Got this wrong under timed as I was scanning for bridges. Just goes to show that method doens't always work.
Got it in BR after coming back a few times and here's my mindset:
I broke this question done to parts to process easier but what I did was I made the first half of the stimulus the context/phenomenon and the second half our hypothesis. Doing this made it really clear why E is wrong.
The phenomenon is that weekend days tend to be cloudier. If you used this as premise 1, you'll realize it doesn't really effect our argument other than to set it all up.
Our hypothesis/conclusion is that humans must have appreciable effects on weather.
That leaves us only with our only support for this hypothesis...which is "it's not 7-day cycles because those are insignificant".
If this were a flaw question, the answer would pop out much easier...why are they only looking at 7 day cycles? How can you jump from not 7 day cycles to must be humans? Now of course if an AC said that, this question wouldn't be as tough as it is but of course the LSAT writers went ahead and hid all that in answer choice E.
If you negate what E says, it says if a weather pattern has a natural cause, it might not be a 7-day cycle (or you can have a natural cause and not a 7-day cycle). That would completely open the gates for the flood of questions I mentioned above. "why not look at 1-day cycles, 2 days? etc. why only 7 day cycles?"
That is why E is necessary. Because if it must be a 7-day cycle and we know that 7-day cycles are insignificant, then perhaps it is humans who have an effect. Without that assumption, simply looking at 7-day cycles is a massive flaw in the argument.
for those who had 3 LR passages, did you find the experimental LR more difficult? I honestly can't remember which one question appeared where cause it's all a blur now but I remember one section being more difficult than the other 2. Happened to be my first section too so I'm not sure if it's because I hadn't warmed up sufficiently yet.
I feel like the questions identified as experimental were ones I had trouble with so I'm praying I didn't mess up a real LR section.
because foraging for food means to search widely for food. So if you're too timid to search widely, not only did you not have new foods, you didn't explore either.
Admittedly, that's kind of a knit-picky way of defining it, i got this question right on timed because i recognized that the key distinction was boldness, not actually # of types of food nor # of environments explored so all I had to do was find an answer that referred to timidness or boldness. It's only on blind review that I realized foraging encompasses both exploration and food.
what's tricky is B calls on a normal weakening answer choice for an LR question that asks us to weaken an experiment whereby you call out the experiment for being faulty and I fell for it. On BR though i realized how irrelevant B was. Even if aerobics group did weights, the conclusion that aerobics helps handle stress.
However, if B said the weight group also had aerobics exercise then the conclusion that aerobics helps prevent stress is in question and that's exactly what E is saying. If the weight group has a greater amount of aerobics than the aerobics only group...how can you say aerobics helps with reducing stress when the weight group had higher stress levels?
#help (Added by Admin)
honeslty, LSAT will probably just respond to your first question as "english is a fluid language, you must read in the context of the passage" or something like that.
But for answer choice E, it's irrelevant because the author has thrown away the fact that artificial fertilizers are damaging in the first sentence. He concedes that artificial fertilizers are damaging but states that it's still necessary otherwise there won't be enough food. It's fair to say the author makes an assumption that food shortage is worse than environmental damage but that isn't the crucial flaw in his argument. That's why E isn't correct. His argument is based solely on the food shortage consequence and saying "but using artificial fertilizers damages humans" would just be countered with "so would not having enough food"
man 21 is rough, once you realize D says he respects the "diversity of its ancient sources"you know it's wrong. The author clearly states in line 16 that it dates back to the Sung Dynasty (it's ancient source). Where does the author say this ancient source is diverse? Nowhere. The trap is that he goes on to say that it is revitalized by immigration from China so we in the West would believe this increases diversity. That in itself is not a bad assumption but that doesn't mean its ancient source was diverse. It very well could be that the Sung Dynasty was extremely monolithic so you can't say the author respects the diversity of the Sung Dynasty cause we just don't know if it was diverse at all.
took awhile for me to parse out what C was saying so i skipped this question on timed but once you do, this question is a lot easier. Essentially, C says that people who suffer from insomniacs are just as likely to go on international business trips as those that do not. What this blocks is the alternative explanation that it's insomnia that causes people to go on international business trips.
If you negate C, it would say insomniacs are more likely to accept international travel (what JY referred to as self selecting to go on international business trips). If that were the case, how can you say business trips causes insomnia when it was insomnia that made them accept the job?
#help Has people found it easier to do these comparative passages as 2 long LR questions (whereby you read one then go to the questions and answer what you can) or as a standard RC where you read it all then go to the questions? Balancing time and accuracy, which one seems to be the more effective approach?
honestly, this argument was so dumb that i didn't even know how to weaken it because it seriously feels like it was weakening itself with every statement and i frankly eliminated everything on the first round because I didn't even know what to look for. Answer choice A is definitely the least worse one of the pack though..
I thought this question was hard because of the fluff involved but on review I found that you can do this question with simple logic.
PS = voluntarily produce sounds
MC = Motor control
SA = sound acquisition
First line: "motor ability is required to voluntarily produce sound" PS → MC
fluff fluff fluff
conclusion: Speech Acquisition is entirely a motor control process (to make it easier to put into lawgic: speech analysis is only from motor control)
SA → MC
So the missing assumption is: SA → PS which is answer choice A.
If you think about it, the second sentence is almost redundant.
It tells us that Most children are several years old before they can voluntarily produce sound. Essentially, it's telling us that infants cannot voluntarily produce sounds. It's kinda there to just strengthen their premise by indirectly saying it but we already knew infants can't produce sounds because of the contrapositive of line 1: PS→MC but MCinfants → PSinfants. That's just to reiterate the contrapositive of the first sentence.
Anyone else having troubles with the website? I printed a couple LSATs last week and I did one this week but now there's no where to enter my answers. Every preptest link just brings me to the digital tester (which I don't find helpful at all, i'd rather print and do paper practices). Is this a glitch or was there some update I'm unaware of?
Even if i go to analytics, there's no tab to enter scores.
I got baited by answer choice B but upon review it's pretty clear why B is wrong.
JY mentions that it's because it doesn't matter if some countries can do it but I think where answer choice B is wrong the most is that it doesn't fully encompass the conclusion.
Remember: the conclusion is that "this claim is wrong" - the claim being it's prohibitively expensive to reduce CO2 to halt global warming. This is where the error arises. B says that some countries has reduced CO2 without prohibitive expense...but does that mean it was reduced to the extent of which to halt global warming? No. it doesn't and that's why it doesn't strengthen the conclusion. If B said "some countries reduced CO2 to the extent that it halted global warming" (which we realistically know is impossible but LSAT is it's own little world) then I think B could very well be the right answer.
On the other hand, D is right because it states exactly that, it quantifies the premise to reflect that it's about reducing to the point of halting global warming. Not only does it strengthen the analogy by saying techniques used in CFC work for CO2, it includes the point that it could halt global warming...otherwise, the producers could just say "ya but we'd need to do way more than that to halt global warming" and deflect your analogy
#help - still don't understand why A isn't considered strengthening. I am actually surprised this question wasn't struck from grading because both A and B strengthen in my opinion and arguably A strengthens more because the conclusion is beyond the scope of the experiment.
The experiment is on 6 month old babies. The conclusion is "HUMANS (not just babies) have a biological disposition to these perfect octaves"
Answer choice A i thought would strengthen because it shows that it is all ages that prefer that kind of music. Not just something that babies like because it's soothing to their ears or whatever. Therefore if babies, older children and adults all like this kind of music, you can conclude it's probably biological for ALL HUMANS and not just a passing phase of babies.
Correct choice was B but i don't even think that strengthens it that much. Like yes it does kind of strengthen it slightly because you're "clean slates" but you have to assume that babies pay more attention to things they already are familiar with (which would indeed skew the results) and there is no indication of that. And even if that was assumed, you have to assume that the song they heard was one containing a perfect octave (because it's prevalent doesn't mean every song of every culture uses it). Even if all of that is irrelevant, how can you have an experiment on babies and make a conclusion on humans in general? What if this experiment only applies to babies and older children or adults are genetically predisposed to pay more attention to music that isn't perfect octaves because as we age, our ear shape genetically changes structure or whatever?
If this conclusion said "babies are predisposed to pay more attention to perfect intervals" then B is undoubtedly correct. But that simply isn't what the conclusion is. It goes beyond the scope of the experiment and says HUMANS in general. To back that up, you would need more than just studies on a baby.
#help
how does the drama critics' reliability affect the premise that the actors were great so the audiences will enjoy the play? Seems to me that saying "oh i don't tend to trust your opinion" isn't at all attacking the argument. I had my eyes on D as well but i (wrongly) made the assumption that if you've seen a similar play then this one would be less enjoyable as you've seen something like it before. Ultimately, I chose E exclusively on the context that you never attack the author's person. Can someone please enlighten me on how this is different from attacking the author?
just wanted to add that for question 4, E says people who know facts are more opinionated whereas the author reported that those who know the facts are more likely to be opinionated. So, even if the author agrees with the statement in the first paragraph, answer choice E would still be wrong by virtue of "being likely to hold an opinion" does not mean that you are "more strongly opinionated".
At least that's how I overcame that hurdle. Hope it helped or that someone else had a similar interpretation
Honestly, I think th question stem should have said "reconcile". The answer choice doesn't explain nor resolve the descrepancy but it does offer something that allows the statement to be true despite the fact that they still get sick but hey, I don't write these questions. At least this one was solveable via PoE
well then...i recognized the correlation causation error but when I reread the conclusion I noted a jump from percentage of accidents to saving lives and thought that was quite a significant error too...is it advisable to just look for causal error whenever a flaw method question poses correlation/causation confusion?
#help
Honestly, I did this question by process of elimination. We know that some statements cannot infer an "all" statement nor a "most" statement so immediately A,C and E were wrong leaving 50/50 between B and D.
Then closer examination in D made it too restrictive to be a must be true so we're left with B.
god damn, i misread "price of the fish" as if it was referring to price of fish in general and I thought that's where the assumption was but didn't realize "the fish" was referring to halibut...you win this one LSAC writers.
damn, did anyone read B and thought that that meant it was a common third factor? After reading E again it's definitely powerful at weakening the statement but in a timed setting I would have definitely seen B and thought "oh okay, so maybe disease Z causes larger IN and Disease X"
Just goes to show that it's good to read each AC very carefully
When I approached this question I thought the argument was so stupid. Immediately I thought, "okay, what if people now work together to buy cars (ie: newly weds)" So that's how I got answer choice E because it says that more and more people do not buy cars as individuals but as couples or groups. That way, the conclusion does not follow that "individuals must therefore be spending a larger proportion of their income to buy a car" simply because they are no longer buying one by themselves.
Don't know if that was the right approach but it helped me. Could be a fluke though haha.
#help
I got the right answer choice but only because I went through all the other answer choices and thought all of them were irrelevant and only A provided any resemblance of the issue. This question actually took me awhile because I didn't recognize the analogy. Rather, I was focused on the premises regarding mice so I thought the answer choice would have something to do with research methods during the mice experiment. I was wondering if there were any tips on when you should the weakness stems from analogy like this one.
How do I delete this comment? LOL I wanted to make a note, not a reply.
> @madelineleibin913 said:
> And how would be disprove answer choice A?
It took me a few reviews to finally see C as the correct AC, i chose A under timed. The reason why A is wrong is because the conclusion is that the virus is 25 million years old. Saying that viruses can affect the evolution of an organism is completely irrelevant to that conclusion. The premise isn't that the virus caused the divergence in species. Rather, it's that a ancestor of the 2 species existed 25 million years ago and that the hepadnavirus was within that ancestor's DNA/chromosomes. There are definitely other gaps in the argument but that's why A isn't stregnthening.