Independent Tutor

MickeyClaffey

I tutor logical reasoning! My focus is on helping students who can't afford expensive tutoring master the fundamentals of logical reasoning in order to score in the 160s. Feel free to check out more about me on tutoring website: www.fundamentlr.com

Discussions

Tutoring Marketplace · Fundamentals of Logical Reasoning Tutoring — Few more spots left at $18/hour

MickeyClaffey

Sunday, Jun 21

@StafarahMorilus feel free to DM me or schedule a consultation! Just doing a first come-first serve basis

Tutoring Marketplace

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Edited Monday, Jun 22

MickeyClaffey

Independent Tutor

Fundamentals of Logical Reasoning Tutoring — Few more spots left at $18/hour

Hello! My name is Mickey and I started tutoring recently with the goal of 1) making tutoring more accessible, especially for fee-waiver applicants, and 2) teaching the fundamentals of logical reasoning to help students who are passionate about becoming lawyers but for whom logical reasoning might not come easily to. My interest in doing this was borne out of helping my brother and a friend of mine, both of whom the second bullet point applies to, combined with the fact that I really enjoy the logical reasoning problems on the LSAT, and I also really enjoying 1-on-1 teaching. Finding enjoyment in studying for this test is the reason I am applying to law school, and I want to share my approach to these problems with you!

Most of my sessions with current students involve walking through sets of problems where I listen to my student's approach and then share mine, emphasizing any takeaways that the student can apply to similar situations in the future. Often, we go in-depth on only a handful of problems throughout a session, focusing on accuracy and critical analysis instead of speed.

The tutoring I am offering is for students whose goal is to score in the 160s and are currently testing anywhere below that. If your goal is to score higher, I may also be able to be of help as long as you are currently below the 160 range. I believe that mastering the fundamentals of LR makes this goal very, very doable, no matter your starting point. While this service is intended to be for students who can't afford more expensive tutoring, anyone is welcome to reach out! I offer a free consultation and two free sessions to see if we are a good fit. I have 4 more spots left at $18/hour (first come first serve), and after those are filled I will charge $25/hour. For more information about my philosophy, approach, and credentials, please check out my website! Here it is: https://www.fundamentlr.com

You may book a free consultation at this link: https://calendar.app.google/PuiSxamTnaDTr7Gh8

Otherwise, feel free to comment and I will DM you, send me a DM, or check my website for my phone number & email. Looking forward to working with you!

Tutoring Marketplace · Looking for Tutoring - LR stamina, application of the foundations, and a bit of RC

MickeyClaffey

Friday, Jun 19

Hi, I offer tutoring at pretty cheap rates (a few more spots at $18/hour) and I focus on mastery of the fundamentals of LR with the specific goal of helping students raise their scores into the 160s. Feel free to check out more information or schedule a call with me on my website: www.fundamentlr.com

Tutoring Marketplace · Looking for a tutor

MickeyClaffey

Monday, Jun 15

I am just starting to tutor and I am focusing on making the lsat tutoring experience more accessible for to those who can't afford extreme prices. I charge $18/hour with a free consultation and two free session afterwards to see if it's a good fit. You're welcome to check out my site here: https://www.fundamentlr.com/home

Tutoring Marketplace · Looking for flexible tutor

MickeyClaffey

Edited Monday, Jun 15

For you and those in similar situations, I am just beginning to tutor with the specific goal of helping people score in the 160s by mastering the fundamentals. For the first several students I take on I am charging $18/hour, check out my site if you want! www.fundamentlr.com

PrepTests ·

PT115.S3.P4.Q27

MickeyClaffey

Monday, Jun 1

C is an immediate elimination but it is subtle: "When X happens... bla bla bla"

but we have no reason to believe X will happen at all from the passage so this cannot be supported

PrepTests ·

PT150.S2.Q14

MickeyClaffey

Monday, May 25

@BrianDowney this is a sufficient assumption question (see "conclusion follows logically" in question stem), not a necessary assumption question, so extreme language is helpful. often in order to guarantee the truth of a conclusion, which is the job here, we will need extreme language.

PrepTests ·

PT150.S2.Q13

MickeyClaffey

Sunday, May 24

@brine exact same for me

PrepTests ·

PT118.S2.P2.Q8

MickeyClaffey

Thursday, May 21

@HeathHughes agreed that this is overlooked in the explanation-- i guess the explanation would be that all things considered even with this slight caveat to the code being fine as is, it still constitutes a "general defense" whereas answers A and C don't really get at the core idea of the second paragraph, the fact that the oath remains good. Would appreciate a tutor chiming in on this though

PrepTests ·

PT132.S1.P1.Q8

MickeyClaffey

Thursday, May 21

this is one of those where theres only one answer that even remotely makes sense so just pick that

PrepTests ·

PT132.S1.P1.Q4

MickeyClaffey

Thursday, May 21

something ive noticed on the lsat is that there is often the following relationship between content and answer choice or vice versa in a most strongly supported question: where one says usually, generally, tends to, frequently etc or basically anything implying "most of the time" the LSAT will want you to conclude that there is also a likely/unlikely (probabilistic) relationship between the two phenomena

PrepTests ·

PT114.S4.Q25

MickeyClaffey

Wednesday, May 13

E is almost necessary for the argument to work-- if no works of art lose their appeal when serving function other than original, then how could we say that a distinguishing characteristic of sophistication in the arts is defined by essentially the opposite! (the reason for sophistication being art NOT losing appeal when serving function other than original)

PrepTests ·

PT130.S3.Q19

MickeyClaffey

Tuesday, May 12

this is a cool demonstration of the idea that if X is correlated with Y and Z is correlated with X, there may be no overlap between instances of X (smoking) that cause Y (heart disease) and instances of X that correlate with Z (caffeine). in fact, it may even be that when taken in tandem, caffeine and smoking PREVENT heart disease! (lol) like we can imagine a scenario where having a dangerous disease is correlated with an early death and having said dangerous disease is also correlated with taking a medicine for it, but instances of dangerous disease + medicine is then NOT correlated with early death!

PrepTests ·

PT131.S3.Q13

MickeyClaffey

Thursday, May 7

@JeromeSong for this reason I also took a while on the question I'm glad you pointed this out

PrepTests ·

PT102.S4.Q26

MickeyClaffey

Friday, May 1

this is an awesome question

PrepTests ·

PT109.S4.Q7

MickeyClaffey

Monday, Apr 27

@HappyTestTaker 1) I would argue yes and 2) Since that is not a faithful interpretation of the answer choice, you shouldn't have to worry about that being within the realm of possibility!

PrepTests ·

PT101.S3.Q20

MickeyClaffey

Monday, Apr 27

The logical jump you have to make here is that if one gives permission to do something, then it is within their wishes that it happen. If you wished any other outcome, the reasonable person would probably not give permission. It makes sense a little more intuitive sense to me via its contrapositive: if it is not wished to happen, they certainly would not give permission.

PrepTests ·

PT120.S3.Q23

MickeyClaffey

Monday, Apr 20

@LiviaLSAT the answer choice says "even if the former does not impede the latter." The argument's conclusion is that it's baseless to say that the former impedes the latter, or in other words, the former does not impede the latter. This answer choice concedes the truth of the author's conclusion, so it cannot be the flaw! The author simply cares to show that the former (programs encouraging superstition) does not impede latter (public scientific understanding), so they are not liable to consider any indirect effect on the pervasiveness or whatever. This AC is attributing a stronger position to the television network executive than they in fact took. Sure, maybe there is some indirect effect, but anything short of impediment is fair game.

In other words, this is like taking an argument that asserts that a car is painted blue on the outside and trying to say it is flawed because even if it is in fact blue on the outside, you neglected to mention that the steering wheel is red!

PrepTests ·

PT156.S2.Q23

MickeyClaffey

Thursday, Apr 9

premise: sound management of resource -> price reflects ALL unintended harm to society

conclusion: sound management of resource -> price reflects ALL unintended harm to environment

one sufficient assumption could be if a resource's prices reflects all UH to to society, it reflects all UH to environment. this works because it copies the stimulus language word for word and operates under the laws of formal logic where A->B combined with B->C lets us conclude A->C.

since the language is quite repetitive, it could make sense to find an assumption that is more subtle. if all unintended harm to society is contained within all unintended harm to environment (in other words the opposite of ac A; UH to society is a subset within UH to env; UHsoc->UHenv), does that let us conclude sound management of resource -> price reflects ALL unintended harm to environment?

this isn't saying that all UHsoc being covered implies that all UHenv is covered, rather, it is saying that if an element constitutes unintended harm to society, it is also doing UH to the environment. the SA that myself and others were looking for is that all unintended harm to society being priced in implies all unintended harm to environment being priced in, but that is not what is presented.

I think no, because in this case where if there is one single UH to society, it will also be a UH to environment , there could be elements of unintended harm to environment that are NOT unintended harm to society. For this reason, a premise that says "Whatever constitutes unintended harm to society also constitutes unintended harm to the environment" would in fact NOT be sufficient, because it doesn't cover situations where unintended harm to the environment is not an unintended harm to society, so the conclusion that sound management of resources leads to prices that reflect all UH to environment does not follow from the premise that it reflects all unintended harm to society, because the UH to society is a subset!

So instead we need UH to environment to be the subset, in other words what answer choice A says. The interesting thing is that this implies the expected sufficient assumption: if a resource's prices reflects all UH to to society, it reflects all UH to environment. How does this make sense, because it seems to be the reversal at face value? The difference lies in the observation that if X->Y (X is a subset of Y) then you can infer that something that invokes all Y (call it Z) also invokes all X. Usually we are accustomed to thinking that if X->Y and Z->Y then X is not necessarily involved because elements of set Y not in X may be invoked instead. The tricky thing about this stimulus is Y (cost to society) is modified by us caring about the ENTIRE cost to society. So, if the entire cost is reflected (every element in Y), the entirety of X (cost to environment) is necessarily involved.

I've been trying to come up with a more simplistic example.

If being a dog implies being a mammal, then we can conclude that if all mammals are warm blooded then all dogs are warm blooded. But we can't infer that all dogs being warm blooded implies that all mammals are warm blooded, which would be analogous to inferring that if pricing reflects all harm to environment then it reflects all harm to society from the fact that a harm to environment implies being a harm to society. However, we can infer the proper conclusion, which is that if pricing reflects all harm to society then it reflects all harm to environment, because harms to environment are the subset, just like dogs are the subset of mammals!

Would love to hear how others think about this/if I'm thinking about it correctly because it seems like an element of logic that was not covered in the core curriculum, so for that reason I assume situations like this won't arise too much on the LSAT.

PrepTests ·

PT130.S1.Q22

MickeyClaffey

Tuesday, Apr 7

D is not crucial because the perceived value according to the kids is what matters, not the objective relevance. However, I would imagine that another necessary assumption is that there is in fact a proportional relationship across the entire spectrum of change as a function of deference, since the stimulus only tells us about the two opposite ends of the spectrum (rapid vs slow)

PrepTests ·

PT149.S1.Q10

MickeyClaffey

Wednesday, Apr 1

the key here is to notice that the stimulus says "seems like" !!! this is indicative of human biases coming into play & is a hint that something like C will be relevant and also lowers the burden of proof that the correct answer needs to have.

PrepTests ·

PT114.S2.Q17

MickeyClaffey

Tuesday, Mar 31

@yanlaodun491 sure but his argument assumes that there is 1. yes maybe 100 MIGHT not produce enough dust, but at the very least it makes it more likely!! Trent's implicit premise is the one crater was not sufficient for the dust ("THAT asteroid crater is not large enough..."), so to learn that many asteroids struck the earth weakens his reasoning! it doesn't have to prove him wrong, just compromise the support he provides for his claim. remember, argument being proven invalid =/= being proven wrong, which is a classic flaw that we sometimes see in lsat arguments and is good to remember.

PrepTests ·

PT137.S2.Q23

MickeyClaffey

Tuesday, Mar 31

@ConnerKline this one can be done by pretty quickly pattern matching: highlight the conclusion in the stimulus and notice it is a "some" claim, so eliminate D and E. then revisit the premises and notice we are working with 1) a "some" claim and 2) an "all" claim and notice that C and A don't match so by POE it is B

PrepTests ·

PT115.S2.Q11

MickeyClaffey

Thursday, Mar 26

@catherism a gift being generous is an unreachable conclusion, so you can scan for that conclusion and eliminate any AC's that mention it. the stimulus tells us requirements for generosity, but nothing that is sufficient for generosity. in principle-conform questions, the correct answer will always be reachable by a sufficient condition.

"A gift is not generous unless it is intended to benefit the recipient and is worth more than what is expected or customary in the situation;"

translated, means if gift is generous, it will be intended to benefit recipient and worth more than expected.

we can arrive at the fact that a gift is not generous by denying one or more of the necessary conditions, as D does.

however, we can't ever conclude that a gift is in fact generous, because we only know requirements for it being generous! these requirements can be met without the gift actually being generous-- they are only there to tell us that if any of them AREN'T met, the gift has no chance at being generous.

regarding the reasoning, even if intention + more than expected/customary was sufficient in this situation, i think it could be argued that the wine being gifted is expected since it happens every year. additionaly, a correct answer choice for these questions would not require you to make any significant assumptions about something being intended to benefit, it would be explicitly said or very strongly implied with a synonym.

i think it boils down to understanding that even if colloquially we might interpret something like "not X unless Y" as to say that if Y happens, X happens, on the LSAT to properly establish that there is a biconditional relationship you would probably see them saying something like "not X unless Y, but otherwise X"

PrepTests ·

PT146.S3.Q25

MickeyClaffey

Monday, Mar 23

it would be really cool if there was a tag for language drift between premises and conclusion that we could drill