I'm not sure if my reasoning on this is correct, but I sort of separate the realm of "causation" from the realm of "conditions". A causes B resides in the realm of causation, whereas if A ---> B is in the realm of "conditions".

So even if without A, B would not happen is an inference that could be made in certain causation arguments, a counterfactual would not be an "inference" we can draw from a causation chain because it's mixing the two realms of argumentation. An if-then statement is a universal condition, whereas A causes B is something derived from an observation.

I guess if the stimulus read something like "whenever there is an intense forest fire, El Nino is unusually strong", then b) could be inferred from that.

#help might be a technical question, but we can assume that low ceiling and thin walls are the same as "houses lacking high ceiling and thick walls"? Maybe I'm being too cautious, but I kept thinking there's a possibility of a mid-level ceiling or a mid-thickness wall or something like that...

#help For this instance, then, is it okay to think of "to the extent that" as meaning "if"?

I think another way of eliminating e) is on the fact that the conclusion is talking about "learned behavior" and then uses "young seals" to make its point. to show if anything is "learned", you have to show change over time, i.e - young to mature, which is what c) is doing.

e) talks about harbor seals in general, so it could be that these seals are still young, from which we can't conclude that they actually 'learned" anything.

I also think answer choice a) in Q13 is a little bit unsettling because of the word "various". Paragraph 2 isn't just suggesting "various" explanations to Olsen's hypothesis - there's a clear train of thought that extends throughout the paragraph. With the word "various", it makes it sound like there were just random explanations given to support Olsen's hypothesis. Kind of like how in LR, some of the wrong strengthen/weaken answers are those that try to undermine or support the conclusion without regards to the given premises.

P1: S v. K faulty rationale

P2: why it was faulty - 14th amendment was invoked not through the racial covenant but through the judicial enforcement of the covenant.

P3: the contradiction of this rationale - need to always reconcile covenant to constitutional standards. Courts ignore this.

P4: another ramification of the rationale - doesn’t get to the heart of the matter

1. Primary purpose - to critique a reasoning

a) this is right.

2. “But where, then, was the state action that is necessary for inoking the 14th amendment, given that the restrictive covenants were private contracts?”

In the 14th amendment, state actor was the Uni

3. Author’s attitude - noxious aspect captures it the best. Author is negative.

4. Attribution rationale - “courts could enforce only those provisions that could have been enacted into general law.” we want to analogize “provision” part and the “general law” part.

a) no, this should be like every other company needs to be held responsible.

c) is right - it’s saying it’s not just the columnist but the entire newspaper who would be held responsible.

5. It’s not a) because the question is not demonstrating something but rather pointing something out, as b) is doing. It’s not c) because factuality is not a central part of this paragraph. It’s not d) and e) because they’re not focusing on the Shelley decision.

2. Tax on saturated fat has been repealed after 7 months.

Tax was having undesirable and unintended consequences.

C: tax should not have been repealed so soon.

a) it’s not talking about implementation.

b) yes, this is supported because we know this tax has been in place for only 7 months.

c) this is also talking about implementation of a law.

d) we don’t know if most people are not evading the law.

e)

3. Foreign company trying to buy FM.

C: dont let this happen.

P: if we allow this, there’s going to be a huge cascade of stuff that will trigger.

a) this is not circular reasoning.

b) it does not take this for granted.

c) it’s not defending a practice.

d) yes, this is the snowball effect i was talking about.

e) we dont know if second event would have to precede the first. Also, there are more than just two events.

4. It’s okay to dump small amounts of chemicals into local river even though this material can pose health problems.

I’m gonna continue to fish.

I’m going to be okay if other food manufacturers do it.

a) we don’t know if other people are planning to perform that kind of act.

b) greatest number of people? This passage is not about utilitarianism.

c) if one is willing to submit oneself to the consequences off that action performed byb oneself (check) or others (check). Yes, this meets our stimulus.

d) I dont think this person really evaluated all the contingencies of his action.

e) the stimulus clearly says “there is evidence that this material may pose health problems.

This question still bothers me - i get that Chester's "that" is referring to Rose's "worst review", but I'm still unsure why "nothing in that paper is particularly well written" supports Chester's misunderstanding of Rose's "worst review." Oh wait I just got it...

Rose means "worst review" as in how a movie critic would rate a movie.

Chester means "worst review" as in the quality of the writing.

goddamn i hate this question lol

5. C: Attacking an opposing candidate on phi grounds is MORE effective than attacking details.

P: phil attack links an opponents proposal to ideological scheme → story and context → emotionally compelling.

So what if it’s emotionally compelling? We need this to bridge over.

a) most likely to remember? This is not included in the stimulus.

b) emotionally compelling → effective.

c) provide more context - don’t care. We need to talk about effectiveness.

d) this just talks about the negative case.

e) most candidates’ proposal grounded in an overarching ideological scheme. It doesn’t matter if there are MOST candidates or SOME candidates. The stimulus is about a mechanism, not really the number of how many effective attacks were made.

6. M: doctors who complain about patients doing medical research are being a little unfair.

Seems only natural that a patient would want to know as much possible about his or her condition.

S: it is not unfair. Doctors have undergone years of training. How can u maintain that a doctor’s opinion is not worth more than something an untrained person comes up with after searching the internet?

For S, the “untrained person” is the patient.

a) no, this is too broad.

b) opinion of a patient (untrained person) should have at least as much weight as the opinion of a doctor. Yes, this is how S interprets M, and to this, S says “how can you maintain that a doctor’s opinion is not worth more than untrained person’s opinion?”

c) opinions of doctors published on websites is different from the subject of M’s argument.

d) patient’s own view of his or her symptoms doesn’t mention that the patient went and searched his symptoms online.

7. Principle: people should not feed wild animals because it makes them dependent on humans and less likely to survive on their own.

Situation: bird lovers commonly feed wild birds to attract them to their yards and gardens.

We want to justify this situation and say this is an exception to the principle.

a) congregating around human bird feeders… well this would make this situation conform to the principle.

b) this is talking about benefiting humans. Our subject is on wild birds.

c) wild birds are more likely to congregate - doesn’t matter where they are more likely to congregtate.

d) this is just talking about bird lovers. We need to talk about wild animals.

e) yes, because wild birds depend in part on human sources of food for survival, it makes sense for bird lovers to feed the wild birds. Because they depend on it for survival. It’s an assumption that says dependency on human and surviving on their own can be interlinked.

*got this question wrong. I totally drew the wrong picture in my head. The stimulus is saying ONE representative visited 640 people, and then the next year, ONE representative visited 501. We’re then trying to talk about ALL the representatives based on this per representative figure. a) wrecks this by saying that there was an increase in size, so even if ONE representative visited fewer in the following year, there would have been a net total of more visits. I think I didn’t choose a) because I misinterpreted the stimulus as saying there were a total of 640 visits and 501 visits, when these figures were pro-rated to be on an individual basis. Always think about “per” unit.

9. Last year, pharm manufacturers increased amount of money they spent promoting new drugs, which they do mainly by sending sales rep to visit physicians in their offices.

2 years ago, there was an average of 640 such visits per rep, whereas last year it fell to 501.

C: additional promotion was counterproductive, making physicians less willing to receive visits.

a) most pharm manufacturers increased size of their sales forces so that their sales rep could devote more time. But this doesn’t show whether the promotion itself was counterproductive or not.

b) physicians who receive visits from pharm site rep usually accept free samples. Okay they get free samples. How does this show the additional promotion was not counterproductive? They could just get free samples and close the door on them.

c) most pharm companies did not increase $$ they spend promoting drugs through advertising targeted at customers. But the stimulus is talking about promotion on visiting door to door. We don’t care about this advertisement.

d) most physicians who agree to receive a visit will see that rep more than once during a given year. Yes, this might show that last year the number falling to 501 doesn’t mean that promotion was counterproductive - one physician just saw a lot of reps.

e) more visits a physician receives, more likely he or she is to prescribe drugs. This is like a general principle that doesn’t really weaken the argument. If anything, e) is a principle on which the stim is operating.

10. Network of ancient tracks on Malta was created through erosion caused by wheeled vehicles.

Some suggested that tracks were manually cut to facilitate the passage of carts (contrary to erosion).

This uniformity is more likely of wheel diameter → routes were utilized until tracks eroded to a depth that made vehicle passage impossible.

The last part once again reinforces that it was the erosion, not the manual cutting.

a) this is the overall conclusion.

b) this is other people’s argument.

c) this is part of the other people’s argument.

d) this serves to counter the other people’s argument.

e) this is the likely explanation that reinforces the overall conclusion.

11. Goal of reforesting degraded land is to create an area with a lot of thriving tree species.

But some managers use strategy that involves planting a single fast-growing tree species.

So maybe something to do with fast-growing and its effect on multitude of thriving tree species.

a) nothing about fast-growing.

b) this is already assuming that there is a multitude of thriving tree species.

c) if not land is planted with tree species native to the area… but do we know if these fast-growing tree species is native?

d) yes, growth of trees = fast growing → contributes to the dispersal of a large variety of tree seeds. This is why they want to use fast-growing species.

e) okay this is just whining how tough liffe is.

12. Independent comp service company tallied service requests it receives for individual brands of personal computers.

Found that, (after factoring brand’s market share) →

KRV had largest proportion of service request. ProBit had the smallest proportion of service requests.

C: ProBit more reliable personal computer brand.

This conclusion is drawn on the fact that smallest proportion → reliable. So something about service requests is indicative of the computer’s reliability.

a) proportions of service requests for other computers were clustered much closer to Probit than to KRV. okay, maybe they were clustered because the Probit were more reliable. Doesn’t weaken.

b) for some computer brands, most service requests are made to manufacturer’s service rather than to an independent service company. Yes, we need to know that the “independent service company” is the company that’s doing the tallying. b) introduces assumption that says maybe ProBit’s service request got underreported.

c) company that did the tally receives more service requests for ProBit brand computers than does any other independent computer service company. This actually would strengthen the argument too because it’s saying that “despite” this fact, ProBit still had the smallest proportion.

d) but this says “it has factored brand’s market share”. So market doesn’t work.

e) if anything, this might make Probit more reliable.

Hope i'm not too late in answering this -

what is "surprising" about the stim is that with advent of more journals accessible online, scientists are all citing the SAME thing.

before I talk about c), i think this is also kind of relevant to our lives too. with internet, there's def more stuff available online for us to cite in our essays. does this now mean we're going to incorporate BBC, CBS, MSNBC, AlJazeera, etc..? nah, we'll probably just google and see whatever comes up first and cite that. this is precisely the logic behind e), and totally explains the outcome.

C) is not talking so much about "same" article being cited. answer choice c) would actually be a pretty good resolve answer if the stimulus was talking about nepotism among science community ("led to a greater tendency among scientists to cite articles that they went to undergrad with" or something like that). as it stands though, c) missess the mark in terms of what it needs to reconcile.

13. Scientific journals began to offer full online access to their articles, scientists gained access to more journals.

This didn’t result in a broader number of articles being cited. Instead, it led to scientists just citing the same thing.

a) this is asking us to think that authoritative scientific journals somehow influenced scientists to cite the same thing… totally baseless. It’s not like the journals were forcing the scientists to cite the same thing.

b) okay, but this still doesn’t speak to whether scientists who wrote a lot of articles all cite the same thing.

c) this would kinda make sense if it was the stim said “ it led to a greater tendency among scientists to cite articles that were written by their fellow scientists.” but the stim is saying “it led to a greater tendency among scientists to cite the SAME articles.” that’s what’s puzzling.

d) several new scientific journals appeared at roughly the same time… so we are to think that this somehow was affecting scientists citing the same thing because they were using this. Again, it doesn’t explain.

e) online searching made it easier for scientists to identify articles that present the most highly regarded views on an issue, which they prefer to cite. Yes, this explains it. What needs to be resolve is that the SAME article gets repeatedly cited. It’s probably because other scientists have caught on that this article is some good stuff so they cite it too.

14. People are able to tell whether a person is extroverted by looking at person’s neutral expression.

People also able to tell chimpanzee’s dominance by looking at chimpanzee’s neutral face.

Humans and chimps = primates.

C: ability to extrapolate something out of face is something to do with primate biology.

Need to make the conclusion more relevant.

a) unable to judge dominance of bonobos, yup this would weaken, not strengthen.

b) wider range of personality traits from pictures of other people than from pictures of chimpanzees. This also weakens because it’s sort of claiming that humans and chimps are different, so you can’t clump them together.

c) extroversion in people and dominant behavior are indicators. Yes, this makes what they observe in humans and chimps more relevant to ecah other.

d) common ancestor would have live over 7 million years ago. There is no mention of 7 million years in the stimulus. Irrelevant.

e) okay… this would weaken it because it shows that experiment was like not pure.

15. All of the apartments on 20th ave → old houses.

So if there are 60 apartments on 20th ave, they are all inside this old house set.

But there are twice as many apartments on 20th avenue than old house. So if we have 60 apartments, we have 30 old houses.

C: most old houses contain more than one apartment.

This kind of makes sense at first. Yes, it would make sense if there are 60 apartments, 30 old houses would need to take in at least two. But what if, i dont know, one old house takes like 59 apartments in? Then, it’s not the case that most old houses on 20th avenue contain more than one apartment. Other old houses can just be empty. Which is what e) picks up on.

e) is worded in a slightly confusing way. It requires us to go one more step to really firmly draw the conclusion. e) says that sig number of old houses contain 3 or more apartments. So yeah this is saying there can be 10 houses with 5 apartments. If that’s the case, that’s already 50 apartments. And we still have 30 houses left. This means 20 old houses could just be empty or have only one apartment.

16. Orbiting spacecraft detected spike in sulfur dioxide in venus’s atmosphere.

Volcanoes known to cause sulfur dioxide spikes in earth’s atmosphere.

Venus has hundreds of mountains that show signs of past volcanic activity.

C: not conclude that volcanic activity caused the spike on venus.

P: no active volcanoes have been identified on venus.

P: planetary atmosphere undergo some variations in chemical composition.

To weaken, we want to say choose something that allows to say actually we could conclude that volcanic activity caused the spike on venus.

a) conditions on venus make it unlikely that any instrument targeting venus would dtect a volcanic eruption didrectly. This is good, it pretty much says whatever premises we have, we don’t know if they are true because of our technological limitation. So, premises dont support the conclusion. We can’t say “no active volcanoes have been identified on venus”.

b) evidence suggests there was a short-term spike. But this just states an observation. We don’t know if a volcano caused the spike.

c) levels of sulfur dioxide higher in venus than in earth’s atmosphere over the long term. This also doesn’t prove any kind of connection between volcanic activity and the spike. Just because there is more sulfur dioxide in venus doesn’t mean a volcano must have caused them. It also doesn’t relate the premises to the conclusion.

d)traces of sulfur dioxide from colvanic eruptions on earth are detectable in the atmosphere years after the eruptions take place. Okay, but what does this say anything about venus?

e) most instances of sulfur dioxide in earth’s atmosphere caused by burning of fossil fuels. If this is true, it actually would strengthen the argument in a way because it gives an additional reason to think that we should not conclude that volcanic activity caused the spike on venus.

*interesting - i didn’t even think about how “directly” affects the answer choice, but I guess it does sort of lessens the strength. But still, it is the most weaken-y answer choice.

17. Increasing electrical load carried on a line → increases line’s temp.

Too much load → exceed maximum operating temp.

Line’s temp also affected by wind speed and direction.

Strong wind lowers temp than light wind.

Blowing across line lowers temp than wind blowing parallel.

Basically, when there is either a strong wind or wind blowing across line, there can be more electrical load carried without exceeding maximum operating temp.

a) absolutely nothing about what electrical utility companies do.

b)run parallel to lines carry greater electrical load than at a right angle… what the there’s nothing about right angle.

c) electrical load carried increases when the wind speed increases (strong wind). Yes, there can be more load carried because stronger wind will lower the temp.

d) air temp has less effect on temp of a transmission line than wind speed. We don’t know this. I thought air temp has more effect…?

e) maximum operating temp is greater on windy days than on calm days. No this is not right, the maximum operating temp stays the same. It’s like a benchmark.

*note on b): i shouldn’t just rule out b) because “right angle” was not mentioned. That’s a dangerous approach. “Across a line” is the same thing as “right angle”. b) is wrong because it’s logically wrong.

*wow i never would have gotten this question right. Was 150% sure c) was correct lol. I think I erred in thinking that we’re trying to prove that burrowing activities happened, whereas the conclusion is saying that it is the burrowing activities that caused the circles to form. In choosing c), I was trying to explain why sand termites would be burrowing, but totally silent on the effect of this burrowing on the formation of fairy circles, which really is the crux of this argument.

On the other hand, a) is the observation we get if we were to assume that it was indeed the burrowing activities of these termites. I think I didn’t understand the relevance of a) because I couldn’t quite see why burrowing activities is related to plants damaged only at the roots, but I guess because burrowing activities = digging, that means grass plants that have died would only show damage at the root because of the termites digging. Again, I really would not have seen this, but I concede.

18. Grasslands near Namib desert there are “fairy circles”.

P: sand termite found in every fairy circle.

C: burrowing activities that cause the circles to form.

To support this hypothesis, the best way is to assume that conclusion is true, and see that the reality is proven through it. One note is that burrowing activities mean digging a hole. Need to show it actually was burrowing.

a) dying grass plants are damaged only at the roots. This is so off base I dont even know how it would support the conclusion. So somehow digging a hole has to do w only roots being damaged…?

b) grasses that grow around fairy circles survive the harshest droughts. Okay but this is talking about grasses around fairy circle. We’re trying to explain scientist’s hypothesis about the fairy circle. We’re not concerned what goes around it.

c) soil has higher water content than soil in ares immediately outside the circles. Okay this explains why sand termites might dig holes. It’s because there is water. And they’re in a friggin desert. So of course it makes sense.

d) form in areas that already have numerous other fairy circles. This doesn’t explain burrowing activities still. We have to then assume that sand termites like burrowing on top of what they have already burrowed, but… why would they?

e) feed on sand termites are found living near fairy circles. This would prove sand termite’s existence, not not its habit, which is the burrowing.

19. Munroe elected in a landslide.

Munroe elected → fundamental shift + well-run campaign.

C: there was a fundamental shift.

There are two necessary conditions, and the argument just says one of them must have happened.

a) PSC closed this year. Because its customer base… hmm already doesn’t match. And it’s not that it’s the “only conclusion” one can draw.

b) PSC closed.

Closed → facing strong competition + customer base unsatisfied.

C: facing strong competition. Perfect.

c) there’s also no choosing one necessary condition out of two.

d) PSC closed.

If facing strong comp and unsatisfied customer base → no reason to remain open.

The two criteria are in the sufficient condition for this answer choice, whereas the stimulus it has it in the necessary condition.

e) PSC closed.

To stay open → lack of comp and satisfied customer base.

Had neither… but this negates both the necessary condition. It doesn’t work that way