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PrepTests ·

PT147.S1.Q18

cooldotori187

Saturday, Aug 27 2022

Survey result 1: almost all accept/know (Wang's law)

Survey result 2 : almost all know (BE experiment)

Principle : Wang's law and BE experiment → /Minsk

Conclusion : most know (/Minsk)

1st inference from survey result 1 and 2 using "almost/almost to most" logic:

: most know (Wang's law and BE experiment)

This is reasonable inference because "almost all" has a stronger scope than a "most" subset.

However, we can't make another further inference about people's mind using people's existing knowledge and the principle. The argument concludes that most know(/Minsk) on the grounds that most know (Wang's law and BE experiment) and that Wang's law together with BE experiment contradicts Minsk hypothesis.

On timed, I first suspected "most inference error" but it turns out there is no error in it. "almost all is A" and "almost all is B" reasonably infer "most A and B"

I looked for another possible error: the argument is committing significant logical error that Knowledge vs. true facts of the world. We can't make inference about people's mind from their existing belief and a true fact of a world.

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PrepTests ·

PT147.S1.Q15

cooldotori187

Saturday, Aug 27 2022

According to Answer choice (A),

Some people's claim, allegedly by the author: "luck → success"

Author's premise : "success → hard work"

Author's conclusion: "not [ luck → success ]"

The author implied a new conditional chain : "luck → success → hard work"

In this world, you can't succeed if you didn't work hard. Even, the fact that you didn't work hard implies that you were not that lucky.

Therefore, two seemingly similar conditional chains are totally different:

"luck → success" ≠ "luck → success → hard work"

(In the first world, you will succeed if you are lucky no matter how hard you work or not.)

As some people's true claim is "success → luck " and this is consistent with author's premise, the author's argument relies on faulty reasoning.

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PrepTests ·

PT147.S1.Q7

cooldotori187

Friday, Aug 26 2022

I agree with you. I think the first sentence is the main conclusion.

MC: The new mayor is bold.

Premise: His assertions are made with certainty and confidence.

Sub-conclusion: They also demonstrate that he is not an introspective person.

Two gaps in the argument:

i) one's assertions made with certainty and confidence → /introspective

ii) /introspective → bold. (sub-conclusion to MC), which can be reasonably assumed.

(B) affirms the first gap in a way of a contrapositive form.

: introspective people do not make such assertions.

(C) is incorrect is because C does not have to be true.

C negated: "Bold people do not make public assertions with utter certainty and confidence". Our 1st assumption stills hold true as long as bold people can make some assertions with utter certainty and confidence.

Public assertions is only a subset of assertions. I guess LSAT writers are very strict about subset/superset concept.

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PrepTests ·

PT128.S2.Q18

cooldotori187

Monday, Aug 22 2022

I felt like the stimulus is exploiting a type of flaw that no evidence of X is used to conclude that X is impossible.

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PrepTests ·

PT131.S3.Q19

cooldotori187

Thursday, May 05 2022

Some babies understand all the words they utter. Nevertheless, they have some words that they don't know the dictionary definitions of but they can utter.

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PrepTests ·

PT122.S4.Q16

cooldotori187

Thursday, Apr 07 2022

The last part of my reply was missing for some reason.

So, what we only need in order to fill in the gap is "most beautiful → best", which is the answer choice (A).

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PrepTests ·

PT122.S4.Q16

cooldotori187

Thursday, Apr 07 2022

Statement X: (Beauty & Truth: different)

We want to prove that statement X is true.

How? Let's imagine an absurd world where the statement X is denied.

Suppose /X: (Beauty=Truth)

In this hypothetical (or ridiculous) world, let's draw a mini argument:

P: most realistic → most truthful

C: most realistic → best

The conclusion of this mini argument contradicts the established fact:

Fact: most realistic ←s→ /best

Therefore we are sure that Statement X cannot be denied and is a true statement.

However, if you carefully examine the mini argument above, there is a gap: we made unwarranted assumption that "most truthful → best". Calling upon the existing supposition of /X (beauty=truth), we can safely infer that "most truthful → most beautiful. So, what we only need in order to fill in the gap is .

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PrepTests ·

PT142.S4.Q16

cooldotori187

Friday, Mar 25 2022

The conclusion is implying that the opinion of most commentators and Mather's view are contradicting .

First view: Caravaggio → Baroque

Second view: Baroque → o, h, e

Let's make a contradiction under the situation where two views are considered true.

: Caravaggio's painting is of Baroque style but it does not have o, h, e, which should have been present in any painting of Baroque style.

Then, this contradictory statement leads to the conclusion that we should reject or abandon one of views.

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PrepTests ·

PT141.S4.Q23

cooldotori187

Sunday, Mar 20 2022

Facts:

Congratulate → misrepresent

/Congratulate → hurt his feelings

Blanket rule:

Sincere

Exception:

/Sincere → belief (He prefers kindness)

/belief ( .. ) → Sincere

Application (Conclusion):

Blanket rule is "Sincere" and this triggers the first line of facts :

sincere = /misrepresent → /congratulate

therefore, our general conclusion is /congratulate.

Also, answer choice (E) states she has no belief at all, which triggers the sufficiency of exception rule in a contrapositive form, and we can safely conclude that she has to be sincere and should not congratulate him on his award.

The second fact is kind of useless in terms of application of principle. Need to hunt for sufficiency condition of exception rule either in original or in contrapositive form.

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PrepTests ·

PT141.S4.Q9

cooldotori187

Sunday, Mar 20 2022

(D) is incorrect because the author conceded Bosch's use of unusual subject matter and the statement that "Bosch's choice of subject matter remains unexplained" is not even the author's conclusion.

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PrepTests ·

PT141.S2.Q12

cooldotori187

Friday, Mar 18 2022

Initially chose (A) but changed to (D) in blind review. After realizing there is a little gap in (A), that "not consult anyone beforehand→ no consent was first given", which later turns out to be an allowable gap as per common sense, and a complicated nature of embedded conditional logic in (D), I lost confidence and ended up choosing a wrong answer choice.

My takeaway - Embedded conditional logic

explanation #1

(D): Justified → [ consulted → each agreed ]

(D'): /each agreed → /consulted → /justified

(D'') [ /each agreed and /consulted ] → /justified

where (D') is a contrapositive form of (D) and (D'') is a variation using a core curriculum lesson about embedded conditional logic.

What we all know is "it was NOT consulted" and this alone CANNOT TRIGGER the sufficient condition of (D'') above. So we are not sure whether it is justified or not.

explanation #2

(D'): /each agreed → /consulted → /justified

(D''') each agreed or [ /consulted → /justified ]

where (D''') is a variation using "or" rule.

There are MANY POSSIBILITIES in (D'''), which is expressed in "or" rule.: In one world, we can conclude that "/consulted → /justified" while we still have another world where "each agreed" and thus we are not in position to conclude whether the public release is justified or not.

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PrepTests ·

PT149.S4.Q7

cooldotori187

Tuesday, Mar 15 2022

In context, the author provides an established causal explanation that laughter can promote patient's recovery from illness. Even though this was a questionable explanation merely drawn from a correlation between watching a comic video and gains in immune system, we need to take it for granted. Also, we notice the author's presumption that "gains in immune system" → "recovery from illness".

The author goes on to show another phenomenon that another factor might seem to play a roll in patient's recovery from illness: "tendency to laugh". We can't establish any causal relationship from this correlation, of course. The author ends up concluding an absurd, speculative comparative causal explanation that another factor has much stronger influence on patient's recovery than does the established causal factor.

Answer choice (D) would have been correct had the author's conclusion been like a simple statement that "hospital patients who have a greater tendency to laugh are helped more in their recovery from illness than are others."

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PrepTests ·

PT144.S3.Q23

cooldotori187

Friday, Mar 04 2022

Embedded conditional statement:

A & B & C & D → E

Contrapositive of embedded conditional statement:

/E → /A or /B or /C or /D

/E → denial of at least one of the above original sufficient conditions

So, below statement also suffices the contrapositive of the above embedded conditional.

/E → A & B & /C & D

Shorty, /E & A & B & D → /C

PSA answer (Premise → Conclusion) we need in our argument:

most favor

& /violate HR

& passed in 8 years

& opposed by influentials → /WFD

Contrapositive in intuitively organized:

WFD & most favor & /violated HR & opposed by influentials → not passed in 8 years (passed quickly)

The answer choice (E) is missing whether the bill is opposed by influentials but perhaps I think this counts as a PSA gap.

(A) WFD & most benefit & /violate HR & → passed quickly

This statement introduces a new condition - "benefit the most people". The new condition contaminates our contrapositive form and we can't verify P to C relationship we want. What if "most benefit" is a super cheat key that can make any bill passed as quickly as possible?

(B) WFD & opposed by influentials & most favor → ?

We don't know if the bill will be passed in 8 years or promptly.

(C) WFD & opposed by influential & most favor → passed in 8 years

This is not a contrapositive form we want.

(D) WFD & passed into law → most favor & /violate HR

This is not a contrapositive form we want.

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PrepTests ·

PT138.S3.Q25

cooldotori187

Thursday, Feb 10 2022

First speaker: If M and TP is in not-both relationship, need to choose M.

Second speaker: Need to choose TP.

Correct answer:

(C) If TP → /M (=representation of TP and M in not-both), then /TP.

The first speaker agrees with this, while the second not.

Wrong answers:

(A) "M → /TP" (Both agree with this not-both relationship.)

(D) "TP provides beneficial educational experience to more children than does M". (Both unclear.)

2nd speaker says "TP reaches much bigger audience than M". However, it is not sure whether 2nd speaker thinks TP provides "beneficial educational experience". Also we need to concede that more audience implies more children in order to presume the second speaker would agree with the answer choice (D). ---so, kind of agree?

While 1st speaker says "M offers richer educational experience more than TP does", this leaves room that TP provides"beneficial educational experience". Because, even after conceding TP's experience is not as rich as what M provides, such experience can still be beneficial. (=comparative statement vs. absolute statement). So we don't know of 1st speaker opinion about the answer choice (D). -- perhaps, can agree

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PrepTests ·

PT138.S3.Q15

cooldotori187

Thursday, Feb 10 2022

Premise : Know (Ellsworth) → Know (Ellsworth is bursting with self-righteousness)

SA: ?

Conclusion: Know(Ellsworth) → Not surprised by the fact that Ellsworth is being offended by the certain suggestions.

One thing to note is that premise is talking about people's belief. This is not the same as the actual fact. Also, "not surprised" in the conclusion is to be understood as people's perception. Though it is unsure whether the certain suggestions are true or not, much less whether people who knows Ellsworth believe that suggestions as true or not.. Since I believe more important part is people being"not surprised", I would better leave the "suggestions part" out and I go on to link "not surprised" and the premise for a pre-phrasing answer:

Know (SR) → Not surprised by the fact that....

However, this my pre-phrasing does not appear in any of the given answer choices and I get to narrow them down to (A) and (E) because the answer choices (A) and (E) are talking about people's perception.

(A) Suspect (SR → unethical)

(E) Expect (SR → Easily offended)

"People not being surprised by the fact that Ellsworth is being offended by certain suggestions" does not imply any judgement whether people believe Ellsworth is unethical or not. So I am a bit inclined to AC (E) for a correct answer choice, but not 100% certain.

Some evidence supporting AC (E) as a correct answer:

1."Easily offended" is more powerful than "be offended". SA question types allows a strong "overkill" answer choice.

2. Having expectation → Not being surprised. (Maybe tiny gap? but pretty much makes sense.)

Fact: People know (SR)

SA: People expect (SR →Easily offended)

Application: People who know Ellsworth is bursting with self-righteousness expect Ellsworth will be easily offended.

=> People has expectation that he is easily offended. Therefore people will be not surprised.

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PrepTests ·

PT112.S4.Q14

cooldotori187

Monday, Feb 07 2022

So, the fact that the theorem is provable implies that it is possible that Joseph's claim could be false. Laura went too far to conclude that Joseph's claim is clearly wrong.

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LSAT · Locating a LR question - labeling a food as nonfat

cooldotori187

Thursday, Jan 27 2022

@jayleencouture313 said:

Maybe PT57.S3.Q14

Food labeling regulation

Admin Note: https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-57-section-3-question-14/

Thank you!!

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PrepTests ·

PT135.S1.Q17

cooldotori187

Thursday, Jan 27 2022

This question is about causal relationship and is testing our ability to argue against a causal relationship. The author is trying to disprove a causal relationship contended by some critics that "negative news reports on the state of the economy damage people's confidence in the state of economy" and that "this lack of confidence in turn adversely affect people's willingness to spend money" (herein, an old causal relationship).

The author attempts to support his/her conclusion that an old causal relationship of some critics is mistaken by citing from studies that people's spending trends correlate "very closely" with people's confidence in their own immediate economic situation. This intuitively leads us to think that people's spending trends would then perhaps not be so much affected with confidence in the state of economy overall as some critics claimed.

However, support power of author's premise is weak for the following reasons:

1. The premise is a statement about mere correlation and this is not enough to support author's conclusion. The author should have shown a causal relationship showing people's spending trends being affected by confidence in their own individual situation.

2. Even though the above causal relationship is conceded (herein, new causal relationship), it might be the case that the author's new causal relationship is actually part of the old causal relationship - that is, people's confidence in their own immediate economy situations itself is somehow influenced by people's confidence in the state of economy overall.

If this is the case, author's conclusion does not follow. No matter how people's spending trends are closely correlated with confidence in their own immediate situations, such spending trends are eventually affected by confidence in the overall economic condition and by negative news reports. The answer choice (D) is point out this logical gap.

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PrepTests ·

PT104.S3.P2.Q8

cooldotori187

Wednesday, Jan 26 2022

The beginning of the last paragraph wraps up the passage by saying that "Hopi personal names do several things simultaneously." And the "several things" are illustrated in the following sentences as Mill's view that the names individuate persons (line 50), Levi Strauss's view that the names indicate social relationships (line 48) and the author's new attempted view that the personal names also indicate significant semantic content in poetic composition (line 51 and line 18). So we can say that Hopi names have significant aesthetic quality in addition to the conventional naming function as Mill and Levi Strauss formulated.

Perhaps, the author said that this view of Hopi names is opposed to Mill and Levi Strauss's claim because each of their claims fails to capture all these three aspects of Hopi names.

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PrepTests ·

PT132.S4.Q22

cooldotori187

Monday, Jan 10 2022

The answer choice (A) is wrong for two reasons.

First, the average number of children per family is not a good indicator to tell whether the family is small or large. A family with a single child can have grandparents, uncles/aunties or nieces/nephews. So we don't know whether the countries that the AC (A) is talking about are becoming a society mainly with small families or large families.

Second, the incidence of allergies is too general to capture the idea of our argument. Our argument is talking about "children's likelihood to develop allergies during infancy."

In contrast, the answer choice (E) is specifically mentioning "small families" and "likelihood of developing allergies of children thereof".

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PrepTests ·

PT107.S4.Q24

cooldotori187

Sunday, Jan 02 2022

Premise (Correlation) 1. Prematurely born babies tend to have low birth weights.

Premise (Correlation) 2. Mothers who had received inadequate prenatal care tend to have low birth weight babies.

Flawed conclusion(Causation): Adequate prenatal care decreases the risk of having low birth weight babies.

Counter: Perhaps, whether having been received adequate prenatal care or not might have been an induced result. Why? When a mother delivered a baby prematurely and the relevant records were unavailable, she was routinely determined to have been received inadequate prenatal care by hospitals' arbitrary classification. This weakens the causation.

Screening answer choices: Correlation allows some of outliers.

My takeaway: When the conclusion picks up something as a cause, we need to find out sth like that the stated cause is actually a result. Vice versa.

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PrepTests ·

PT142.S2.Q3

cooldotori187

Wednesday, Dec 22 2021

So what the second sentence is telling us is that caring for the environment does not constitute a necessary condition for being an overall success. This is because failure of this condition does not affect in denying overall success.

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PrepTests ·

PT137.S3.Q17

cooldotori187

Friday, Dec 17 2021

not [A and B]

= /A or /B

It opens 3 possible worlds: /AB, A/B, /A/B

not A nor B

=/A and /B

It has only one world: /A/B

1. Rules

i. Not sterilized → can have bacteria

ii. Not sealed → can have bacteria

iii. Sterilized and property sealed → no bacteria

2. Facts

Food preservation methods can be one of the followings but not limited to:

i. sterilizing and sealing

ii. something that at least slows the growth of bacteria

iii. something that destroy enzymes

3. Answer choices

(D) is telling us any "non-sterilized" food, which triggers the first rule and we can push out that "any non-sterilized food can have bacteria".

(E) seems to bait us to use contrapositives of the first and second rules. If so, "food that contain no bacteria" would have been both sterilized and sealed. But we are not sure whether both sterilizing and sealing was performed under one of acceptable preservation methods. We know only that this food was sterilized and sealed and this could have been done by a food research team, not by an acceptable method. We should not link the idea given in the first and second sentence and the method explained in the latter part.

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PrepTests ·

PT137.S3.Q13

cooldotori187

Thursday, Dec 16 2021

I picked up one flaw here, I'm not sure if I am correct though, which is false dichotomy. The study mentioned in a psychologist's argument illustrates that identical twins showed many of similar inclinations despite of separate upbringing in different environment. Study result confirms that there surely is some genetical factors at play. However, this does not confirm that there are no environmental influences in our human inclination.

However, the psychology goes on to say that "environmental factors are not influential" and I think this seems to be kinds of logic flaw known as false dichotomy. Environmental factors can also influence our inclination even in the presence of genetics. In reality, we know that environmental factors and genetic factors are not mutually exclusive and this topic has long been popular as nature vs nurture.

Anyway, returning to the stimulus, if the psychologist in the stimulus were to prove that some of human inclinations are not subject to environmental influences, the study should have included a case study where identical twins in the same upbringing evolve the similar beliefs, tastes, and careers no mater what environmental changes. The answer choice (D) is showing such a kind of setup but with the non-conforming result and therefore it weakens conclusion-premise relationship in our given argument.

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