C: Appearance alone does not determine whether something is a work of art.

P: BB is a work of art; an identical stack of boxes is not.

Cxt: BB is a stack of boxes indistinguishable from normal product packaging.

A late-section MOR Q usually means that I can't prephrase; I will need to try to gain a good understanding of the stimulus, then hit the ACs with an open mind.

A -- No, I just can't make this work. It does not match the argument.

B -- Maybe the opposing argument is that appearance does in fact determine works of art, but I don't see the ambiguity.

C -- Is the argument really saying that two things (the two stacks of boxes, I guess) are the same thing? No way.

D -- I chose this on the timed PT b/c I was rushed and could see it making sense. However, it does not: the assumption of the theory is not that appearance can alone determine works of art, so this does not make sense.

E -- Yes. If appearance alone determined whether something was a work of art, then it would be impossible for BB to be a work of art but the normal stacks to not be a work of art. But it is actually true that one is a work of art, but the other is not.

C: If we want enough food to be produced, organic farming cannot spread any further.

P: If all farmers go organic, they would not be able to produce enough food.

The flaw here was not immediately obvious until I did BR, but this is actually not that bad. The reasoning assumes that if organic farming spreads to even one more farmer, then all farmers will have gone organic (i.e., we won't be able to produce enough food).

A -- It does not assume this; maybe artificial is much, much more unhealthy.

B -- Yes, this works; maybe it will spread more, but not every farmer will adopt it. Then, we can't satisfy the condition of "all farmers go organic" and can't conclude that we won't have enough food.

C -- It need not consider this, because it is forward-looking and discussing the growing population in the present moment.

D -- No, this is saying that the argument overlooks the idea that we could still run out of food even if only some farmers adopt organic farming, not all. It does not overlook this, it assumes that every farmer will adopt organic farming.

E -- No, we are not focused on the environment; we care only about how much food is left for us.

C: Med self-help book ‑cause→ Better fam health

P: Better fam health ‑cause→ Fewer doc visits

P: In one year, families who had been given the self-help book made fewer doc visits.

This is a question, I think, most people need to think about for a minute and fully understand the stimulus before hitting the ACs. If you hit the ACs too early, they are bound to confuse you. The flaw here is that the stimulus takes evidence that the self-help book leads to fewer doc visits in combination with the idea that better fam health causes fewer doc visits to conclude that the self-help book causes better fam health. But it might just be that the self-help book leads to fewer doc visits directly, not to better fam health.

A -- This does not matter; maybe it's possible, but it's not a flaw.

B -- This could have screwed up the experiment, but it's not the flaw in the reasoning.

C -- No, this could confuse you if you don't try to prephrase the flaw. We are looking for a flaw that says two things could causally contribute to the same effect.

D -- Yes, this is great. The self-help book and better fam health could both cause fewer doc visits, but these two things need not be related to each other.

E -- No, this sounds okay at first, but the families were given the self-help books. So this does not make sense.

X: No indoor seating, so no surprise that the restaurant failed.

M: It was irresponsible for the bank to finance the restaurant, since the place had no indoor seating and was among many fast-food places on10th street.

On an Agree question, I am trying not to make undue assumptions and at first just gain a broad understanding of what each person is arguing. On this, a top-level understanding is not enough, and we need to dig deeper into what each person seems to think (again, without jumping to unwarranted conclusions).

A -- X directly states this. M, however, does not give an opinion on this. We also cannot infer what she thinks, because her conclusion is based at least partly (maybe wholly) on the idea that the bank took a bad risk because there are lots of places already on 10th street.

B -- We don't know what X thinks about this.

C -- X might agree with this, but, similar to (A), we don't know about M.

D -- No, I think this is too strong and not supported.

E -- M would certainly agree; I think X would agree, because he says that it is not surprising that it failed.

C: AE paintings are aesthetically pleasing.

P: most people, when shown an AE painting next to a preschooler's artwork, rated the AE painting aesthetically better.

Cxt: Some people say that AE paintings are no more aesthetically pleasing than a preschooler's artwork.

It is important on the LSAT (and in general, I guess) to recognize the different between absolute and relative statements. A classic reasoning flaw occurs when a stimulus jumps from a relative premise to an absolute conclusion, as this argument does. Thus, we want to find a necessary assumption that fills in this gap.

A -- We don't need this to be true. If this were a strengthen Q, this could work, but we are looking for an assumption.

B -- Yes; this is similar to saying that at least some of the preschool artwork was aesthetically pleasing. Use the Assumption Negation Technique and consider what would happen if it were true that all preschool artwork was not pleasing at all -- this would suggest that maybe the AE artwork is not pleasing, but compared to the terrible, unpleasing preschool artwork, the AE work is just a tad better.

C -- This would make me think the experiment was not set up very well. Either way, not an assumption.

D -- This need not be true.

E -- If anything, perhaps this weakens the argument. It certainly is not something the argument assumes.

C: It is not justified to post warnings in buildings that urge removal of bats.

P: Bats are shy and rarely bite humans, and most bats don't have rabies.

Cxt: Most rabies cases in humans come from being bitten by a rabid animal, and bats carry rabies.

It seems incredibly easy to weaken this reasoning, which rests on the foundation that, because bats rarely bite humans and most bats don't have rabies, we don't need to urge people to remove bats from buildings in which they live and work. I didn't think this was a super easy question, though process of elimination made it much simpler.

A -- I am not sure what this does for our argument, so it likely cannot weaken it.

B -- If rabid bats are much more aggressive, then our premise about how bats are shy is less potent because rabid bats (of which there are at least some) are aggressive, not shy. This weakens.

C -- This only reinforces the reasoning.

D -- This does not weaken at all.

E -- Same as (E) in that, if anything, it strengthens the reasoning.

Cxt: Oysters were killed by TBT, not by the rise in water temps.

Cxt: TBT has been eliminated from the waters, yet the native oyster population has not increased.

This is a paradox: TBT was found to be killing oysters, yet now that TBT has been taken away, there aren't more native oysters. I don't know what the answer will be, but I am thinking something involving oyster predators being killed by TBT, with some interaction having to do with the warmer water.

A -- What does this tell us? We need a reason to understand why the native oyster population has been kept low even though the TBT is gone.

B -- This is not helpful.

C -- I like this; it concerns predators, things that eat native oysters. If TBT also killed these native-eating oysters (oysters that eat the natives when the water is warm), then what occurred makes sense: when TBT went away, the oysters that ate the natives flourished, and they killed the native oysters, thus keeping the population down. This is not an obvious AC by any means, but it is fairly cookie-cutter for RRE.

D -- I don't think we care about other chemicals, and even these ones apparently had little effect.

E -- But this doesn't address why the native population did not increase once the TBT went away. Sure, it is more deadly in colder waters, but this doesn't matter to us in resolving this discrepancy.

C: So this ligament must be...

P: To be able to fly, birds need stable wings, and for this they need the forces on their shoulder joints to be balanced, which requires a ligament connecting the shoulder to the wing.

This is a FIB question in which we are asked to provide a conclusion based on the premises. Thus, it basically a MBT Q. My strategy is to connect the premises and only pick an AC that is fully supported by the stimulus.

A -- The ligament is indispensable in this specific sense, but perhaps other structures are also required for flight.

B -- The ligament is used for stability during flight; it is not the reason that they need to be kept stable.

C -- It is a ligament that connect the shoulder and wing, not necessarily the only point of connection.

D -- We have no reason to believe that this ligament caused the powerful forces.

E -- Yes, this is supported by following the linkages in the stimulus. The ligament allows the forces to be balanced, which is required for stability.

C: Migration ‑cause→ Less infection from parasites

P: Among non-migrated monarchs, 95% are infected. Among migrated monarchs, 15% are infected.

This is a causal conclusion: the lower infection rate among monarchs that have migrated is due to the fact that these monarchs migrated. However, there is a gap here -- what if the monarchs that did not migrate did not do so because they were infected and couldn't migrate?

A -- It did not address this possibility, sure, but how does this change our argument at all? It doesn't.

B -- We don't want to attempt to distinguish between long and short migrations.

C -- But we're talking about percentages, so size of each population should not matter.

D -- Yes, this hits our prephrase: if they cannot migrate, we can't conclude that not migrating led to infection. In reality, it was the reverse: more infection caused less migration.

E -- We know nothing about where food sources are stable. This should be easy to eliminate.

C: These leaves are ingested because of their medicinal properties.

P: Ingesting the leaves eliminates gastro worms.

Cxt: During rainy season, bonobos swallow whole the leaves of this shrub.

I was actually kind of stuck on this question (somewhat surprising because it is question 1 and rated pretty easy), but I didn't go to my first instinct when I'm struggling with a question: focus on the conclusion. The conclusion posits that the bonobos ingest the leaves because the leaves have medicinal effects. Why does it conclude this? Because the leaves help to kill gastro worms. Well, that is kind of a jump -- why can't it be that the bonobos simply swallow the leaves because they taste amazing? Or maybe they are easier to swallow when they are wet? We need another reason to believe that the bonobos swallow the leaves because the leaves have medicinal effects.

A -- I was attracted to this, but it doesn't suggest that the leaves are swallowed because of their medicinal properties. Plus, maybe the bonobos just eat other leaves part by part (not whole).

B -- We don't care about the chimps in bolstering this reasoning.

C -- This actually kind of weakens, because it hints at the idea that the bonobos only eat the leaves because they are abundant.

D -- This also kind of weakens; it makes me think there is another reason (not medicinal properties) that the bonobos eat the leaves.

E -- Yes, this strengthens, because the bonobos swallow these leaves during the rainy season, and if the rainy season means more worms are in the bonobos' stomachs, it seems that they eat the leaves in order to get rid of the worms. It doesn't prove our conclusion, but it makes the reasoning more formidable.

Thank you!

Type: FLAW

C: Removing tonsils before breathing problems occur will ensure that children don't experience any breathing problems during sleep.

P: Swollen tonsil removal alleviates sleep disturbances.

P: Swollen tonsils lead to breathing problems during sleep.

I got this Q wrong on the timed test because I didn't read closely enough and thought I had prephrased the correct AC; I got it right on BR when I took more time to understand fully what the stimulus was saying. The flaw is a fairly simple and common one: just because removing tonsils will solve sleeping problems associated with swollen tonsils does not mean children won't have any sleeping problems at all. What if there are other causes of sleeping problems? I need to focus on the conclusion and make sure I understand the argument on flaw Qs before hitting the ACs.

A -- No, not even close. There is no person of authority the author appeals to.

B -- This is an odd AC, perhaps similar to circular reasoning. To eliminate this confidently, focus on what the conclusion is and make sure there is no assumption that is basically the same as that conclusion.

C -- This is what I picked on the timed test, because I thought the stimulus was incorrectly arguing that because tonsil removal helps alleviate sleep problems, then tonsil removal was intended to help alleviate sleep problems. It is not saying this; it doesn't get into intention and I should have realized this AC is descriptively inaccurate.

D -- This could be true, but if you focus on the conclusion you know that this AC doesn't matter.

E -- Yes; with this consideration in mind, we see that perhaps the children's breathing problems would not be alleviated, because removing tonsils won't solve issues caused by other health problems.

Type: NA

C: Predatory pricing should be acceptable.

P: Even after driving competitors out of business, the threat of renewed competition will prevent the company from raising its prices to unreasonable levels.

This is a tough question. I viewed the assumption as: if a practice prevents a company from raising its price to unreasonable levels, then we can safely say that practice is acceptable. This was fairly close to the right AC -- I think one thing that helped me was my expectation that the correct AC would contain the term "acceptable," because this term was used only one time, in the conclusion. This is a trick you can sometimes use to help you on NA Qs.

A -- We don't need this to be true for "any company."

B -- This need not be unlikely; we don't know what will happen if several companies do it at the same time, but we don't care.

C -- You'd need to make lots of assumptions about the largest companies for this to even stand a chance.

D -- The argument says that predatory pricing is acceptable because competition will prevent raised prices. We thus do not need it to be true that the only thing that can prevent high prices is competition. What if government regulations also keep prices from being raised to unreasonable levels? That would be okay, and our argument could still stand.

E -- The negation of this says "There are at least some pricing practices that do not result in unreasonable prices that are unacceptable." This would hurt our argument, because it leads to the idea that maybe predatory pricing, even though it does not result in high prices, is still not acceptable for some other reason.

Congrats on your progress! You're going to do great in October.

I would continue doing majority timed practice with a little untimed work mixed in one of two days a week. Best of luck!

Type: FLAW

C: Not wrong for Meyers to take the compost.

P: Take something that you have reason to believe is someone else's property → Stealing → Wrong

P: Meyers had no reason to think the compost was someone else's property.

This is a classic flaw in which the stimulus negates the sufficient and tries to negate the necessary in the conclusion. We know this is flawed reasoning.

A -- No, this is not descriptively accurate.

B -- We don't know what Meyers would have done had she believed something else, and the stimulus does not make any assumptions about this, either.

C -- Yes, exactly, the action that this AC references is taking something you have no reason to believe is someone else's property. The stimulus treats this like a necessary condition for something being wrong, but it is actually only a sufficient condition.

D -- I guess this is accurate, but it is not a flaw.

E -- The stimulus doesn't conclude that the compost is someone else's property; this is descriptively inaccurate.

Type: RRE

Cxt: Family of sheep farmers saw their incomes grow a lot btw 1840 and 1860 because the price of wool on international markets rose significantly, and they sold much more of their wool internationally. However, their prosperity did not increase as much as their income increased.

This is a weird stimulus: the basic idea makes sense, but the idea of prosperity is very broad. Maybe three of the family's sons died during this time, so their prosperity was in shambles? Or does prosperity just refer to economic success? I wasn't sure, but I knew I wanted to hit the ACs thinking about how I could allow for this family's income from wool sales to be super high over these 20 years but their "prosperity" wasn't quite as high.

A -- The end of the 1800s is 1890 or so; how does this resolve our paradox?

B -- This expands our paradox, b/c it just reinforces that the family made more money in int'l markets.

C -- Yes, this is a good outside-the-box AC; it introduces the idea that the family sells other products, and the prices of these products fell so perhaps the family's income from these products fell too, leading to the effect we see on overall prosperity.

D -- Trap AC: this does not allow the 2 big things (income rise, but prosperity not rising as much) to coexist. It doesn't explain how they could have both occurred, because competition in wool sales could have happened but we are certain that income from wool sales still increased.

E -- This allows our paradox to still exist, so it's wrong.

Type: NA

C: Most nations who said oil reserves were unchanged were probably wrong.

SC: Oil reserves are unlikely to remain unchanged from one year to the next.

P: Oil reserves gradually drop as fields are drained, then rise as new fields are discovered.

This was very tough for me: it was one of two Qs I got wrong on the timed test, and the only Q I got wrong on BR. I got it down to (B) and (C), but incorrectly picked (C) both times.

#help

Is it a mistake that this section is rated 1 star? This seems like a 3-star section (or at the very least a 2-star).

Type: WEAKEN

C: Animal feed should not include GM plants.

P: Rats fed GM potatoes for 30 days had bad health effects, but rats fed a normal diet had no issues.

This is a weaken Q that reports on a study of rats and what they eat. My initial thought was, "Maybe the potatoes caused the problems, not because they were genetically modified but simply b/c rats can't handle potatoes." This was, in essence, the correct AC, though I don't think it was straightforward. Whenever you have a stimulus that bases its conclusion on a study between two groups, you need to make sure you are controlling for all factors that could cause differences in, say, health effects between the subjects in the two groups. So in this case, we must know that the rats fed "a normal diet" were fed potatoes, because otherwise we are not isolating the effects of GM foods.

A -- This is correct; it gets at the idea of controlling for the effects of potatoes.

B -- I can't think of any reason this would matter.

C -- Trap AC; the stimulus says that the rats "developed" deformities, so it can't be that the rats in the GM group simply started with health issues. Also, the language in this AC ("not uncommon") is not great, plus what about the weakened immune systems?

D -- This clearly does not matter.

E -- I was attracted to this at first, but ultimately we don't need to be able to fully explain how something occurs if we are pretty sure it does occur. I'm looking forward to seeing why JY says this AC is wrong.

Type: STRENGTHEN

C: Snowpack will probably melt more rapidly and earlier in the spring, leading to more spring flooding and less storable water.

P: Rising winter temps in the Rocky Mountains are likely to cause a greater proportion of precipitation to fall as rain rather than snow.

I first realized this is a causal argument about what will result from likely higher temps over the coming century in the Rocky Mountains. I didn't have a prephrase, but rather I was looking to keep the causal conclusion in mind as I read the ACs.

A -- This doesn't directly relate to our argument, which states for a fact that rising temps will cause more precipitation to fall as rain than as snow.

B -- This is really good, because it compares the same regions but with a difference in temps, and the result is what we would expect based on the stimulus.

C -- Okay, but why is there less storable water? This doesn't get at our causal chain at all.

D -- But this is comparing regions that could be different in ways different than just temp. It is far from a controlled study.

E -- Throwaway AC: don't fall for this b/c it doesn't help our reasoning at all.

Type: DISAGREE

V: Studied by a sci discipline → Can be measured.

Happiness research is entirely subjective, so it cannot be measured.

Y: Optometry relies on what patients say they see; happiness research relies on what subjects say they feel.

Optometry is a sci discipline.

This was really tough for me. V is implying that happiness research is not be studied as a sci discipline, b/c it cannot be measured. Y seems to imply that happiness research is a sci discipline, but the ACs don't go for this point of disagreement. A good approach from Disagree Qs is to kill any ACs that one of the speakers (or both) does not mention at all. For example, V does not talk about optometry, so we really don't know what he thinks about it. I felt confident eliminating ACs about optometry.

A -- I think they would agree on this. Easy to eliminate.

B -- V does not discuss optometry. We don't know whether he thinks things in optometry can be measured.

C -- Y would 100& agree with this. I was torn on what V would say; I think he would say No, this is not true, because subjective reports cannot be measured, and if something cannot be measured it cannot be studied by a sci discipline.

D -- Again, we do not know what V thinks of optometry. Eliminate this.

E -- No, clearly wrong; neither person would say this.

On this Q, it was helpful for me to skip it and return later with a fresh mind. I also recalled my approach on a Disagree Qs, which allowed me to eliminate multiple ACs.

Type: MOR

C: Newborn health depends a lot on the amount of food available to a pregnant mother.

P: From 1850 to 1900, there was a correlation between babies' birth weights and the success of previous year's crops.

Once I read this stimulus I figured a MOR Q like this would be super easy: it is just correlation → causation. However, ACs (B) and (C) made me think twice, which led me to spend more time on this question. I think the tough-ish part was that the stimulus clearly talks about a correlation btw two events (birth weights and success of crops), but these events are not identical in the conclusion. Newborn health is a proxy for birth weight, and crop success is a proxy for food available to a pregnant mother, but they are not exactly the same. This threw me off.

A -- Yes, we go from a correlation in the premise to a causal conclusion, indicated by the use of "depends to large extent on."

B -- Close, but the conclusion says "to a large extent," not that one is the sole cause of the other.

C -- It is not inferring that a correlation still exists, but rather that the two trends are causally related.

D -- No, there is just no "common cause" identified.

E -- No, this is wrong because there is no causal connection in the premise.

Type: MSS

Cxt: A study had people listen to a long music piece, then undergo hypnosis. Half of the people were asked to recall the music and half were asked to describe a movie scene (even though no one had seen a movie as part of the study). The two groups were equally confident in their recall.

On MSS I don't expect to have a great prephrase, maybe just some expectation of how I will need to connect different statements in the stimulus. I went into the ACs here looking for something not too strong, ready to rule out ACs that I just can't support with what is contained in the stimulus.

A -- The claims they are talking about pertain to the first sentence of the stimulus, but I don't know if "many" are overstated.

B -- This study didn't seem to prove that hypnosis improves recall, but I don't know otherwise.

C -- "Inevitably" is not a word I like when we have one study to go on. This is too broad a generalization for a MSS Q.

D -- Yes, this seems to be supported because the one group was confident in describing a movie scene even though they hadn't seen a movie, but had merely been told they had just viewed a movie. I also like the weak language: "to at least some extent."

E -- This is just clearly not supported.

Type: STRENGTHEN

C: Flavor complexity is masking any taste differences.

P: Chocolate is a super complex flavor.

Cxt: People like low-fat chocolate as much as regular chocolate, but they like regular vanilla more than low-fat vanilla.

This is what I think of as a "soft" phenomenon-hypothesis stimulus: there's a phenomenon and an explanation for it, but it is fairly simple and not scientific, really. I was looking for something in the ACs that ruled out alternative explanations for why the difference in how people perceive the two flavors exists. I didn't even realize that the stimulus did not state that vanilla is less complex than chocolate, so that is a good strengthener because it allows the comparison to make sense.

A -- Not a comparison we want to make; we don't care about this.

B -- At first I kind of liked this, because I thought it could add validity to the taste tests, but I now realize this is talking about the vanilla tests only, so it's kind of putting a wedge btw chocolate and vanilla. This is not a good thing on this Strengthen Q.

C -- No, this doesn't bolster our hypothesis.

D -- Yes, good. This would actually be a necessary assumption if it said that vanilla is less complex than chocolate.

E -- I don't know how this affects the argument at all.

@ said:

If you are taking the LSAT in the next few administrations, there is a good chance that the test your receive will be more similar to the 60s or 70s than the 80s, so don't lose hope. Keep practicing and mastering your mistakes and you will be able to tackle whatever LSAC throws your way.

I have heard this before -- why is it the case? And how certain is that upcoming administrations will be more similar to 60s/70s than PTs in the 80s?