@MarieChavis One right answer! We gotta learn to be confident in ourselves, take the point, and run.

Argument: X and Y correlate, therefore X causes Y.

Invalid, but could be true only if we assume that X and Y don't have some common cause. So the correct answer will eliminate some potential common cause. If we make the opposite assumption--that the two phenomena in fact do have a common cause--then the argument totally breaks down.

There is a huge set of potential common causes for any correlated phenomena, which is why correlation/causation arguments are invalid. In order for a given correlation/causation argument to be true, we must eliminate all potential common causes.

In this case, the common cause of the absence of the fern and the presence of the worm was the unusually thin leaf litter. The correct answer said that this cannot be the common cause, which must be true in order for the conclusion of the argument to be true.

RC used to feel like a black box to me. This series has been so helpful.

15/16, 4 min under time. But the question I missed I didn't flag, so I likely wouldn't have gotten it if I went back through and reviewed.

I think I got a different drill from other folks… 16/16 though, proud of myself.

@Rena12345 I have failed so many RC main point questions by picking summaries over the actual argument 😑

Understanding that it’s asking about the argument has been a huge help.

@NathanW Saaaame. I got tripped up on the second to last question because I just wasn't reading the answer choices thoroughly. Fully missed a word that made the correct answer choice obvious. I've gotta slow down!

@VenessaO77 If you make a custom RC drill you can select the passage. I took the first sentence or so of the first paragraph and put it into the RC drill search bar, then ran the passage myself untimed before coming back to the lesson.

@erarabiameyer Become the Kevin you wish to see in the exam with you.

Coming from a math, science, and engineering background, an answer that is "close enough" is really uncomfortable to me. My biggest source of errors on RC is seeing answers that look "close enough" but not exactly what I expected from a pre-phrase, so I convince myself that that answer is a trap and select another one. I have a feeling I'm going to benefit more from process of elimination than pre-phrasing and hunting for a while until I get used to this type of reasoning and thinking.

There's a typo in this paragraph. Should say "was" right before the parenthetical.

I'm feeling ready to fight some gremlins. Bring on the spotlight passage about tabletop roleplaying games!

@DavidDuncan88 Your reasoning is outside the domain of the statement. The statement was about answers that you got wrong, i.e., selected an incorrect answer. If you select ANY answer, then you must have either selected the correct answer (also outside the domain) or an incorrect answer (inside the domain).

If you selected an incorrect answer, then you have committed at least one of the two errors outlined. You eliminated four answer choices, including the correct one, and selected an incorrect answer choice; or you convinced yourself an incorrect choice was correct on its own merits and moved on. Neither one implies that you did the other.

Eliminating 5 answers and/or skipping isn't addressed here.

@LincolnBrown Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.

If you understand deeply in your bones and your heart and the folds of your brain why an answer choice is right, you won't worry about it being wrong. The only way to reach that understanding is to have a strong base of fundamental reasoning skills and lots of practice. Read/watch the lessons. Do your drills. You will get faster because you will recognize things automatically that took effort before. You got this.

@EdithM I think the point is that you can look at it either way, and it will work as long as you're correctly using the rules and identifying sufficiency/necessity relationships.

@KellanOliver10 There's at least one other.

$50+ -> /her ticket, her ticket -> /$50+. If the ticket's over $50, she didn't receive it. If she received the ticket, it wasn't over $50.

@MarisolSanchez Both will be triggered. M is sufficient to infer both N and O, so if M occurs, both N and O also occur. The conditional phrase mentioned nothing about time.

@180-Energy Has everyone who has improved their test scores mastered logic? Not necessarily. They could have improved their reading comprehension or stress management, for instance. Mastering logic is just one of many methods that are sufficient to improve your score.

Flip it around to see the contrapositive: If you do not see improvement in your test scores, you must not have mastered logic.

But a lack of mastery of logic is not sufficient to infer that your score will not improve. Again, take the example of improving your reading comprehension or stress management. If you fail to master logic AND you improve either of those skills, then your score may increase. Failing to master logic is not sufficient to infer that your score will plateau or dip.

For me the circle diagrams are very helpful for this. Within the larger set of people who have improved their scores, there are smaller subsets--categories of people who took different methods to improve. One subset is mastering logic, but several others exist. Managing stress and improving your reading comprehension are two other subsets, but I'm sure you could think of several others.

I am an avid reader and consider myself quite good at intuitively understanding grammar, so I was very surprised when I found the grammar section of the course to be incredibly helpful for making my implicit understanding more explicit.

For question 5, the written explanation states that we should make the reasonable assumption that politicians are a subset of the elite. However, when I was working out this problem it felt like a "link assumption" question where they would conclude "if society is declining, revolution will follow" and task us with identifying an assumption which would make the argument valid, which would have to be politicians -> elite.

There are many politicians who could reasonably not be considered part of the elite (think union leader or sheriff), so this assumption feels like one that should be explicitly part of the argument OR the reason why the argument is flawed/invalid.

This could just be me and my cultural context, though. Maybe I've shifted the goalpost for who is considered "elite" and need to leave that hang-up at the door.

@LeslieLinarteLuna I did the same thing, and almost second-guessed myself. But I think it works! I'm pretty math-brained so the fact that the two negatives cancel out when applied to the same quantity makes me happy :)

@arae hyphen (-) + greater than (>) = arrow (->)

On my keyboard the hyphen is to the right of the zero (0) key, and the greater than symbol is the period (.) key with SHIFT on.

Though I find it's easier for me to just write it out. You're allowed scratch paper on test day, so I'm trying to train myself to use that resource effectively.

Hey! I'm in the bay area and also looking for accountability buddies. Haven't tested yet, prepping for June.

@AddisonBass Arrow doesn't point from first clause to second clause, it points from subset (sufficient condition) to superset (necessary condition).

@DeliaCanDoIt! I think the skill builder exercises illustrate the intended habit. When you encounter a comparative, make sure you identify (1) the two things being compared, (2) the quality being compared, and (3) which thing “wins” the comparison.

For test day, most of the advice I’ve seen is that time spent writing is often not a good investment unless you’re returning to a flagged question with time to spare. Part of the purpose of us doing all of this practice is to make it so this type of analysis and reasoning comes naturally and we don’t need the crutch of a diagram or notes to get through this type of question quickly and accurately on test day.

@tylermwhite I wish you only the best, man. Was just trying to help.