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austingoldsmith1227665

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Lessons · [OPTIONAL] For, since, because

austingoldsmith1227665

Monday, Jul 22 2024

#feedback

I understand that this is getting into the weeds, but the reason that "for" and "since" don't lead to arguments in the counter examples because the parts of speech have shifted. (Illicit changes!) In the example with "for," it's become a preposition, whereas it's a conjunction in the main example. In the example with "since," it's still a conjunction, but it's a temporal conjunction (like "after" or "before") instead of a causal one (like "because," "so," or "but").

In the example with "I hugged you because I missed you," I would argue that this is actually an argument. The premise is that the speaker misses the listener. The conclusion is that the speaker hugged the listener. If we switched the pronouns for names, we could easily see this as an argument that could be challenged:

Person 1: "Max hugged James because she missed him."

Person 2: "No, she didn't. Max hugged James because he asked her to."

In a parallel situation, we could also imagine this conversation:

Person 1: "Max endorsed James because she has confidence in him."

Person 2: "No, she didn't. Max endorsed James because he asked her to."

Evidently, the second scenario involves an argument, so surely the first does as well.

Study Groups

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Saturday, Dec 21 2024

austingoldsmith1227665

Study Buddy Jan LSAT (online or Boston)

Hi everyone! I'm looking for a study buddy for the January LSAT who wants to do some intensive prepping. I'm aiming for at least one practice test per day, but I realize that this may be impractical for some people, so I'm happy to review drills or other material together on a daily / bi-daily basis as well. I would definitely want to discuss for about 1 hour at least every other day / once every three days at the least.

I already have a 170 on an official LSAT and have an average of 173 on the site, with a high of 177. I'm down to study with anyone, but primarily looking for someone also aiming to break into the 170+ range. I struggle most with the reading comprehension section and feel that I'm strongest at formal logic. I usually hit around -0 to -2 for LR sections and -2 to -4 for RC sections. I'm also an SAT tutor in real life, so I feel pretty comfortable analyzing question formulas and things like that, but I feel like I also get thrown off by questions that "break the mold." Feel free to reach out if you think our skills could complement each other's! :)

PrepTests ·

PT118.S4.Q20

austingoldsmith1227665

Saturday, Jan 18

#feedback

I get that D is wrong but the flaw with sampling all men and no women as unrepresentative is not that men are only half of the population, which the explanation seems to imply when it says that men are "still 50% of the population." A study that samples a portion of the population systematically is valid for that portion, irrespective of how much that portion constitutes in the population. If men were 99% of the population, the conclusion would still have a representative error for the 1% of the population who were not men.

PrepTests ·

PT151.S3.Q18

austingoldsmith1227665

Thursday, Jan 16

#feedback #help

I understand why E is correct / the most weakening answer because it reveals that the trend simply applies to no one, but I think that B still has weight as a part-and-whole critique.

Imagine this scenario: ten people post on social media daily. Each person posts 300 words on social media per day: 100 in the morning, 100 in the afternoon, and 100 in the evening. Three of them follow the anticipated pattern: medium (50/100), low (30/100), high (70/100). The rest, however, post almost uniquely neutral words. The resulting sum of positive words would be the following, daily:

- Morning: 150 (out of 1000)

- Afternoon: 90 (out of 1000)

- Evening: 270 (out of 100)

If true, these conditions would imply that, on average, positive words increase, decrease, and increase sharply. However, the majority of people (seven of them) would still not fit in the pattern described above. In other words, their effect on the average connotation is muted because they have no effect, but this would not imply that the whole applies to them as parts.

My question, then, is why the fact that stimulus restricts itself to positive word matters given that it expands it range to all people ("a person") and not just people who indeed use the positive words ("such a person," "these users," etc.).

PrepTests ·

PT145.S1.P4.Q26

austingoldsmith1227665

Thursday, Jan 09

#feedback #help

For Q 26, if we tried to distill why E) is incorrect as a principle, could we express the error as the following: "This answer, despite demonstrating the predicted result of [someone's] hypothesis, does not demonstrate that predicted result through the mechanism that the hypothesis predicates its prediction on."

In other words, I understand why A) is correct, but E) seemed solid to me because the passage of information from a parent to a gestating chick seemed to match Steele's broad argument (that parents can pass information while gestating). Given this, would you say that E) is not the best choice as an example of the generalized error above, or do you have another reason in mind?

Thanks in advance for the help!

PrepTests ·

PT155.S3.P1.Q7

austingoldsmith1227665

Thursday, Jan 02

#feedback #help

I see why D) is a clear choice, but I didn't understand from the video ("no, just no") why C) is wrong. Namely, I agree with the interpretation that the "other" versions in this context are the original, unedited / antique versions. Yet the author describes the restorations as only "supposedly" original / restored, and further critiques the setting of their presentation as "inauthentic," which, in turns, deprives the restored versions (but not the original ones) of being "allowed particular films to shine, [and] also to balance and react against other kinds of films." Thus, it's unclear to me that the author has established that any actual benefits do accrue to the restored versions in respect to their authenticity, despite their "supposedly" authentic quality. On this basis, I thought that the comparison between the (lower) level of authenticity of the restored versions vis-à-vis the original ("other") versions' (higher) level of authenticity was actually an apt representation of the author's view.

Rereading the passage and option, one error that I did notice was the illicit shift from "authenticity is sometimes allowed to go out the window" in the passage to "in many cases" in the answer. Would this also shift in frequency / set size be an independent reason to eliminate C), setting aside the debate over the author's weighing of authenticity?