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Example: "We cannot have A without B" or "Without A we cannot have B"
Cannot = group 4 (negate, necessary)
Without = group 3 (negate, sufficient)
PT Questions
annagvelez460
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annagvelez460
Thursday, Jun 23 2022
What's usually the cutoff for what's considered an early application (not early decision) for a March 1st deadline? Am considering if mid to late January is good for a Fall 2023 admission, or if I should submit the application before the committee breaks for Holidays in December? Potentially December 1st?
annagvelez460
Thursday, Jul 21 2022
Alright folks: there's absolutely a way to get questions like these correct without diagramming. JY's initial quick method described in the video is a solid technique under timed conditions -- essentially turning the test on itself; a big fuck you to the LSAT writers. To do this, you just need to understand that correct ACs in MBT/Inf questions are 99% written in weak language. If I see a strong word like All, None and Most in the answer choices, they're all raising red flags for me... and they should for you too if you want to game this test efficiently.
For me, I initially wanted to diagram but didn't see the need after I read it thoroughly. I knew if I diagrammed the map was going to turn out convoluted like in JY's explanation because the logical indicators a scarce and weren't really making much connections with each other. Whenever I read a stimulus like this, I just go for it without the diagram. You need to really internalize what you're reading in order to get this through your head correctly though.
Everyone has a different way of going about questions like these, but for me, POE is what saved me. If you can prove 4x answers are horse shit, you're golden. You don't really have to prove the last remaining one is absolutely correct because in timed conditions: ain't nobody got time for dat.
My POE went like this (pay attention to the nuances of how the ACs are written and you'll see how easy they can be knocked out)
A - Descriptions of monstrous beasts? Does that mean if you're a story of any other kind and you have descriptions of monstrous beasts then you are violating the laws of nature? The relationship of violating the laws of nature and monstrous beasts was about horror stories about monstrous beasts not descriptions of monstrous beasts. If you chose this one, you need to understand that words mean things. And describing something in a story is not the same as writing a whole story about what you're describing.
B - This one would've been right if instead of "Any" (which is a sufficient condition) it would've said "some". There's a some relationship between stories that describe violations of nature and those intended to invoke dread on the reader. Saying that if you're a story that described violations of nature then it's intended to invoke a dread on the reader is wrong because there's no sufficient/necessary relationship between these two things from what is given in the stimulus. If you thought there was, you need to revisit conditional relationships and how you can draw inferences from all, most, and some.
C - This one is wrong I think in two ways: 1) it's word mumbo-jumbo from the stimulus and 2) it's making a leap. If you don't see it, you need to slow down your reading.
D - This one is wrong because it makes an even BIGGER leap. Again, strong wording and a strong inference. This is just not supported by the stimulus.
Thank you for reading my TED Talk.
annagvelez460
Wednesday, Jul 20 2022
The key to getting the correct answer choice on this one is to see that there's a causation conclusion in the argument. There should be red flags being raised when you read a causation in the conclusion in your LSAT studies. Drill it in your head: correlation does not prove causation.
In order to disprove a causation, we just need to prove that there's something else that can prove the causation OR (if there's a correlation in the premises of the stimulus) that the reverse of the correlation can also be causing the phenomenon/conclusion in the argument.
In this case, AC (C) is the only one that provides an alternate explanation for the causation, and therefore debunks the conclusion that chess is what exclusively causes the higher school/intellectual achievements.
JY and the people in the comments keep saying AC (C) is subtle but I don't concur. (C) screams with the possibility that the students were trying to have a higher GPA in order to get into the after school chess program, hence there's room for "maybe the students studied a lot to get a higher GPA" and therefore debunks the conclusion of this argument.
annagvelez460
Wednesday, Jul 20 2022
What really fucked me up here is the terrible referential phrasing in the conclusion. Had to read the stimulus 4 times to grasp what I was reading.
Once you understand the conclusion after "since" in the stimulus, you can see the inferences that can be made from the argument. If you don't see the inferences that can be made, go to the answer choices and carefully read each to see what can be proven by the stimulus. POE for me went something like this:
B - this doesn't have to be true. It can be true that it formed elsewhere, but we just have the discovery of the western australia diamonds.
C - tricky, but no. We can't make this jump from the argument because it's just not supported. If you picked this one, it's because you need more work in understanding the core of arguments. In any case, from the stimulus, what we know is that the age of the diamonds, and hence the early stages of the crust, is 4.2 billion years old. That DOES NOT mean it took the crust billions of years to form.
D - Another jump has to be made to draw this conclusion. Just because we found a component of the earth's early crust doesn't mean it's the only component. There could be more components, and the argument hasn't told us anything that alludes to this being correct. Therefore, it's "open play" when an argument doesn't fully cross out alternatives. We can inject as many alternatives as we like to strengthen/weaken arguments.
E - This is similar to B and D in that it doesn't have to be true and there's too much of a jump that has to be made for it to be true.
Always remember: MSS correct answer choices almost always use weak language. In this case, AC (A) really didn't use weak language. BUT, the strong language in B, D and E should be raising red flags when you read them. The difficulty in this question is shown when there's two "good" choices (A & C) and you have to really understand the core of the argument choose A and not C.
annagvelez460
Wednesday, Jul 20 2022
If you got this one wrong, as I initially did, you have to use the power of Process of Elimination (POE). Don't ever make an answer choice work for the argument. Very rarely (some argue this never happens) do you have to make big assumptions for the correct AC.
For this one, B-E all fucking suck bro. They make too long of a leap. If you can't see that, you need to practice more MSS questions and see the common wording in wrong MSS answers.
B - you have to make a big assumption/leap for this one to work because nowhere in the stimulus was a premise about cattle ranching NOT being a good source of income.
C - if you chose this one, you need to read more carefully. Nowhere in the stimulus does it allude to this.
D - Tricky, but no unfortunately. The stimulus says that it can generate up to 5x the profit. It doesn't mean that on average ALL ostrich farms make 5x the profit.
E- Again, another big assumption that we would have to make for this AC to be correct. The assumption is that high start-up costs = negative profit, and we can't make that assumption given the facts in the stimulus.
annagvelez460
Wednesday, Jul 20 2022
The conclusion of the argument is assuming that if every person that inhales lavender AND sees a reduction in illness is because they are under intense stress. Therefore, B is the necessary assumption needed for this argument to work.
For NA questions, we're looking for an AC that the author MUST agree with, and if false, will cause the argument to fail (in other words, not make sense/contradict itself)
B is something the author of the argument must agree with AND if we falsify it (in other words, negate it) will not make much sense for the argument to be work/be true/make sense. If you have trouble negating an AC, just say "It is not true" in front of the AC and read it normally.
annagvelez460
Friday, Aug 05 2022
This question is almost like a NA question. The astronomer failed to explain in his argument why the earlier estimates are wrong with his new findings or why his new findings point to something plausible (rather than the impossible from the earlier estimates). So if you got this wrong (like me!) while still understanding the argument, it could be because you're (we're) losing focus on the task at hand with RRE questions. I even correctly anticipated the correct answer choice by saying something along the lines of "... the astronomer found that the stars are younger"
With RRE questions, you need to find the answer choice that completely explains the paradox or would justify the reasoning of the author. For me, I lost track of the task and got baited with (D).
Under timed pressure, I thought (D) would reconcile/fill the gap. I thought that by pointing out that there's a relationship between the observer and the brightness of the stars that then we can map out that this leads the astronomer to think that the brighter the stars, the younger it is.
I honestly can't even remember why I didn't think (C) was a correct answer choice. BUT, in hindsight (20/20 imma right?) (C) is the only answer the explains the author's argument by filling the hole (almost as a NA would). I think I could've gotten this right if I would've just focused on the task at hand and not on getting baited.
Sheesh!
annagvelez460
Thursday, Aug 04 2022
The numbers and the diagram is great and all, but there's also a honing of your intuition that needs to occur to get quicker with MBT questions. I see two approaches that could've been done to correctly answer this question:
1) POE. All other answers suck ass and are just unsupported by the stimulus.
2) If you read the correct answer calmly, you're able to catch that the stimulus says exactly this. You don't really need to go into a time sink with diagrams and numbers. But hey, to each their own.
annagvelez460
Tuesday, Aug 02 2022
Just accept it: harder flaw questions will have AC's that are more nuanced and harder to parse. (D) is a great example. If you didn't go into the answer choices with a strong understanding of what the flaw is, you'll get lost in the AC's. If you didn't understand the flaw, you need to drill flaw questions that have a lower difficulty than this one.
annagvelez460
Saturday, Jul 02 2022
How did you get the paper accommodation?
annagvelez460
Monday, Aug 01 2022
So observing from the comments below, everyone seems to have a different take on the reasoning/principle of this question. I see it fairly simple and used the same approach I use for parallel reasoning, which is to dissect the logic in abstract form and try to make it as bare bones as possible. You should be doing this because if it's a principle it must be able to be applied in general terms. For me it turned out to be:
If an assessment of X needs to be done before we proceed with Y --> we should NOT proceed/do Y until we do X.
(C) is a close contender to the logic above, but I don't think the conclusion matches the necessary condition in our principle. (C) would've been correct if the conclusion said something along the lines of "therefore the new portable grill cannot be put into the market until the lab safety check is complete". But it didn't.
(B) on the other hand is not worded verbatim with our principle as you normally see with easier parallel reasoning/flaw questions. But you have to put 2 and 2 together if you're going to properly flip the bird to the test makers.
annagvelez460
Monday, Aug 01 2022
For those that get absolutely lost with JY's lengthy explanations: I did some research in other websites on why (C) is wrong. Here's my take for what it's worth.
(C) would be correct if one word was added to the statement. That word would be "what". If (C) said "The box office success of a film does not depend on what the audience found ..."then it would've been correct. This presumption also depends on (D) not being worded the way it was because (D) is just too obvious not to be right.
(C) is not supported by the stimulus because it's generalizing what the film critic is saying. The critic wants to know WHAT the typical person found funny, frightening or blah blah. (C) very subtly glossed over the nuance the critic is stating in his argument.
#help
When I went to the AC's, I was looking for classic examples of impartiality towards family members, like what AC (C) says. Didn't look past what JY said in the video about AC (C): this AC doesn't tell you anything else, so you can't assume that you never fire a family member just because their a family member (even if they do a shit job for example). AC (A), during my first round and BR, didn't seem like it was partial, but now I see that it is partial because you're refusing to hire even though they're qualified for the job.
This is obviously a nuanced question... hence the medium difficulty. Any tips on seeing the nuances on your first try and under timed conditions?