@ 1. Effective laws need enforcement mechanisms

2. There is no international police force

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International law is not effective law

Guess was editing when you wrote this. Mine was a bit repetitive.

I wrote the arg break down because (E) should be a fairly quick answer to pick since it is the only one that has "international police force" occurring as the necessary or its negation as sufficient. Remember we want to get from premise to the conclusion and negation of "international police force" is the primary premise.

P1: To qualify as an effective law, ..., a command must be backed up by an effective enforcement mechanism.

P2: But there is currently no international police force.

C: What is called "international law" is not effective law.

Let's look at the conclusion:

What do we know about the effective law? We know from P1 that effective law --> effective enforcement. What do we know about "international law?" We know from P2 that they have no international police force.

How to get to the conclusion that "IL" is not effective law? we need to link IL, lacking international police force, with negating "effective enforcement," the necessary condition of effective law. (E)

(A) In my opinion,the quickest way to get rid of A is to recognize it is not even talking about law or international police force. You might be assuming that "[individual] obeys a command" = "effective law" and "mechanism to compel obedience" = "international police force." But such assumptions are never justified because the scope and meaning are quite different.

Hope this helps!

Note the difference between contrapositive and negation. @.hopkins is talking about contrapositive and @ is talking about negation. Contrapositive is saying the same relationship in a different way and negation is saying the opposite of a relationship. @, as Nicole said there is no contrapositive for "some" because you only know that some could be,but does not have to be,100%.

This is very helpful! Thanks!

I had same problem when I tried to upgrade using the Safari on iPad. I would suggest try to upgrade on a different tool (phone, computer, iPad, etc). Once I have paid for the course, I had no problem accessing the materials on iPad, iPhone, or Mac.

@ @.janson35 , I got it! Just figured out by answering the same question for another poster. The correct answer is an example of strengthening causal arguments with correlation.

Staying active on the forum is actually helpful!! =D

@

said:

Flaw: The correlation of Ra, C, and (C --> Rh) does not mean there is a causation from C to Ra. The answer which strengthens this argument will show that (Rh --> Ra) (C causes Ra because it causes Rh which causes Ra) or directly that (C --> Ra) (C causes Ra) or some contrapositive to that effect (~Ra --> ~C) or (~Ra --> ~Rh)

First, this is correct reasoning. Although diagramming unnecessarily makes it "seem" harder. And your confusion seems to stem from incorrect application of conditional logic to causal claims.

@

said:

The arguments conclusion incorrectly points to a cause (using the word "promoted"), based on a correlation. B indicates a correlation, not a cause, so B doesn't strengthen the argument. D, however, points to a cause (an indirect cause), helping to justify, and thus strengthen, the argument. D is therfore the correct answer.

B is a correlation, but it can strengthen the causal argument. The reason is because causal claims are not as absolute as conditional claims. You can see this from the discussion here (http://classic.7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/3578/does-a-causes-b-equal-to-a-b). Notice that D is also a correlation. Tempting but wrong precisely because of the assumptions you make. Even if the answer choice explicitly links antibiotic as an alternative cause for the resistance, D does not work because heavy metal does not cause sewage sludge to have antibiotics.

Hope it helps!

@ thank you for getting back! Your explanation and example have helped me to think about this issue more.

@ If you ran some DNA from a crime scene through a database of 500 known criminals in the area and one matched all six markers then there is a high probability that they did the crime. However, if you ran it through an FBI database of a million criminals, the probability is higher of hitting more six marker matches, thus you have weakened the case for the original person committing the crime since you have introduced an alternative perp.

This seems to me more like weakening by introducing alternative explanations(other people can also match) rather than weakening through correlation, although you did use probabilities and correlation to find the alternative explanation. Let me know if I have misinterpreted your example.

In bare bone formulaic terms, if the conclusion is "A caused B," would you consider the correlation "most As are B"/ "B probably happens when A happens" as strengthening "A caused B"? Your explanation at the beginning helped me to kinda of see how it could do the job. However, I could not think of any LSAT question I have done that does this. Do you have any in mind?

Normally when I see strengthening causal relationship, I go into the default mode of:

1. eliminating alternative cause; or

2. eliminating reversed relationship; or

3. showing presumed cause with presumed effect; or

4. showing no presumed cause, no presumed effect.

Correlation does not seem to fit into any of what I normally look for.

I am not in any rush for solving this issue since it doesn't seem to show up often. And I can always use POE. @ @.janson35 However, I would really appreciate if you guys could help me to think a little more about this or perhaps take a look at this Q once you have done PT64.

If (A) had said most bacterial "not resistant to heavy-metal" are "not resistant to antibiotics." Then it seem to be more relevant to strengthening the correlation. I would still be hesitant to interpret this as strengthening since it is not strictly applying "no presumed cause, no presumed effect" strategy.

And most bacterial "resistance to heavy-mental" are "resistant to antibiotics" seem hardly a strengthener as well since it is not "presumed cause, presumed effect."

Could people who possess The Trainer kindly help me to clarify this "correlation" strengthening "causation" ? I no longer possess The Trainer.

I am thinking and typing at the same time, sorry if my thoughts are ambiguous and all over the places.

If the argument had said "most BRICK houses on river street with front yards also have two stories," the argument will be valid. The argument starts with information about brick houses: they have front yards. Then, the argument discusses houses with front yards: most have two stories. You draw the "most arrow" from "front yard" to "two stories" because the corresponding premise is about front yard. In other words, an arrow from FY is independent of the arrows to FY.

OP review the Valid Argument Form 4 in the "Some and Most Relationships." The inference (B) in this Q is very clear. (D) is reversal of the first sentence.

@ , I just used 7 sage. I believe using shapes/underline/sub-notations to distinguish items occurred in a few logic game videos, though they were never specifically emphasized.

Hi,

I am also looking for a people to take PTs together on Saturday or/and Sunday, preferably at UBC. I am pretty efficient self-studying, so I am not looking for people to go over exams together. However, I think it would be tremendously helpful to stimulate real exam situations. Let me know if anyone would be interested :)

How do I upgrade? I bought the course a while ago and I am not sure which version of package I have bought. I recently resumed studying and saw locked blue lesson. I went to Extensions and Addons to see if I can upgrade, but I only saw "Extend access period" and "LSAT PT explanations," both of which do not seem to be relevant to what I want to upgrade. I also checked upgrade course and was directed to back to the Extension and Addons.

I did this game by 1) splitting the game board into two possible worlds based on whether Q is third; 2) distinguishing the items by placing them into circle, square, and triangle. For every question, I tested the two worlds. Total spent around 12 mins.

If A causes B, A always lead B. If you don't see B, then you don't see A. Situations such as A causes B in one scenario but not the other entail there being joint factors causing B. For example, Eating a lot --cause--> overweight

and Eating a lot -cause-> ~overweight can be consistent because there are more than one factors that lead to overweight.

This is different from conditional logic because in conditional logic, the world is simpler and relationship is straightforward.You can think of A having a characteristic of B. For example, dog has the characteristic of four legs. Thus, if you don't see B you can never see A.

I don't use conditional language for causal relationship because it doesn't normally help me to understand a question.

Hope this helps.

@

said:

Could anyone give me some help? According to the lessons, it seems that "A causes B" = A-->B. However, in PT25-S4-Q12, this rule does not seem to work.

I believe the flaw for this question is not applying contrapositive to a causal relationship. Instead, the principle *claims* that there is such causal relationship and then uses the contrapositive to *prove* the causal relationship. In other words, the principle is using circular reasoning.

Causal relationship can always be represented by conditional logic. I don't remember seeing questions where this does not apply. If you have an example, let me know and I can try to help.

I think your confusion with this question stems from misinterpreting the first three sentences. First sentence presents a problem. Second sentence tries to explain the reason for problem, but note it is an ascription- "it has been said..." (a.k.a. hinting the author does not agree with this explanation. In the third sentence, the author's rejection to the explanation is clearly said. If "those with great vocal are most likely to ruin voices" then lack of vocal power (maturity) cannot be the explanation. Then, the last two sentences presents author's view of what the problem is.

The correct answer combines first and last sentences in the form of problem/explanation. I don't think there is formal logic involved. The first most statement in your diagram cannot be drawn because it is not the author's opinion.

@ , hope this helps!

@

said:

I'm wondering what you think is best moving forward.

I think you sound very frustrating. LSAT is really nothing much in the grand scheme of things. Going to law school is not an end in itself. Life is so much more than just an exam and which law schools we end up attending. Take care of yourself! It does not matter when you take the test, or what people say. Trust yourself in making the decision you would be most comfortable with.

It really depends on how much you care about your GPA, the rigorousness of your program, and whether you'd okay with the possibility of delaying one year for law school. If you are always straight A and you are in a top tier school,from my personal experiences and that of my friends, it's very hard to keep up the momentum even with a lot of determination and light load class schedule. If you almost absolutely do not want to delay, it will be in your best interest to take it soon. Otherwise, always take it when you are ready.

For Reading Comp, getting the right answer normally entails anticipating the right answer for local questions and quickly eliminating the wrong ans for global questions. If I don't get a sense of the right answer after the first read, my final answer after 2/3 mins of staring at the different options will probably be no better than a guess, unless of course I re-read big chunk of the passage. I may have gotten some of these questions right after long deliberation in past practices, but a lot times got them right for wrong reasons anyways. I might just have guessed and save the time! Good Luck!

Correlation can be non-linear. It merely means there is a relationship between X variables. In the case of X = 2: if you plot one set of variables on the x axis and another on the y, you get to see a pattern instead of scattered points. I think it is safe to assume LSAT only uses positive or negative correlation (linear). And in the context of Q24, I don't see a difference between correlation and association.

My two cents is that association includes correlation. The difference is association encompasses much broader relationships. We could think of things that are associated without having the responsive relationship. On the other hand, correlation points to a much more definitive relationship of how one variable would repond to the other varible's changes.

PT 41 Game 4