarized the evidence in the last paragraph as:

Steele and colleagues claim to find evidence of a distinct pattern of mutations that is recognizable by scientists. This is important because this pattern of mutations is the mechanism that can imply confirmation of their support for Lamarckism.

Mainly, the word pattern jumped out to me as a theme to look for when analogizing. So, the alleged copy in this case would contain patterns that are similar to the original Greek play, but probably not correct since it's a copy and not the original. That's how they would prove it's a fraud.

A.) This is trying to say that because they found a piece of evidence occurring in the same rough time period, that is supposedly a copy of the original, that this would prove it's a fraud. However, we are focused on finding evidence through a pattern repeated over again. This is from the same time period, but not a pattern. We also don't know how this text compares to what we think is the fraud. Next.

B.) Okayyyy...so they admitted their guilt. But that is not analogous to the pattern-based evidence theme in the last passage. Next.

C.) Same as B in being wrong. Not analogous to a pattern. Who cares if someone accused them of altering the original?

D.) This almost got me. But I dismissed it because I don't know how exactly the play's text differs from the surviving version. If the text shows a pattern or something, maybe. But it doesn't. So no.

E.) Yay, this matches my prephrase. Vocabulary can indicate a pattern in this case, because if they are not using the same types of words that are supposed to be in the text, then something is wrong. Since they are not following the pattern of vocabulary, then it makes me more likely to believe the surviving text was altered by a fraud.

Hope this helps!

Review:

Question type: Flaw

Argument summarized:

Premises/support:

violations of ANY of society's EXPLICIT rules go ROUTINELY unpunished -> /society has moral guidance

/moral guidance -> people act in different ways -> chaos

Conclusion:

/society should allow ANY of its explicit rules to be broken w/ impunity

Identify the flaw:

Prior to reading, I could not define impunity. I googled it during my review of this question.

Impunity: freedom from punishment, harm, or negative consequences after doing something wrong or illegal

This argument tries to make some really strong points. It is dealing in absolutes.

It assumes that violating ANY, which could mean just violating one explicit rule, goes unpunished on a routine basis, that society shouldn't allow ANY of its explicit rules to be broken with freedom from punishment.

There is a difference or key term change going on. Routinely unpunished means on a regular basis, some action is not being punished. Then, it goes to the prescriptive conclusion on what society should do. And it is relying upon rules being broken with freedom from punishment. (Based on definition of impunity). Freedom from being punished is actually a lot different than the decision to not be punished. There's the gap in my opinion.

Answers:

A.) The argument doesn't take this for granted. It takes for granted routine unpunishment, NOT rules being routinely violated with impunity. Wrong.

B.) This does not have a clear impact on the argument. This sentence is like a whole hypothetical word salad that I hate.

C.) Does not do this. Premises make it very clear that it's the violation of ANY explicit rules that matters. Premises are also dealing with absolute terms. I got this wrong because I honestly could not put into words the flaw that was going on, and chose this option.

D.) Yay. Answer choice D gets at the key term change or the shift going on in the argument. It just says it in a really convoluted way in my opinion. Correct.

E.) No it doesn't. This also does not impact the argument.

Review:

Question type: Weaken

Robert: Economy goes down, then many people lose their jobs. As a result, people spend less. This causes less jobs for everyone, and then the economy goes further down. Then, once everything becomes so bad that the prices collapse, people eventually start spendng again, and then the economy improves. Yay :)

Terry: Well, if people don't have any jobs or money for spending on anything other than basic necessities, people can't really increase their spending. So actually, prices collapsing do not lead to economic improvement.

Initial throughts/prephrase: I agree with Terry, but lets weaken it anyways. What if people actually spend on things outside of their necessities? For example, I had a trip saved up to go to Jamaica prior to the economy collapsing. I am going to take that trip and go to Jamaica, because I want to. Therefore, I am spending money outside of my necessities and helping the economy.

Answers:

A.) What. I don't care about what companies do AFTER the economies improve. I care about what people are doing WHEN the economy sucks. Bye.

B.) Tempting. I chose B on my timed test. However, it's wrong because it actually doesn't provide the specific mechanism for the economy to improve, which is spending more outside of one's means. Does this mean people are spending more if they think the economy will improve? This answer choice never says anything about it. Next.

C.) Yesss. Accounts for people already having savings lined up stimulates the economy because they have money to spend outside of only purchasing basic necessities. Correct.

D.) Asked and answered in stimulus. Food is a basic necessity. So people spending money on it because they have to is already accounted for in the argument and doesn't impact Terry's argument.

E.) Does this mean I'm still purchasing stuff if prices are stable during an economic collapse. This answer never says anything. Bye!!!

Review:

Question type: Strengthen

Premises or support:

An experiment done in jail on young offenders shows that the violent inmates, WHO CHOSE FOR THEMSELVES CONSISTENTLY, chose food items that were low on nutrients of the set of food available for them.

A second experiment shows that SOME of the violent inmates, WHO DID NOT CHOSE THEIR DIET (aka THE EXPERIMENTORS CHOSE THEIR DIET FOR THEM), were placed on a diet high in nutrients.

The second experiment noticed that the the behavior of the violent inmates who were given the high nutrient diet, improved over the four month of the experiment.

There is a correlation between poor nutrition and violent behavior.

Conclusion:

Poor nutrition is at the root of violent behavior for many young offenders.

Initial thoughts/prephrase:

Woof. They are making a causation argument from a correlation shown in two very different experiments. If I wanted to pick this apart, I would go for how the first study had the inmates chose their own food items, vs. the second who had their DIETS chosen for them. However, we need to strengthen this argument. We can do that by eliminating alternative hypothesis or increasing the plausibility of the experiment. I would strengthen it by saying: there was a control group who were placed on a base level nutrient diet (not low or high), and had no difference in their behavior. Or, eliminate other mitigating factors. For example, I'm probably gonna behave really good if I have four months to go in my prison sentence, regardless of the food I'm given because I want to be out of prison. To strengthen, I would eliminate this possibility, like the inmates in the experiment all had the same amount of tme in their jail sentences left and were not at the end of it.

Answers:

A.) Quantity of violent crimes committed does count. What is central to the argument is that the crimes themselves are by nature violent. Wrong.

B.) Why do I care about how easy and cheap it is to make dietary changes in a jail? I don't care. This has no impact on the argument. Wrong.

C.) Tricky tricky! I chose this in my timed test. However, it's wrong because consuming a FOOD is different than consuming an actual DIET. A diet of poor nutrition is central to the argument, not one singular Snickers bar. Next.

D.) Eeeeeh. An experiment is stronger when the test subjects don't get a choice or know the type of treatment they are receiving. Young offenders voluntarily choosing a low-nutrient diet themselves does not necesarily strengthen the argument. Also how much is MANY? Many = some. No clue on this quantity to make an impact on the argument either. Next.

E.) Please God let it be this. E adds a control group!!!!! Finally!!!!! This strengthens the argument by increasing the plausibility of the experiment and its results. BOOM CORRECT.

Review:

Question type: MSS

Summary of information:

1.) Technological improvements enable increases in food production as populations grow.

2.) If societies do not become more centralized so production of food can be better coordinated, then there will be no increase in food production big enough to make a difference.

3.) Having a more centralized society means it's at a greater risk of more people dying if the whole society collapses.

4.) Conclusion: Increasing centralization in order to increase food production through better technology will make the disasters associated with a society collapsing worse.

Prephrase: There are some factors like increased centralization in a society that can make certain disasters worse for a society if it collapses.

A.) We don't know this. We only know about a specific set of factors, and a greater need for increased food production can be needed when a population amount grows.

B.) This argument is focusing on a set of factors, and it does not make that strong of an argument to say this is the ONLY set of factors that matter for reaching the conclusion. This opens the door to other factors that can influence the collapse of a centralized society. This is also a very weak answer choice, which is good. B is correct.

C.) Not relevant. Unsupported.

D.) NO! They are not making that strong of an argument. They are only talking about ONE mechanism which enables the production of food to increase. They are not saying it is the ONLY one.

E.) Too general for the sake of this argument, and I don't know if I can support this with information in the stimulus. The argument is talking in hypotheticals a lot of the time, it is not making an argument on what has actually happened in society.

Review:

Question type: RRE

Phenomenon in need of explaining: Vervet monkeys use different alarm calls to warn one other of nearby predators, depending on whether the danger comes from the land or air.

Possible hypothesis/explanation: They use different types of calls in order to tell where the predator is coming from so they can act accordingly to the specific call.

A.) Pitch being an explanation of how many predators are coming does not help us explain the phenomenon of using different types of alarm calls. We also don't need to care about how many predators are approaching.

B.) Very general, and does not completely explain the phenomenon happening. What about predators who come from the air? This answer choice tells us nothing about that.

C.) If predators can't attack from both land or air, then why still are they making the different types of calls? This answer choice baited me into making a bad assumption. I falsely assumed that ruling out that the predators can attack from both the air and land somehome helps explain the different types of calls made.

D.) This matches closely with my prephrase. They make different calls because they have different responses to flee depending upon where the predator is coming from. Correct.

E.) Not really relevant. Does not help us explain the different types of calls.

Review:

Question type: NA

Argument summarized:

Context: Some astrologers say that our horoscopes completely determine our personalities.

Psychologist conclusion: It is false that our horoscopes completely determine our personalities.

Premises/Support: Birth records of two different people born 40 years ago on the same day and exactly the same time, just in Toronto and New York, were shown to have different personalities when tested.

Assumptions: The psychologist determines something is false based off of one study of two people in different locations. I know time of birth is a determinant in your zodiac sign, but is the location a determinant too? What is being born in different places also impacts your zodiac sign?

Wrong Answer: B. I mistakenly chose this because I thought cultural differences could influence someone's personality, but this actually strengthens the core argument that it is false that horoscopes are the only thing that determines our personalities.

Correct Answer: C. I didn't choose this at first because I remember the two locations are n the same time zone, so I thought whatever. However, when negating C (meaning that it DID result in different horoscopes), this makes the results of the study invalid because it means they weren't testing people with the same horoscope in the first place. And the author's whole argument is resting upon this one study. Therefore, C is correct.

Other wrong answers:

A.) This is not necessary to the psychologists argument, which is the one we are trying to back up by identifying a missing premise (assumption).

D.) Nearly tricked me. However, the text says that they have at least the day and time recorded (which I assume they recorded correctly), and that is really the only thing I need for this argument. For example, who cares if they forgot to include something like the weight on the baby? It does not impact their horoscope. (But would likely make the parents mad lol.)

E.) This is a nice fact that does nothing for the argument. It is not necessary for me to reach my conclusion. Irrelevant.

Review:

Glad I was not the only one who really struggled with this question. This was a rare question that absolutely stumped me, and I had no idea of a path forward essentially because I couldn't figure out what the heck the stimulus was saying. I honestly had to dumb this down like I was 5 and go P.O.E. for review. I feel like if this happens test day, I am better of picking and skipping because I will try to go down a rabbit hole with this.

Question type: NA

Argument summarized: (phenomenon-hypothesis)

1.) A study of 30 years of weather pattern records of cities indicate that weekend days tend to be cloudier than weekdays. (AKA: Saturdays and Sundays are cloudier than the rest of the week.)

2.) The small amount of seven-day cycles (Mon., Tues, etc...) that occur naturally are not significant enough to cause measurable weather patterns.

Conclusion (hypothesis): Now, no one can deny that human activity has actual large scale effects on the weather. (OR, human activity DOES have actual large scale effects on the weather, and everyone has been mistaken).

Essentially, they noticed a thing that occurs under specific conditions, and made a specific cause and effect argument from a correlation. Timing is a huge element of this argument. The fact that two things have the same timing/pattern doesn't prove that the cause has to have that same timing/pattern.

For example, every Saturday, I notice a man falling off his bicycle. I conclude that there must be something happening every Saturday to make this dude fall off his bike. What if the man falling off his bicycle every Saturday is actually caused by something else that doesn't happen on that day? For example, on Friday nights, the dude always goes out to party and is hungover Saturday so he falls off his bike a lot. I just identified a different pattern that is not the one I hypothesized to be correct.

I just showed that the cause doesn't have to share the same timing pattern as the effect. Boom!

Review:

This a question that made me second guess myself during timed testing conditions. I honestly thought C was way too easy, and that they would be going for something more subtle. However, I've noticed with a complex stimulus like this one, test writers often make the correct answer choices deceptively simple. Maybe this is their way of trying to be nice, but it definitely feels wrong in the moment while testing.

Question type: NA

Argument summarized: (Experiment w/ a phenomenon-hypothesis)

A doctor hypothesizes that nerve inflammation is reduced by a cortisone shot, and hypothesizes further that pressure on the nerve was causing a patient's back and leg pain.

The patient is experiencing a phenomenon where the doctor provided a cortisone shot to their nerve, which resulted in pain relief.

The scientific context or support is that pressure on a nerve causes nerve inflammation which causes pain.

Assumptions: The doctor is actually correct and there is not some placebo effect going on. They have only one person mentioned in this kind of experiment, which makes me wonder if they knew what treatment they were going to receive beforehand and if they knew the expected results. That could negatively impact the integrity of the experiment. The doctor also assumed that their causal chain is correct, and that there are not other factors at play that could produce this kind of pain. They are limiting it. What if the person has preexisting health conditions like diabetes, which also cause this same type of pain, and their causal chain is wrong?

Wrong Answer: D. I chose this first pass because I honestly thought C was too easy and the test writers were trying to trick me. D is wrong because it is too limiting. The doctor is not making that strong of an argument, saying that corisone is the only thing that can cause a reduction, this is just their solution in this specific circumstance. Beware of test makers trying to get you to make things stronger than they actually are.

Correct Answer: C. This was a "duh" answer for me that I overlooked. This answer is correct because if the patient knew they were receiving the cortisone shot and knew the expected results, that could negatively impact the integrity of the experiment. This does not tell us anything about the actual experiment's validity. Did the cortisone shot actually work or was it the patient's belief?

Hi there! I am definitely interested!

Review:

This question messed with me so badly. I got it wrong on the actual test, but got it correct in blind review with unlimited time.

Question type: RRE Except

Paradox: Why is the retail profit margin on personal computer sales extremely low compared to that of other popular high technology items when consumer demand for personal computers is increasing yearly?

Prephrases of what may solve paradox: Technology advances so quickly that it is difficult for personal computers to keep up with other high technology items. All of the personal computers being sold are on sale/discounted, so a lot of people want to buy them, but there are more attractive high technology items that people choose instead.

The right answer in this case will be something that does NOT solve the paradox. Common trap answer choices for RRE add a premise as a fact that does nothing for the argument, or only solves one part of the paradox.

Answer A: Fits with prephrase I came up with initially. This is OK.

Answer B: This deals with satisfaction. I broke this apart by asking myself: If I am really loyal to a computer brand (satisfied), wouldn't it make more sense for me to keep buying that brand over being swayed by other attractive high technology items? For me, this answer choice deepens the paradox, because the answer choice should be answering something about the retail profit margin on computer sales being low compared to other high tech items. The argument is implying that popular high tech items are making LESS of a profit compared to personal computer sales out of all retail sales total. This answer tilts in the opposite direction. Therefore, this is the right answer.

Answer C: Makes sense. For example, an person setting up a Macbook for their personal office may need a lot more help from employees than other tech items like a set of nice headphones. This is OK.

Answer D: Solves the paradox by talking about how sales on personal computers bring in customers, but they end up being swayed by something more flashy. Also similar to one of my prephrases, this is OK.

Answer E: More stores selling personal computers at discounted rates would explain this as well, this is similar to one of my prephrases, so this is OK too.

The only answer that does not solve the paradox, or deepens it, is B. There for it is correct.

Review:

Seeing J.Y. cross out all of the answer choices like I did while doing this question under timed conditions was so vindicating. This is such a hard question, that I couldn't even figure out what the right answer was on blind review. What really tripped me up with this question however, is what J.Y. identified is that the arrow is going the wrong way in Answer choice A. I eliminated A my first go around for this reason too!

Even after watching J.Y.'s explanation video and Kevin's notes, I'm not sure I get it. The correct answer is actually using set logic, which I haven't seen done for a SA question before. I think the most realistic solution to approaching a very challenging question like this is doing P.O.E. with answer choices based upon strength and scope of the answer choice. Questions like these are such a time sink.

Review:

Question type: SA. The right answer will make the conclusion valid. We are looking for something air tight, or a missing puzzle piece that completes the puzzle.

I had the hardest time prephrasing for this question. It really helped to see Kevin's explanation. That the gap missing is about PURPOSE. It makes sense because the premises are a set of facts, and the conclusion is about the city council's objective/purpose/mission. Therefore, we need to connect the facts we know to the city council's purpose.

Prephrase: The city council already knew about the possible negative effects of putting in a rent control ordinance, and knowing this, they decided to pass the rent control ordinance anyways.

Answer A: Wrong because it's out-of-scope/irrelevant. The study being conducted by impartial investigators does not give us a WHY about the city council's decision.

Answer B: Wrong because it is out-of-scope, and regardless, "appropriate topic" does not equal purpose/objective. Who cares about what is an appropriate topic or not, this has not effect on the argument.

Answer C: Correct because this suggests the city council already knew about the possible effects, since they agreed with the study's conclusion about rent control. This is within our scope, and actually gives us a WHY for the city council making this decision.

Answer D: Wrong because this is irrelevant and does not allow us to draw our conclusion. It is also not strong enough. "Some" members is not the strength we need to make a conclusion about all members of the city council.

Answer E: Wrong because this is also irrelevant. This answer is a trap answer choice because it actually does not answer anything about the city council's objective/purpose, it just adds a fact that they sometimes act weird.

What I can do for next time: I got this wrong because I went into the answer choices without a prephrase. Next time, I can look closer at the language in the conclusion and how it compares to the premises.

Review:

This was a difficult passage for me. I think I made the majority of my errors here because I could not figure out how to dumb this down into something I could understand in timed conditions. It wasn't until I reread each passage during Blind Review, that I seemed to get it.

Passage A: Public funding and support for the arts is justified (meaning, funded by tax-payers dollars) because it builds social capital and allows more equitable opportunities for people to experience cultures.

Passage B: There is no justification for art subsidized by public, tax-payer money because it will generally not be the art that most tax-payers would have chosen for themselves.

Correct Answer: D. It was easy for me to see that the Passage A author agrees with this statement. Passage B author disagrees more implicitly, shown by paragraph 2. Essentially, B is arguing that public funding for the arts is not going to give more people opportunities to experience art because the art is already preselected for them by committees.

Wrong Answer: B. Upon second glance, this answer seems so word-salady to me. I chose it without examining it closely to what is mentioned and implied in both passages. This answer sounds nice, but it is actually wrong because both authors agree if you look back in the passages.

Review:

This is Question 16 in the middle of an LR section. If I am seeing multiple premises using complex conditional logic and no easy chains are popping out to me immediately, I am skipping questions like this and coming back to them later if/when I have time. I feel like this question wastes way too much time, which is further exacerbated by the fact it is an except question.

Review:

Seeing the visual graphic really helped me understand this question and why the correct answer is correct.

Question type: must be true

Stimulus summarized:

1. A type of celestial object named X (Quasars) are so far away that it takes their light 500 million years to reach Earth.

2. For X to appear from Earth's perspective, it would have to burn at a rate that produces more light than 90 billion suns would produce.

3. However, nothing that burns at a rate that produces that much light could exist for more than 100 million years.

The light of X takes time to travel to our eyes in order for us to see it. It takes millions of years for the light to travel to Earth for it to appear in front of our eyes to see. I understood this argument better when I thought of how we may see the flash of supernovas here on Earth, but because they are so far away, we are essentially looking back in time on the event because the light takes a long time to travel here. Because X was burning at so high a rate to produce that high amount of light, it means that it could not have existed for more than 100 million years.

Correct Answer: E. Each word can be proven by looking back at the stimulus. Because of the brightness quasars burn at does not last longer than 100 million years, and what light we are seeing now on Earth is at least 500 million years old, we are seeing something that no longer exists. I didn't pick this answer initially because I thought "duh it no longer exists". I feel like this correct answer was hiding in plain sight because it's so simple once you actually get it.

Wrong Answer: C. I definitely missed the qualifier dropping. The argument is talking about what applies to quasars specifically and how we see them from Earth. "Anything that from Earth appears as bright as a quasar does must..." This is wrong because it is misrepresenting what the argument is actually trying to talk about in my opinion. We can only draw a conclusion about something very specific (quasars) because of very specific factors (how their burn rate produces X amount of light and how long burning at this high rate can last). C messes that up completely.

What I can do for next time: Watch the qualifiers! Wrong answer choices will drop or make qualifiers way too strong than they actually are in the argument.

Review:

This question took me a stupid amount of time to figure out.

Question type: must be true

Argument summarized:

1. Some people believe X (that saying an organization is hierarchical says everything to say about how that organization operates

2. Bureaucratically controlled org. -> hierarchical

3. The PWD is an example of a bureaucratically controlled org., but it operates differently than how MOST other bureaucratically controlled orgs. operate.

My first thoughts after reading this was "How the heck does Sentence 1 connect to Sentences 2 and 3?"

Inferences: The PWD is a bureaucratically controlled org., so it is hierarchical. However, knowing the company is hierarchical does not tell us everything about how this company operates because it operates differently than most other bureaucratically controlled organizations. This connects back to sentence 1. Meaning, saying an organization is hierarchical DOES NOT say everything to say about how that organization actually operates. Sentence one is arguing A->B. However, the argument negates it and denies this relationship by saying A <-some->/B with what is implied by Sentence 3.

Correct Answer: D. Not all = some. This answer stood out to me because it was an inference I made after working through the argument without timed conditions. This gets at the core idea of A <-some->/B. Not all hierarchical organizations operate in the same way because the PWD operates quite differently than how other bureaucratically controlled orgs. typically operate.

Wrong Answer: A. Not directly supported by the stimulus. I eliminated this answer because it was making a comparison where the stimulus did not include enough information to correctly draw that comparison.

Wrong Answer: B. First glace, my gut told me this is too strong. We have one sentence with an all conditional and one essentially with a most conditional. Any inference I needed to draw would be weaker than one with something as absolute as any/all.

Wrong Answer: C. This is not supported by the stimulus. I feel like this answer is trying to bait us into making an assumption. Hierarchical organizations can just operate differently from what we know in the stimulus, which does not imply NOTHING can reliably be concluded about how that organization actually operates. Too strong again.

Wrong Answer: E: Too strong again. The stimulus is not making this strong of a claim. It is just saying that a company being hierarchical doesn't tell us everything there is to know about how that org. operates.

What I can do for next time: Rely upon strengths of premises in the argument when judging answer choices. I feel like a lot of the wrong answer choices are too strong based upon what we know in the stimulus. A MBT answer is correct if every single word is 100% supported by the stimulus.

Review:

I got this answer choice right in my actual test and blind review, but I wanted to go back again and review it because I answered this pretty intuitively and wanted to make sure my core structures were fine.

Question type: NA

Argument summarized:

Premises: If freely choosing to do something, then it is not wrong to pay someone to do something. If someone is NOT freely choosing to do something, then it is wrong to pay them to do it.

Conclusion: Test subjects being volunteers who are told about risks and compensated for risks is not sufficient enough to defend the testing procedures for new medications.

Assumptions: The volunteers for the experiment are actually volunteering because they want to, not because someone is making them or they are under duress. (Example: They are only doing the experiment because they want to get paid, someone is pressuring them to do it, etc.) Just because you are informed of the risks and being paid, is not sufficient to show you are freely choosing to do the experiment and are not under duress.

Correct Answer: A. Fills a gap needed to get to our negative conclusion. Having knowledge of the consequences of testing procedures does not mean that one is freely choosing to do the experiment on their own.

Review:

Question type: Flaw

Identify the flaw: Pointing out someone's argument isn't persuasive doesn't mean their conclusion isn't true. A conclusion can be true regardless of whether the argument given for it is persuasive/strong or not.

Wrong Answer: C. The author is rejecting the idea that two things (education of students and providing of consumer goods) are analogous. They do not treat them as identical.

Correct Answer: E. Inadequate = unconvincing. The author (faculty member) is rejecting someone's (the president's) argument because they think their reasons aren't strong enough to prove that their conclusion is true.

What I can do for next time: I identified the flaw correctly, but I could not identify the right answer. I got confused by the strong referential phrasing in the answer choices. Next time, I can work harder on matching referential phrasing back to the stimulus.

Review:

This was a question that stumped me before and after viewing the explanation video. In order to understand it, I broke it down like I was 5. Hope this is helpful for anyone struggling like me.

Question type: Flaw

Flaw type: Author assumes "small percentage" = "underrepresented"

When percentages and amounts are mentioned, that's a yellow flag in my mind to start thinking this is a math flaw type question.

The argument talks about:

Percent of Group A that is in Group B

Group A: amount of people from service professions

Group B: amount of people who become board members at top corporations

There is a very small percent of people from service professions (Group A) who become board members at top corporations (Group B).

But concludes something about:

Percent of Group B that comes from Group A

There is a small percent of people who become board members at top corporations (Group B) that come from service professions (Group A).

Just because we know something about Group A in Group B, doesn't mean we know something about Group B in Group A.

Imagine there are 1,000 animals.

• Only 10 are elephants.

• At the zoo, 1 out of 100 animals is an elephant.

Is the zoo underrepresenting elephants?

No, because elephants only make up about 1% of all animals in this example.

Review:

Passage type: Spotlight

Low res summary:

1. Introduction to topic: corrido folk song

2. Analysis of structure of corridos: use of metaphors

3. Further analysis of structure of corridos: closing verse (despedida)

Main point: The corrido is a type of narrative folk song that comes from the border of the US and Mexico which can incorporate simple metaphors and formal closing verses.

Author tone: informative

Perspectives?: We only get one perspective, which is the author's analysis of the structural patterns within corridos.

Question type: Most strongly suggest author agrees (what is implied that the author agrees with)

Wrong Answer: B. There is no comparison to the corrido to other ballad forms. We get the cultural history of how they originated, but there is never a comparison between this type of folk song and other types of folk song. I chose this answer because of the "familiar mainly to local audiences." However, this is wrong as well because the whole sentence does not match up with what is mentioned in the text.

Right answer: E. This is implied in the text with the sentence: "Such imagery, highly conventional and readily recognizable to corrido listeners, reflects and strengthens the continuity of the corrido tradition." I saw the inference that parts of the corrido were transferable to other corrido songs, but I didn't get that it would still be recognizable without the despedida. The author of the passage is not making a claim about the structures of corridos need a despedida in order to identify them, they are merely identifying the despedida as a pattern that occurs in the structures of corridos.

What I can do for next time: Make sure every part of the answer choice on these types of questions is supported by the text in some way (indirectly or directly).

This is some nasty work putting a parallel flaw question right at the end and having the last answer choice be the correct one. The flaw is simple, it's just going through all of the answer choices one by one that takes the most time and energy. LSAT writers are betting on you feeling burnt out and mentally exhausted by the end of a section and making a stupid mistake here. It was extremely frustrating to get this wrong under timed conditions, then get it right in BR. In BR, the right answer jumped out at me so easily. I guess I need to improve on reading for structure quicker under timed conditions.