Hello,

When in doubt, turn back to the premise and conclusion indicators and work your way from there. In this instance we have the conclusion indicator So. Also it is such a very bold claim using the word Must, meaning out of everything else that can happen, this is the only thing that will. Well, why is that? Then we see that its because of its has poor quality, missing sections, poor order. All of those points are leading us to there must be substandard parts, in reality we know nothing of the quality of the parts. Here is a similar argument:

The Northwestern Soccer team run by coach X is of poor quality. The passing is often inaccurate, they have scored on there own goal on occasions, thereby leading them to be at the bottom of their division. The team even seems to lack motivation. So it is clear to see that, each player on the team is mediocre at best.

The same whole to parts flaw exist, I hope its a bit clearer to see in this one. Bad team does not mean bad players. Bad manufacture does not mean bad items. Hopefully that was clear and useful in some way.

Tough time understanding why this works but I think this is based on how hypothesis' function instead of what it does to support structure per say. D states the two studies in which no correlation was found, it was insufficient to draw any conclusion. So whats happening in our world "If there is a correlation between nearsightedness then it goes away with age", right now we have no evidence to the contrary.

Now given D, we have two studies that do not support any conclusion whatsoever, when we concluded that there is no correlation from our study we ruled out every other possible explanation. Specifically, we ruled out the possibility that nearsightedness does not go away with age. What is happening with D is that now, we just allow this possibility to exist, a possibility that if allowed will lead to an absurdity. While D does not weaken the support structure directly, much like the existence of an alternative conclusion, it does so in a round about way.

Hello,

A good method is to put the pieces side by side and see if each piece matches. Here is a summary and a cleaned up version without referential language.

So we have:

No indication of tax avoidance found by X | No reference to critic found by Y

No indication of tax avoidance exists| No reference to critic exists

This is referred to as an argument from ignorance if you would like more information to search up. A quick summary is that both arguments assume that the conclusion is true because it has not been proven false yet. However, you can easily image a second auditor coming in and finding years of tax avoidance/fraud in parallel you can imagine a second examiner of the index finding many references to such critics. Hopefully that was clear and useful in some way.

Hello,

There is just a slight misinterpretation of E. What is saying is that:

Compared to ten years ago, the school takes in smaller percentage of people from their total number of applicants. Which could mean anything. For example, 10 years ago, they had 10,000 applicants and had a 50% acceptance rate, as compared to now where 1,000,000 people apply and they accept 1% of their applicants. We now do have lower proportion (1% vs. 50%) yet they have more students (5,000 v.10,000 respectively) but that doesn't tell us much.

From A, the assumption is that since most of people coming to their school were already in the workforce, it raises the question whether they are getting the jobs from the school or from their prior experience. Just raising this alternative takes away ever so slightly from the support structure. Hopefully that was clear and useful in some way.

Hello,

That is an effective approach to general correlation-causation questions. However, for an approach to be effective it has to be applicable. Starting from the stimulus we can try and figure that out.

-A study found that people who take vitamin C have a lower risk of heart disease than average.

-Therefore people who take vitamin C are healthier than average.

Thats pretty much what the stimulus boils down to. A similar argument would be:

Farmers who grow carrots tend to have less pest eating their crops than average.

Therefore farmers who grow carrots will have a higher than average yield (crops grown successfully).

As you can see, not having pests is only factor that contributes to higher yield. What D is doing would be equivalent of saying that, lack of pests leads to (some negative consequence). So we can simply state something like lack of pests leads to crops developing genetic disease (somehow).

What B is saying is that carrots reduce our pests by the same number or less as potatoes (randomly picked). If its potatoes that reduce our pest by a significant number and carrots has only a slight impact, we run into the same problem as earlier. There is more to having a good yield than simply reducing pests.

In conclusion, there is more to general health than heart health. So to weaken a Hasty Generalization we need to show the hasty part does not generalize.

Hopefully that was clear and useful in someway.

Hello, that line of reasoning could well work in the real world and I would think that it actually happens. Situations where a home or property has sentimental value so the economic impact is weighted down in the decision to keep the property. However, in this case it is not exactly what can be draw from the stimulus but lets see if we can:

We have this list of premises:

- Z is making decisions on behalf of L regarding their will

- L likes her grandson and he is getting something from his/her will

- Z has to sell property off to clear off L's large debt

- L was indifferent to the only farm they owned

Therefore it would be likely okay with L to sell the farm instead of giving to his/her grandson

There is two things main you need to figure whats going and they are the two bolded sections. Lets say you have one sandwich and also that you are indifferent to sandwiches in general. Now I say "therefore you would likely be okay with giving your sandwich to the bank instead of your family member". Naturally the first thing you think of is "Hey, maybe my brother/sister/dad/mom/etc. wants that sandwich?" thats how we get to E.

As for answer choice D, lets assume you owe a couple restaurants a lot of money and you have to sell some of your food. How much is the sandwich worth? Will selling the sandwich clear the debt? Do i have other food like maybe a can of soup I can sell instead? All of these answers I don't know. But I do know that when I bought the sandwich it caused most of my current debt, but I have no idea what it can do for me now.

In conclusion, D leaves us to our own imagination, while E is saying that there might be an objection that could possibly arise. E isn't a certainty but it allows us to reasonable assume that a grandparent would want their grandchild to have something they like. Anyway hopefully that was clear and useful in some way.

Hello, thats a great point. It is reasonable to assume that the consultant or many consultants are offering bad advice. At the end of the day we don't know unless things play out which we unfortunately don't get to see. However, if we start from the stimulus we might be able to determine if we need to look further into that assumption.

The stimulus is stating that Trav. Corp. is planning on expanding into the tour bus industry while knowing most of its consumers travel by air. Therefore they must be attempting to expand their consumer base.

Here is the same argument: Wayne is at the grocery store purchasing tomatoes. However most of his diet consist entirely of french fries. Therefore he must be trying to expand his diet.

Hopefully the second one makes a little sense as to why you are not trying to expand your diet. You could simply be trying to get the tomatoes so you can make some ketchup so you can keep eating all the french fries that you heart desires. The same thing applies to the tour busses, the fact that it came from the mouths of a majority of industry consultants hired by Trav. Corp is just added salt. If you cut that part out, and it said "Companies expand by introducing new products to old customers" you would lose no meaning.

The point of all that was just showing there is an "an alternative hypothesis" to the phenomenon we witnessed. Just one existing is enough for us in this case. Hopefully that made some sense and was useful.

Hello, In this case you have to use the context surrounding the word to figure out what exactly is going on. They are actually using a play on words to disguise what is going on. The term "unintelligible" in the answer choice is functioning the same way as the word "independent" in the stimulus. That also means that "independent" in answer choice D isn't the exact same "independent" as the one being used in the stimulus.

For example the stimulus states that dance music could stand independent of dance. Which means that you can understand dance music in its own context. Next for answer choice D, it states music that is unintelligible meaning music that cannot be understood, then adds when it's independent (when its by itself) is sophisticated. I think you built the bridge already from sophistication to intelligible so i'll save the hassle.

If I had a short way of saying all that, I would say independent in the stimulus implies that the music is intelligible and is a very reasonable assumption to make given the context. I hope that was clear and useful in some way.

Hello, thats a wonderful point and answer choice E is a very common flaw that is worth creating a visualization for. Here is an example argument similar to that of the stimulus:

One study found that left handed people are more likely than right handed people to develop brain tumors. Another study found that left-handed people are more likely to drink herbal tea. Therefore there is a positive correlation between drinking tea and brain tumors.

Anyways, both the actual stimulus and this example are connecting two pieces that share an intermediate topic and hoping we wont notice. E would be right (right as in it identifies the correct flaw), if the conclusion for our example had instead said this "Therefore we can conclude that a genetic disposition to being left-handed leads to both one drinking tea and brain tumors"

The flaws function in very different ways but are erroneous none the less. Hopefully that was clear and useful in some way. (Also just assume the world is cut into a true binary of left-right)

Excuse the line.

Passing on some information, hopefully you find it useful:

The skeletal structure of this argument is a very familiar one. The flaw thats being is actually the older trick in the book which is confusing sufficiency for necessary. That aside let's take a look under the hood.

We have "superheated plasma in which electrical resistance fails" and that will be X

Next we have X that causes "ball lightning" and will now be Y

Lastly, under the assumption that this is the case, which we have to assume it is to go forward, Y must necessarily emit intense light and the plasma would rise. (That part is rephrased but we can call the emitting and rising Z)

Now we have a chain that looks like this: X-->Y-->Z. From here on just look back up because it will be just the variables

Good so far, now the professor is stating that during the occurrence of Y it has lead us to Z .

His conclusion is that of X--> Y. How can this be? Well the assumption (in arguments in general as well) is that there can be no contradiction and he sees one present. So if he sees one, where is it? It has to be X-->Z and X-->Z. The first part is given, the second part has to be inferred. How can X--> Z occur? The only way is that X-->Y-->Z. This means that X and Y must share a bi-conditional relation for it to be attached in such a way. Which is what E says. Lastly the creation of a contradiction just to solve the question is a round about way of doing this but the contradiction is heavily implied in this light so it was worth addressing.

I hope that was presented in a very clear manner and of some use.

Hello, I think starting with the stimulus to explain A is a good starting point so let's do that. The member of parliament is trying to justify to us that his proposal is good social reform. Why should we believe him? He defines good social reform as Increasing the sum total of human happiness and add thats his reform will make his people happy.

There is a gap between increasing the total amount of happiness and making just a specific group happy. Meaning you can make his group happy at the dismay of the general public. (Worth noting that the sum can go up if you make just a few happy and there is absolutely no impact on anyone outside of the group.)

D just points the weakness above out but for A, let's take it bit by bit. "Different things", which can literally mean anything you can think of, "makes different people" now we are talking about literally comparing 2 people in the world, "happy". We get a sentence that says anything at all can make any person happy (compared to another), the amount of work require to get that to say what we want it say is too much and wouldn't capture its meaning even if we attempted it. A is wrong in my opinion because it is completely detached from this idea of adding to the sum happiness of a specific group. (You can say that reform is a thing and it could make some people happy technically that fits in there but so does Not having the reform makes most people happy and so much more, its too open for interpretation is what I am getting at and it still wouldn't tell us about the sum happiness)

Hopefully that was clear and useful in some way.

Hello, this is a pretty tricky question but it can be broken down into smaller parts to handle. In our stimulus we are given a principle that states people should do their duty unless there is overwhelming evidence that something bad will happen. Duty is defined in the first sentence as one's job or societal role. Those two things we have to keep in mind while we look through the answer choices. E fails to touch on either of those things. Ill leave it to you figure out why there is no overwhelming evidence of something bad because thats a bit easier to see. Hint: "slight chance"

For the second one, which isn't so clear, we just assume the journalist's duty is to report on crises, maybe the journalist is a sports writer, maybe she's the editor, maybe we can't say for certain what her job or role to society is from what is stated. In conclusion, there are two key indicators to work from the conditional principle given to us those are that of "duty" and "overwhelming evidence need to act against that duty" and unfortunately E provides neither. If you take those two points you can map them onto be A and it should be little clearer on why its the beaming correct answer. Anyway I hope this was clear and useful in some way.

Great point overall but I just wanted to point out that they both use mitochondrial DNA as the example. The writers are making another assumption that needs to be caught that hemoglobin contains mitochondrial DNA and that is why Glover reaches the conclusion of it not being reliable as an evolutionary marker.

For the other question of does the tadpole assumption happen often? I'd say as often as assuming a blue jay is a bird and baseball is a sport, meaning you are the mercy of the writer's biases in many cases and you react as best as you can. That was a very beautiful assumption to have caught by the way.

Hello Oychoi,

Im happy you caught your own assumption, that is something you never want to do unless you are explicitly asked to make one. In our world, we know that fraternal twins have very similar genetic structure to each other. However we are not given that info in the passage.

Secondly even if we did assume it, how do go from similar to "virtually the same". There is no difference between identical that is why the similarities in life outcomes is attributed to them according to the stimulus. When it comes to that assumption the moment we introduce difference in genetic material we would need a completely different study and therefore a completely different argument.

Lastly, the point thats being trying to get a cross is one of this: "The only constant variable these two kids share are their genetics, they turned similarly despite every other variable, therefore the constant (genetics) determines the outcome and not environment (the could of said societal factors, economical, etc. so environment is nothing special but it does encompass the rest if you want it to).

Getting back to the answer choice, our goal is to say is: you can have the same genetics and then be influence by different factors to turn out different (literally the logical opposite of the conclusion). And fortunately C points us to another factor that determines our path in life (inclinations) which is psychological ("differentiate themselves").

In conclusion, C doesn't disprove the author but it does offer very conflicting results, the study in the stimulus and in C start in the same place and end in different places. While E starts from a different place and ends in a different place. Hopefully that rather vague map was useful in someway.

Hello TMaca, if we take a quick look at what each person is saying it might help. S is saying that scientists predictions about global warming trends cannot be based on solid evidence, why do they think that? Because they simply cannot agree. Hopefully that sounds very ridiculous to you because it is. Now looking at what W says, the disagreement you ,(you referring to S), are talking about (the support for s's conclusion) is actually happening within the nuances of some environmental theories (this is a bit of reading between the lines). W goes on to state that there is agreement in the scope of the trend i.e warming ranging from 1.5-4.5 C.

In Summary S says disagreement shows lack of solid evidence. Then W says the disagree is in the detail and there is consensus on broad issue.

Now looking at answer choice D, we can take it bit by bit. "Disagreement...in perspective" = disagreement in details so that sounds about right and then "emphasizing similarities" = consensus on broader issues.

That was a difficult piece to link up and a great point to ask, I hope that was clear and useful.

Hey Aristotle, thats a point I wouldn't argue with you in terms of international conflict-resolution strategies. However, there is a slight shift in focus that happens between the stimulus and that answer choice. Its not about whether that helps, its about whether the intention of the leader help's other people, which in answer choice A, the leader's motives are said to be self-oriented, which allows to not even worry about the implications of said diplomatic discussions. Hopefully that was clear and useful.

Hey Titantotle, great question. What you're saying might have some grounds if that was some other study. However the study mentioned stated over 4000, which could literally mean all 5000 kids never had any symptoms. The fact that we can argue between 1000 kids getting sick vs. no kids getting sick is a great sign that this answer choice has moved us away from the task. Rendering it useless. Regardless that was a nice point to bring up.

That is one acceptable variation of the negation but. A = Never drive and B = often walk. So not A would be sometimes drive, not B would be infrequently walk. You have the concept right on the money though.

Yah both work fine, I am specifically talking about when you decide to negate the thing after the "but". JY chose to negate the first and keep the second. The above example provides keeping the first and negating the second. Combining both is inconsistent with DeMorgan's law. I think there is a video somewhere on here about it but a quick summary of it:

To do not(A and B) you can do either Not A and B or A and Not B but you can never have both Not A and not B because at that point what are we even talking about. To answer your question though, yes it is accurate to think of each portion as independent from the other.

Hey Ashley, great question. In situations like that you can always use a substitution to see if another word would function in the same fashion. In this situation "but" functions identical to "and" a pleasantly familiar term. So it would bring an end result of "There are people who never drive and occasionally or rarely walk. In either case its just completely out of the scope of what we need. Hopefully that was useful in some way.

You are correct is stating is profit is revenues-cost, but having antitheft is just reducing risk of future cost going up because no books have yet been stolen. Secondly profit actually does go down in this one because they purchased equipment so it will increase cost at the very least from just that statement alone you could say that profit was affected negatively. Also I crossed out B for the same reason you did.

The two comments below do a good job of analyzing it but treat " most favor" as A and "airport built "as B. Then it says most wont favor it so treat that as A , therefore airport will not be built which is B.

Summary:

A-->B

A

Therefore B

Hope thats a little clearer.

If Coffee is safe for the heart in normal amounts, will that guarantee the safety of the throat, the stomach that deals with it, the safety of intestines, etc. Safe for one organ is not safe for all organs is what they are getting. E is out of the scope because we aren't talking about large amounts.

Starting off with the passage it can be summed by saying those that, those who dont pay for their own electricity don't have a reason to conserve energy therefore if we give them a reason by adding meters we will conserve energy. The shift in focus I think will help because we want to focus on how the actions of the landlord will lead to the effects they want. What A is doing is literally attacking the premise its saying that "Well actually tenants do have a financial incentive" which is not a fair way (LSAT wise) to attack the argument, we must attack the support structure. Here is a similar one: I have no reason to exercise, X wants to exercise so they will put a monitor on me and make me pay money if I don't, therefore I will exercise. We can talk about how exercising is actually good for me and that there is reason for me to exercise but thats not the focus. Hopefully thats a little bit cleared. As for the correct answer it points that an alternative solution, tenants who don't pay for their own electricity have lower energy consumption because their landlords have energy conserving appliances, and if we switch to the meters we don't know for certain if they what will happen to this current practice that already saves energy. Will it increase energy consumption? Will it lower? We don't know and just creating that level of doubt is enough to weaken the question.