I had B in the beginning but the “least restrictive” part tripped me up, B still seems restrictive imo. But I now see that E is just way too free and doesn’t place enough restriction so the money could technically be used for any cause.

My gut was telling me to pick E but all I could think of was Indian people living in Singapore don't necessarily eat "Indian curries". But like everyone said, it's the only AC that touches upon the turmeric aspect.

Wow this happened to me too, I was scoring between 167-174 and I got a 159. A punch to my gut for sure. I haven't studied in a month because I honestly felt so sad. Logician's words are definitely encouraging.

UGH I didn't like B because I felt like it was making us assume that "the record of prenatal care" was often/ routinely NOT available. Like we don't know that typically they can just ask the mothers if they took prenatal care or not.

Conclusion: The republic's recruitment rates for 18 YEAR-OLDS depend substantially on recruitment rates for high school dropouts.

Why?

Because a rise in the percentage of 18-year-olds who were recruited to the armed forces CORROLATES with a rise in the percentage of people who dropped out of high school.

C is correct here because it gives us an alternative explanation. The recruitment rates among 18 years olds went up rather BECAUSE the percentage of 18-year-old high school graduates who were recruited for the army ROSE.

They are trying to get us to assume that the dropouts would join the army, but they could have just as easily joined the labor market.

The flaw I anticipated was "what if the current traditional code could be amended?" What clued me in was that they mentioned that it was "widely entrenched and accepted" already. I thought about our constitution, would we want to COMPLETELY REPLACE it just because it has a negative qualities, no. We'd probably want to modify it in some way instead to improve its shortcomings.

D is correct because it's telling us that the high levels of glutamate in the blood ALL come from leakage from the damaged cells. If the high levels all come from this leakage, we know for sure that glutamate can kill the surrounding nerve cells.

If these surrounding nerve cells can be killed then it makes it more likely that glutamate is the cause of long term brain damage.

UGH I was between A and D. I fell into the trap. In retrospect, I think D is pretty obvious we have to make so many assumptions to pick it. For example, it could be that the hyena population doubled but that could be from (1) to (2) hyenas. We simply don't know and to further that we don't necessarily know that the doubling in population is bad for the wildlife pop. This AC doesn't weaken.

A, weakens because it provides an alternative cause to the reason why the baboons are maturing faster. Giving the alternative cause weakens the strength between the reason given (the dumpster making the baboons mature faster) and the conclusion draw.

Conclusion: Hospital patients with greater tendency to laugh are helped more in their recovery from illness even when they laugh a little than other patients are helped when they laugh in greater amounts.

Why?

Because greater gains in immune system strength occurred in patients whose tendency to laugh was greater to begin with.

Flaw: The argument is forgetting to consider that those with a greater tendency to laugh, naturally laugh more. So it can be the case that it’s THE LAUGHTER, rather than the tendency to laugh that helped with their recovery. This is what A points us to.

Thanks for the post @ ! I think I am going to incorporate breathing strategies while doing my PTs and practice taking breaths to simulate the real exam.

For the remaining of my PTs, I am going to take them at the same time I am scheduling my Jan Flex. So that my body + mind are even more used to the time and setting.

One thing that I think could help when everything gets blurry esp in LR is IDENTIFY THE CONCLUSION as a sense of grounding. This skill should be quick at this point and even when everything gets fuzzy, we know we can rely on it. This can help us be calm down and realize that we know how to do this exam. We've done it plenty of times.

I used to be bad at weakening but I took around 2 days to do all the weakening questions I had left over from PTs 1-35.

I started untimed.

My focus always is:

Identify the conclusion

Identify how the information is supporting it.

If I can predict the flaw in the argument. This sets me up for the going into the answers but I can't always predict.

Start eliminating ACs that clearly don't weaken the support structure.

Select the remaining AC and see how it would weaken.

For weakening Q's, for some reason I always keep in mind ALTERNATIVE CAUSE.

Also, POE is very helpful because I know that I am getting the right answer by eliminating the bad ones first, it has decreased my errors as well.

Who else was personally victimized by the second part of the conclusion that they clearly ignored?!! (raises hand, it me)

hiii!!! how do I sign up!!! and LOL this made me laugh!

I was debating between C and A a lot.

I initially went with A. I thought about C that just because melatonin affected those without insomnia SIGNIFICANTLY, this didn't rule out the possibility that it could have helped those without insomnia even just a little.

I see now that A is a worse answer of the two, because the fact that one correlation is weaker than another is RELATIVE and doesn't tell us anything about what the correlation is or how much weaker it is. It could be just slightly weaker. We simply don't know.

Lesson: beware of relative answers!

Typical flaw of giving one piece of evidence A TON OF WEIGHT and not thinking about other considerations/the whole picture.

I was so confident about 18 🤣

I was between B and E like most of us.

B I eliminated because the stimulus says antihistamines have "other effects". These may or may not help battle congestion, we simply don't know all their ingredients. For example, let's say that we took an antihistamine that somehow had vitamin C, and let's pretend vitamin C helps us somehow relieve our congestion. That's why I couldn't pick B, we can't say that antihistamines are ineffective against congestion caused by colds, bc they might help a little through their "other effects".

E, similarly I focused on the "other effects" of antihistamines and the fact that histamine plays no role in producing cold symptoms. Thus, if the antihistamine we take somehow helps us with our cold symptoms then it cannot be attributed to the blocking of histamine but to those "other effects."

I will remember this question because it made me think of Schitt's Creek.

Just because the Roses' income is now the average for families, this does not mean that their income must have increased.

They were millionaires last year, but they just lost all their money this year so now their income is average.

Ugh my intuition was telling me there was something about C, but I couldn't translate it to "busting ass" during my timed take.

C works as an alternate cause, because it's telling us "hold up, the chess playing skills is not what caused their grades to go up. Instead it was the fact that they loved chess so much that they want to join the team and you need a high grade for it, so the students' desire to want to join the team caused them to have higher grades."

The big gap that I thought of was, "well we know that it was hard to travel through the mountains, but how do we know that it wasn't significantly harder to travel by boat?" The argument doesn't tell us.

If it was even harder to travel by boat or even just as hard as it was to travel by land, then we can't really make our conclusion based on the premise given.

I figured out the flaw but then my brain couldn't find the best matching answer. I went C but I can see why B is a way better match.

Basically just because one of us/disease couldn't accomplish a goal on our own, doesn't mean we can't accomplish it together.

I feel like I got this right so quickly because E is exactly what happened to me when I took Gen Chem

Damm JY knew exactly what I was thinking through 19, but I still picked D even though I felt it wasn't right smh

"addressing a problem" doesn't necessarily mean "solving a problem 100%." For example, I could say my problem is that "I am failing math" one way of "addressing the problem" is by actually studying for exams. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that studying for the exams is going to guarantee that I don't fail math/pass math. I am just doing something that is an attempt to address my problem of failing math.

Question 2 is foul