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I'll be honest it took me two reads on this one.
Stimulus:
Feudalism assumes there is a noble class
noble class requires superior noble status and passing down titles.
Feudalism existed centuries before passing down titles existed.
So we have a mismatch here. We are saying that we have this thing that existed for centuries without one of its required pieces. So we are ignoring that the passing down of titles is not happening in order to believe this or we have to change the dates that feudalism was in the history books to make it appropriately match up.
A) To say that feudalism by definition requires the existence of a nobility is to employ a definition that distorts history. I did not like the way this was written at first but kept it open. The thing is no other answer was better so down to parsing the language to see if it is completely applicable while ignoring the distaste for the way it is written. If we go by the definition of feudalism that is in the stimulus we don't have feudalism until the 12th century. History says it happened at the 8th century and that is a mismatch. So keeping the definition would mean that we would have to what we know about history. This answer totally matches what we need.
B) Prior to the twelfth century, the institution of European feudalism functioned without the presence of a dominant class. We have evidence that they still had a dominant class by there being feudalism in the 8th century even if we know that class did not count as "Proper Nobility" based on the inherited title definition.
C) The fact that a societal group has a distinct legal status is not in itself sufficient to allow that group to be properly considered a social class. We know what is required for a proper social class (nobles) but we do not know what is sufficient for the noble class. Maybe being a royal inherently makes you count as noble without any concerns. This answer could be attractive if you saw legal status as the inherited titles sanctioned by law and placed those together with the noble status as dual sufficient conditions but those are necessary conditions for being a proper noble.
D) The decline of feudalism in Europe was the only cause of the rise of a European nobility. Can we answer the question "what cause the rise of European nobility?" Well, that is a tricky question if we want to apply the full definition that is in debate then the first instance of nobility that we know of from the stimulus was at the 12th century when they started inheriting titles. But this definition contradicts history so people are sort of fighting about it, right? From our stimulus we cannot say that the 12th century was the first time there was nobility (maybe in the 2nd century there was also nobility) and we cannot say that feudalism was the sole cause (maybe the inherited title idea had 0 to do with feudalism and they just wanted more paperwork to say they are special).
E) The prior existence of feudal institutions is a prerequisite for the emergence of a nobility, as defined in the strictest sense of the term. This is biconditional hell. This breakdown into feudalism needs nobility to exist and nobility needs feudalism. The stimulus is not saying that nobility needs feudalism to exist. It is saying that if we want to not change history we have to look at the definition of what is needed for a proper noble class concerning only inherited titles so far.
I have learned that sometimes I have to tell myself that my mind is just not getting that stimulus at the moment whether it is an easy or a hard question. Then I flag it and move onto the next few fairly quickly. If you start to reread the stimulus and you don't get it that may be something to consider. When you come back to it either two things will happen, you have the time to appropriately stare at it and take the chance or you are short on time anyways which means skipping that question likely saved you from missing many more. It is an individual choice but something to consider and something that can be seen more as a strategy for getting the best score than something that people beat themselves up for when they stumble on a question.
@KatrinaJC interesting, although the still didn’t really specify the difference in between live and coach, they just gave more of an “it depends” answer. My texts with the ai were always complex as it was sending me full questions sets that it wrote and I was sending back a full analysis of the questions, correct answer, and wrong answers. Thank you for emailing them about it.
You may be able to mention something in your personal statement that shows the growth into your current position.
Stimulus
chess analogycampiagn advisors are playing against each other and that is what the press reports on.
Voters are harmed by the current reporting methods.
Voters lack information to make informed decisions on substantive policy
C- campaign advisors should stay out of the news so the press reports on positions concerning substantive issues.
A) we do not have the Candidate's opinions
B) we do not have the Press's opinions
C) we do not have the Candidate's opinions
D) we do not have the Reporter's opinions
E) This is the problem the argument is concerned about so we can find support for it there.
NA
Stimulus
chess analogycampiagn advisors are playing against each other and that is what the press reports on.
Voters are harmed by the current reporting methods.
Voters lack information to make informed decisions on substantive policy
C- campaign advisors should stay out of the news so the press reports on positions concerning substantive issues.
A) "Most Appropriate" who says? this is a value judgement and a strong statement. Does the argument need "most appropriate" to be true to work? no.
B) Okay so let's say they do have positions, then the press has something to report on. What if we negate this and say that they don't have any positions on important stuff, then is the fact that the press is reporting on the process only a bad thing? No. This would destroy the argument and is the answer.
C)If the press reports did determine the issues then there should not be a problem with them not reporting on the candidates.
D)Even the negated version of this if it were the answer is not exactly what we are looking for. The argument does not need this to be true because even if they were paying attention the news is not reporting on the issues.
E) Negation is probably the easier test to use on this one. If there was a difference in between reporting on the process and on the substantive issues then that is helpful to the argument not something that could destroy the argument like we want to do when negating an NA answer.
Weaken
Stimulus:
Snoring more common among smokers than nonsmokers.
Smoking causes snoring. (Conclusion)
This is a classic correlation causation stimulus. How do we look at these? Well, the author is just finding two things that somewhat move together and blindly saying one causes the other. So we can strengthen them by saying "hey this possible other cause, yeah it isn't happening here" (block alternates) or we can weaken them by saying "yeah this other possible cause for this it is totally likely that it is happening here" (show alternate causes).
Things could also be happening where a third factor is causing both, which we could weaken or strengthen by blocking the cause of both or pointing out its existence. They could also be entirely unrelated but that seems unlikely.
A) Stress causes both snoring and smoking. Sounds like our third factor causing both here which means they are not causing each other. Classic answer for this type of stimulus.
B) Obesity (third factor) causes people to smoke (one of the correlated factors). From this we can tell anything about if the relationship in between smoking and snoring. It is totally possible that smoking is caused by something and then proceeds to cause another thing (snoring), so this didn't weaken the relationship that the author proposed in his conclusion.
C) C is interesting. Most snorers do not smoke. Say we have a group of 10 of each side smokers and nonsmokers. We have 3 smoking snorers and 2 nonsmoking snorers. This would match the stimulus fairly well as we know that snoring is not common among both groups. based on the fact that Smoking Snorers are more common they have the bigger number no matter what so if we look solely at the snoring group of people our 2 and 3 people 3 are smokers (the majority). This means that C is anti supported by the argument but let's say that we can ignore that and add it in. Does this answer about the percentages of people who are smoking snorers really do anything to our conclusion that smoking can induce snoring? Not really. Smoking could still cause snoring. There could be other things that also cause snoring that are the reason why the number don't match up. Like let's say our smoking group has 10 people in it now and we are going to match the answer choice in the terms of numbers. 4 of those are our smokers, 6 are our non smokers. Well how did they end up snoring? Maybe they ate Ice Cream and that caused it. Unless the stimulus is like "this is the only cause, sole cause" then we live in a realm where this situation is entirely possible (except this answer goes against the situation in our stimulus).
D) Most Smokers do not Snore. This is supported by what we know in the stimulus. We know for instance that snoring is not common overall so it is likely low numbers over both groups smokers are just higher. So let's look at what is attractive about this answer. It is easy to assume that if smoking causes snoring it should have a higher rate of people who snore than who do not snore but that is our brains trying to make the situation a stronger cause than may exist. Maybe smoking causes snoring in 1 out of 1,000,000 people. We would not expect to see the majority of smokers snoring in that case. Now because this answer is very popular let's make and look at another example. Alright, It is summer when I am writing this so I am going to use theme parks. we had a low amount of heart attacks in the theme park this year. Many more of them are on roller coasters than were people standing around the park. Wow, that's weird, right? I think roller coasters might be causing heart attacks.
So we aren't given the total number of actual cases with the totals of people that would give us a clear picture just like the stimulus. We have a low amount of cases over the board but roller coaster riders are just a lot higher than people walking around. Now let's make our version of D. Most roller coaster riders do not have heart attacks. Is this totally possible? Yeah. Maybe only 6 out of 1,000 riders have heart attacks and the walkers only have 2 out of 1,000 with heart attacks. It doesn't change that they are higher than the walkers which is the difference the conclusion is based off of. The fact that most riders don't die does't change that some of them do and maybe those rollercoasters are causing just a few of those deaths and other factors are causing the rest. That doesn't change that rollercoasters could be a cause. And for the hell of it.... The real cause for all of them was heatstroke.
E) Both Smoking (hypothesized cause) and Snoring (Hypothesized effect) cause throat problems (random 3rd factor) does this weaken the pull in between the other two factors? not really they could still totally be cause and effect.
Inference
Stimulus:
1.C-more important to criticize democracies over human right issues than dictatorships.
Human rights violations always inexcusable
Committed by a government that serves the will of the people is worse than otherwise.
Criticism is more likely to have an effect on governments that represent the will of the people than dictatorships.
Assumption: democracies are governments that serve the will of the people.
A) Do we know anything about all governments? not really we would have to assume things about them. Do we know anything about the overall category of inexcusable and reprehensible acts? nope.
B) Well the argument did judge human rights violations in democracies to be worse than human rights violations under dictatorships so I think we have our answer here with support to back it up.
C)We know that it will have lesser effect than on a democracy but we don't know that it will have no effect at all.
D) We are just talking about these situations in the sense that they have happened. We cannot point to the stimulus part that says or can be added up together to mean this. We have absolutely nothing about the likelihood.
E) We know something about those who represent the will of the people-"violations are more reprehensible" and "criticism is more likely to have an effect" but the second group, people who merely claim to represent the will of the people is nowhere in our stimulus directly or by the trick of a single word that could show there is another group. If we don't know anything about them it is harder to make an inference about them without the first group being set up as the only group who does x or the group that is the best at y. If we had that type of thing we could rule against any group that ins't the first group based on those statements but we don't so we know effectively nothing about the merely pretends to care people and cannot make any inferences about them.
Task find the miscommunication
So the goal in this question is to find out what word the second person incorrectly interpreted.
Stimulus
Chamber of Commerce met to discuss making the city look prettier and landscaping/removing side of highway stuff.
Mary Sims pov: tearing down the billboards will hurt our ability to make a living.
Jack Jordan pov: The basis of our business is an attractive community. people don't want to see billboards. They hurt our ability to make a living.
So the trick in this is that someone is saying something and the next person responds after reading into the statement incorrectly like the distracted relative at a holiday responding to something that they were barely paying attention to and getting it wrong.
A) Billboards -they both agree on what this is.
B) Basis - they are both using/reading this term in the same way
C)Our- Mary Simms thinks of our as her business Jack Jordan thinks of ours as the entire community. ("our" groups are not matching)
D) ability both using/reading in the same way
E) Damaged- both using/reading this in the same way (definition match)
NA
find the answer that is needed for the argument to work. It should read like a must be true statement and if you negate it the answer should destroy the argument (not just hurt a little).
Stimulus
Cortez saw people playing a game with a rubber ball
The people have used rubber since A.D. 1000
The game must have originated in between A.D. 1000 and Cortez showing up.
So the author is assuming that if the people used a rubber ball for the game that they could not have played the game without that ball. But what if they used something else for the ball prior to finding rubber. Sure rubber could have been a lot better of a material to use for the ball in the game but that doesn't mean that they didn't make them out of stuffed leather or something originally.
A) We know they played a ceremonial game on this occasion but we on't know if they did for everything. Americans use fireworks on the 4th of July but we don't use them for every holiday clear down to national donut day (I didn't look that up but I am assuming it exists).
B) That's a great informative tidbit. Let's play the negation test- Making rubber balls was not one of the earliest rubber inventions does this hurt the overall conclusion dates? nope. early or later it still falls within the timeline.
C) Let's try the MBT Test on this one- the game was popular throughout Mexico. Does this need to be true for the argument to work? not at all. It's out.
D) They always used a rubber ball for the game play. This does need to be true for the dates to line up and if you negate it it does destroy the arguments reasoning. it is the answer
E)This is completely irrelevant to the argument anyone else could have dated the use of rubber in that group of people's history including those people
Strengthen Except
expect to see a neutral answer rather than an obvious weakener.
After the 70's oil raises people have been using less energy in their homes.
C: people changed their habits and reduced their quality of life
There is no real support in this. it is just a phenomenon and a conclusion that the state researchers have made. In the answers we should expect to find 4 choices that would fill in the blank for how they got to their conclusion (strengtheners) and one probably neutral answer or a weakener if they are going easy on us.
A) This seems like an example of reducing the quality of life if you are no longer willing to heat the entirety of your house.
B) Changed their habits and went out to nice cozy free public places.
C) So, it is cheap to change your heating system and make it super efficient. Well this sort of goes against the idea of changing your lifestyle because of bills.
D) Keeping it chilly to keep costs down seems like they are making accommodations to deal with the cost of living.
E) Assuming the shower water isn't ice cold this means they are trying to use less energy in the water heater too.
Necessary Assumption
Stimulus:
1860 found feather fossil from the mesozoic era
Birds. were not believe to exist until after the mesozoic era.
Evidence of feathers from that era were present
Feather must have come from the earliest birds
Okay, let's say we have a velociraptor named Mongo. But wait, what if Mongo has some pink and red feathers? Then can we say that the feather found had to come from a bird? What if there are other things with feathers? This is the assumption that the author is making. The author sees a feather and just thinks birds but if there were other creatures at the time that had feathers then the whole argument fails. A feather would no longer be solid and complete evidence of a bird.
Now we have a solid idea about what's wrong with the argument so let's check the answers for it.
A) What do we know about the Pterosaurs? they are really scary if you are trapped on an abandoned theme park island with them....okay but really from the stimulus we just know they are a timestamp. They disappeared and then sometime later this other species that we do care about probably shows up but we don't even know when. You have to make a few jumps to make answer choice a work. For instance you have to assume that the Pterosaurs had descendants, and those descendants had feathers whether or not the Pterosaurs did. When you have to make up a story about the feathery little Pterosaur offspring you are helping out the answer choice. It is okay to assume very simple real world knowledge like the sun is hot but you can't chose an answer that you have to help with information you create.
B) Do we know what type of feather the one we found was? nope. Does this even matter not really maybe the first bird popped out looking like a fully formed chicken. Is that still okay for our argument? Yep, looks like this isn't needed then.
C) Oh, so only birds have feathers... This is what we talked about earlier... not hidden tricky wording so it looks like we could pick this one right away.
D) Is the argument assuming this? That it was some Pterosaur bird missing link? No. It is assuming that it was a fully evolved bird. We know this because the conclusion directly states this must be a very early bird. (not the birdie missing link)
E) This is totally pointless random information that no one needs to know.
I will be 30 soon and I have had people in my life question why I am still pursuing this. My response is always in 3 years I will still be 3 years older but I can do that as an attorney or as someone who still wishes they had pursued their goal and didn't.
@gurbanikalsi I am concerned about that. I use underlining for tracking the Authors Opinion.
@NoNamed92 Thank you. I do know that 7Sage's Ai is Gemini because I asked it one day. It is not however the same as Gemini on google so it seems to be a secondary Ai system where they have implemented their own training and rules. Before finding out that I could have it send me questions I was using my free time to make study guides for the study groups that I am. I may go back to it and finish up some more things for them or read my reading comp books more for a minute. My average is -2LR and -4RC but I need a 173 for a full ride so I can get out debt free to turn around and pay for my Dad's kidney transplant. As my goal is more than just scholarship based I am studying a lot. It was nice to have a steady stream of new level 5 questions to pick apart all day.
@NoNamed92 interesting. I am a graphic artist so every time there isn’t stuff on my desk I respond to question sets that I have had it generate for me usually individually because the work flow is inconsistent. Thanks for asking it that. I will even feed it articles to make reading comp questions for me.
Well, due to an extra boring stint of time at work pre holiday and a rainy Fourth of July weekend I managed to run myself out of my usage limit on the AI. I know there are differences in the plans for AI usage limits. The thing is there is no descriptive qualities to these limits. Will I go from Live to coach and only get to have three more question sets from it? There is also no other appeal to the coach plan for me being I don't have the time or inclination to meet with real coaches over zoom anyways (I assume other people are in the same boat). Purchasable AI time along with the students overall realization that the AI is quite adept at writing questions that they haven't seen before seems like a very profitable area to expand into. I know I would purchase them as I have spoken with the AI until it has gamified writing new questions and prompts for me daily then breaks down where my reasoning for every answer is correct or incorrect. I don't know if this will be something that you guys decide to do but it would be nice and it would probably be a needed advent to described how the ai timing is being purchased (text amount, message amount, other) and how much you really get with each plan to make it obvious as the whether it is a worthwhile upgrade. Hope this at least brings up some conversation about it.
1-2 thousand fruit fly species exist.
Hawaii has the most fruit fly diversity (500s)
106 of Hawaii's fruit fly species are picture wing drosophilids (pwd)
All Hawaii fruit flys came from 1-2 females.
So this was just a stimulus with a bunch of statements thrown together. That means that there is normally something we can draw from the statements before we even care about the question. What we need to look for to make this easier is overlapping categories. If something is in two places in the stimulus then we know that we can combine the information to figure out more about them.
So we have
lots of fruit flies
Hawaii has 500 fruit flies
106 Hawaii fruit flies are a certain type.
all Hawaii fruit flies are from 1-2 individuals.
So, this trick didn't help up much here because so much of the stimulus is about fruit flies in general. the best way to look at this then would be to stay the groups. Biggest group at the top and smaller groups down from that.
All FF (1-2,000)
--all Hawaii FF came from 1-2f, 500 types
----106 of Hawaiian types are (PWD)
By using the largest group and working your way down it is very easy to tell inferences. This is an easier question where it is not really needed but the method will still work on harder questions of this type. When you use this trick pick one piece of information and look back up the line and that is everything you can quickly know about that type. If you look down those are things contained in the overall group.
A) All of the picture-winged drosophilids in Hawaii are believed to be the descendants of the same one or two ancestral female fruit flies. what's our subject? PWD. If we move up in our structure then we know this is immediately correct, but let's check it out. Next part, they are descendants of 1-2FF in Hawaii. Is that up from PWD? Yep. Correct answer. I did not do this question this way but just wanted to show a way that should work on harder ones.
B) Picture-winged drosophilids are found only in the Hawaiian islands. We know about this group in Hawaii only. We do not know if that group exists elsewhere. Maybe they are invasive in Florida.
C) All of the 1,000 to 2,000 species of fruit flies worldwide are believed to be the descendants of one or two females. We don't know this and even though something similar was presented in the stimulus it was about Hawaii flies only.
D) If 500 new species of fruit flies were discovered, then Hawaiian fruit flies would no longer be the most taxonomically diverse population. This takes a lot of assumptions helping out the answer to make it work. For 1 they can't be Hawaiian FF or they would just make Hawaii bigger and they can't be spread out in between too many different categories of fruit flies because then the spread may still allow Hawaii to be the most diverse. If we are making up our own story to fill in the blanks then we are helping the answer out in our head and it sucks more on paper than you think.
E) Some fruit flies originated in Hawaii and spread from there to other parts of the world. Could it be true? Totally. Do we know anything about this? Not at all.
We can't store radioactive waste on site (where it was made) in the long term.
P- No one has a safe plan or place to put the waste permanently
C-We should shut down the plants and build no new ones. (AKA stop making the waste)
Okay so we need to stop making more waste. That's great. I can be okay with that conclusion the problem is the rest of the paragraph was talking about the problem of dealing with the waste that was already made, so what are we going to do about that because it never really gave a solution... Not addressing the waste that already exists is the other half of the nuclear waste problem and we should look for an answer concerning that.
If you didn't see that to get to the prephrase then use the 2 step method for flaw questions.
Is the argument ignoring/forgetting/doing this?
Is this a mistake? (if you had a really annoying friend and they tried to argue this is a problem would you tell them to shut up because it is common sense or would you say "Okay, you have a point."?)
A) it would prevent the development of safe technologies for producing electric power This is treating the problem like it is clean power overall but our problem in the stimulus is what do we do with all the radioactive waste.
B) it does not distinguish between nuclear plants that have, and plants that do not have, a reputation for operating safely Similar to A this is acting like there is a different more general problem in the stimulus than there is.
C) it does not provide for the permanent storage of already-existing waste Yes, this is what we predicted. Pick it and move on or quickly glance at the other two and make sure their subject isn't close and then move.
D) the generation of electric power from fossil fuels is relatively safe This is discussing a type of power that is never mentioned in the stimulus directly or implicitly. If it is a topic that isn't presented at all it would be very hard for that to be the problem in the argument.
E) the risks of unsafe disposal of waste from nuclear power plants lie in the future, but the benefits from such plants are in the present It is tomorrow's problem... Is the argument saying all this unsafe not stored correctly waste is tomorrow's problem? no because it told us about it and then never addressed fixing it or when.
Maria is running for election
If Maria runs Jerome will not.
C:Maria will be the only candidate in the election.
So, what happened to anybody else? To make this argument work we have to assume the only other person who was going to run for election was Jerome and then it rules out Jerome to get to Maria only.
A) According to its management, Brown’s Stores will move next year. Without Brown’s being present, no new large store can be attracted to the downtown area. Therefore the downtown area will no longer be viable as a shopping district. Making this less convoluted and more general it is wanting both options to be placed together. Not having the first store means that there may not be any other stores placed there so you can have the first store, or both stores. It is not saying you get the first store because you have to have a store and we don't have the second store (while ignoring the potential of any other stores).
B) The press release says that the rock group Rollercoaster is playing a concert on Saturday. It won’t be playing on Friday if it plays on Saturday. So Saturday will be the only day this week on which Rollercoaster will perform. Okay, we have a band playing on one night. We remove another night as a viable option and then conclude that the only option is Saturday. This matches the error in the stim. Removing one possible options and concluding based on that while acting like there are zero other possible options that could affect it.
C) Joshua says the interviewing panel was impressed by Marilyn. But if they were impressed by Marilyn, they probably thought less of Sven. Joshua is probably right, and so Sven will probably not get the job. This isn't ruling out options while ignoring others, it is just sort of ranking someone's possible options of the options.
D) An informant says that Rustimann was involved in the bank robbery. If Rustimann was involved, Jones was certainly not involved. Since these two are the only people who could have been involved, Rustimann is the only person the police need to arrest. Okay, so this one is interesting. The set up is exactly what we need but the problem is it corrects the flaw. Our flaw was that there were other potential options the author was ignoring or oblivious to and this answer directly says there are not other options. If there are not other options then it is okay to rule one of two out and say it just be the other one.
E) The review said that this book is the best one for beginners at programming. If this book is the best, that other one can’t be as good. So this one is the book we should buy. This is operating on declaring one options as better than the other not on ruling out anything. It is still picking between things but the way it is doing it is different from our stimulus.
Comets don't generate light
Comets reflect light from other places.
Scientists estimate size by brightness
Scientists overestimated the reflectiveness of Halley's Comet by 60 times.
What do we easily know from this? Well if they are judged mass based on how shiny something is and this single known comet has a less shiny material than they expected when they did their calculations then the calculations are wrong. the comet is likely larger than previously thought.
A) Some comets are composed of material that reflects 60 times more light per unit of mass than the material of which Halley’s comet is composed. Do we really know other comet are composed the way scientists thought? No. We know for sure that they were wrong concerning one of the comets but it is completely possible that they could have been wrong about all of the comets.
B) Previous estimates of the mass of Halley’s comet which were based on its brightness were too low. This is exactly what we predicted based on the statements.
C) The total amount of light reflected from Halley’s comet is less than scientists had previously thought. So we know that the formula that scientists were using to get mass was wrong or this specific comet based on the way that the comet is made but that foist mean that they measurement that they too for reflectivity was incorrect. They could have gotten a perfect reading on light and then just plugged it into a bad formula.
D) The reflective properties of the material of which comets are composed vary considerably from comet to comet. This totally could be true just as easily as it could be false. The thing is we just don't know about comets as a whole. They could have been wrong only about Halley's Comet or they could have been wrong about the whole class of comets. The ambiguity in this is the same reason why A is wrong.
E) Scientists need more information before they can make a good estimate of the mass of Halley’s comet. We don't know what qualifies as a good estimate so how are we supposed to know if this is something that we can draw from our statements? We can't make a judgement call on this answer.
A 151 is about the top of the bell curve. So essentially it is where most of us start at. It isn’t a bad score and can be improved. Don’t think that it is unachievable to move up in score. It happens on a different timescale for everyone but generally people can study until they make it into the 160’s to 170’s.