P1: basically, if it is correctly addressed, then it will arrive at its destination within 2 business days

Diagram: correctly addressed mail --> arrives within 2 business days

contrapositive: /arrive within 2 business days --> /correctly addressed

Conclusion: (most) mail /arrive within 2 business days so it would follow that --> (most) mail /correctly addressed

Which translates to: a large proportion of mail is incorrectly addressed

AC C seems to be flipping the diagram and saying:

mail arrive within 2 business days --> correctly addressed

When we don't know that at all.

@KayleeMurray Going through this module as a conditional logic refresher before my test this week, and what I found is that if you can intuitively translate the sentences into logical if-thens, which one is the sufficient condition and which one is the necessary will be easy to spot. So for #3, after I read it i went "okay so if it was an oral myth that survived, then it was one that that was eventually written down." OMS --> EWD (/EWD --> /OMS). Obviously with super convoluted sentences it's much harder to do this, but I did it with Q 1-6 and worked out every time.

I've never been tricked this badly wow

@apple Ik i wrote a fricken book in my last comment so IM SORRY but one last thing, look up "Dissecting Arguments in LSAT Logical Reasoning" on youtube, it helps with being confident on what a piece of an argument is doing.

@Mdwa1999 I also thought that this sentence was just context and that didn't stop me from finding the right AC, if anything it helped. Context, like a premise, can NEVER be the conclusion, so you can immediately rule out D.

With any role questions it's great if you can identify what the role of the claim in question is right of the bat, but it's almost always just as, if not more, important to identify the conclusion bc most of the ACs will explain the claim in question's relationship to the conclusion. If you recognized the correct conclusion (the last sentence), that immediately rules out AC D (if you didn't catch on to the first reason to rule out D) and E bc they have the wrong conclusion.

Again, if the claim is just context, could it really be a "COMPLETE EXPLANATION"? No. So A looks really sus bc the stim absolutely needed the rest of the information to support its conclusion. Plus it called the conclusion a "fact" which set off alarm bells bc the conclusion is basically the thesis for their argument, in what world could it be considered FACTUAL?

and again, if the claim is just context, why would any other part of the stim be explaining it further, usually context just introduces the concept, it isn't being fleshed out. So B looks bad, plus if you read AC B and then go and reread the first sentence, you should see the disconnect. The whole sentence is working together to paint a picture.

Which only leaves, C. When you don't see context as an AC option, the next best thing would be to reframe it as a "premise" bc whether it is context or a "premise" at the end of the day, both are being used in order to drive home the point (conclusion).

The Editorialist says maturity --> privileges of adulthood and then says, BUT physiological development is completed blah blah blah. When I read that I stopped and thought "okay who cares???? What society deems as a sufficient maturity level doesn't have to equate the completion of physiological development" and i had a feeling that's where the argument was going. The editorialist was basically saying that maturity (a central concept in the stim) and physiological development were the SAME thing (equivocation). Which, if you just think about it, when you talk about the concept of "maturity" in society most people aren't referring to the completion of physiological development.

I was only deciding between C or D but I highlighted "readily accepts a claim" and I was like that just doesn't happen. It's not arguing in favor of an established claim, it's using evidence to make its own claim.

Got this wrong when I first saw it and I was presumably trying to diagram it. Months later I'm in the process of tightening up my NA performance so I'm reviewing all my recorded incorrect NA questions and immediately recognized the right answer upon reading it. I am much more confident in my ability to master a stimulus and pretty much never write anything down now. If you understand what the stimulus is saying, the correct answer will pop into your head after you're done reading/ translating the stimulus.

If you find diagraming and recognizing the formal logic tremendously helpful, then great, stick with it! If not, just know that it is not at all necessary and with time and practice, mastering the stimulus will become easier and will be your greatest help.

Helps to look at "these facts suggest" as another way of saying "all this to say..." and hence like "therefore." In this case if you swap out the two you'd have:

All this to say that Taiwan is the homeland where Austronesian languages have been spoken the longest, and, therefore, that Austronesian-speaking people originated in Taiwan and later migrated to other islands."

That reading lends itself to interpreting that last part as the conclusion. It's not serving to support anything else, everything is in support of that part of the statement.

"RIGHTLY ADMIRED THEM"

Rightly = approval

Admired = appreciated the aesthetics

SO if you have approval for their appreciation of the aesthetics = approval for their aesthetic judgement

"Admired" lends itself to appreciation. It is not a neutral word like "observed" or "viewed". Also when someone says "rightly so" they're offering approval, you would never say that if you were neutral on the matter.

SO rightly admired = approval for their aesthetic judgement does not require any crazy leaps/ assumptions

@wrongsaint

Proposal of what WOULD have been better: "Suppose Mali had required that objects be recorded and registered before leaving the excavation site, and had imposed a tax on exported objects to fund acquisitions of important pieces for the national museum."

Concession of what could be a potential non-desirable outcome of this proposal: "The excavations encouraged by such a system may have been less well conducted and less informative than proper, professionally administered excavations by accredited archaeologists. Some people would still have avoided the rules."

"But would this not have been better than what actually happened?" Affirming that STILL, the NON-DESIRABLE outcome would have been better than what actually occurred.

AC A & B are too extreme with "they must," C & E are unsupported (aren't mentioned like that). By process of elimination D is best but also makes sense because the author highlight excavations by non-professionals to be undesirable so it follows that they think excavations should be done by professionals WHEN POSSIBLE.

@apple My process as I took the test:

A. Kept open

B. Ruled out pretty quickly because the columnist never says what he thinks constitutes a GOOD presentation.

C. Never endorses a product, just defends it against a criticism (he could honestly not even like GIAPS)

D. Kept open because I could not explain it away

E. Columnist doesn't attack any "source"

Just chose A because D was too confusing, flagged, and planned to come back to it but I didn't because of time

I was adamant I did not understand how it was AC D but after a few minutes of review, it clicked. So here's how I rationalized AC D:

The columnist is saying that since GIAPS is a tool, it cannot be responsible for bad presentations. But what if GIAPS malfunctions, short circuits, etc; essentially does not "effectively perform" how it is supposed to? Then (one could assume) GIAPS COULD be responsible for a bad presentation if the system failed to do what it was meant to do. (Like if you made a presentation on google drive and saved it, but google has a system crash and it deletes your presentation - that's not your fault, it's google's). The author is overlooking that this sort of crash could even happen and is concluding that the responsibility of a bad presentation MUST (always) lie with the user.

Stupidly hard question for NUMBER 2.