Hey JS,

When you are stuck between two answer choices, I encourage you to zero in on the details. C) sneakily says that EACH interpretation was tailored to the interest of a different cultural group. But we know that some of the interpretations were for different socioeconomic groups WITHIN the same cultural group, namely the EuroAmericans:

For middle/upper class EuroAmericans - authenticity

For the new rich EuroAmericans - grand flourishes.

Hope this clears things up!

Hi K,

This isn't so neatly diagrammable, but I think the key here is to understand (as always) the gap in the argument.

The biologist generalizes from a particular instance:

1) Skeletons of lions & tigers are almost identical, but their hunting behavior is very different

To conclude something about dinosaurs (!):

2) Looking at just the skeletons of dinosaurs won't give us reliable info about their hunting habits.

The biologist is assuming that just because there was one instance of skeletons not being reliable, they are never reliable, or in lawgic:

Instance of skeletons being inadequate indicators of hunting behavior --> Skeletons alone never adequate indicators of hunting behavior

If we plugged this conditional into our argument, the conclusion would logically follow.

C) provides this conditional.

Let me know if you need me to clarify anything!

Hi, I am having trouble seeing how B) is not just attacking/denying the premise. I chose B) through POE, but aren't we supposed to leave the premises intact?

When we assert that most A are B, are we leaving open the possibility that all A could be B too? Or is it closed -- most A are B and some A are not B?

Hi JS,

You can eliminate B) because the style manual tells us that we can correct w/o explanation if it's an "obvious typographical error." An obvious typo is not the same thing as an archaic spelling.

Hi Divon,

You mean PT37, right?

I translated the stimulus like you did, but be careful with E).

The only thing we can logically conclude when food is bad is that we're not going to have a good meal

/Good food --> /good meal

E) is trying to get you to conclude a sufficient from satisfying a necessary condition. All we know is that bad farming practices & poor soil are sufficient conditions for bad food but just because we have bad food doesn't mean it was necessarily because of bad farming practices or poor soil. I was at the farmer's market yesterday, and the swiss chard I was looking at came from good soil and good farming practices. But thankfully I noticed before I bought it that it was bad (pests had eaten out the stems).

A) is correct because if we have a good meal, we can conclude good soil (=natural) and cultural conditions. And if we don't have good natural and cultural conditions we can conclude

/Good Meal.

Hi Divon,

Let me take a crack at this one.

The "paradox" boils down to:

1. A seat belt law was passed that should have decreased TF

2. But in city X it didn't (it stayed the same)

These were a few immediate questions that I had:

1) But there are factors other than not wearing your seat belt that can contribute to the #of TF in a city, like speed limit

2) What if people simply didn't obey the law?

3) What if the public safety record isn't accurate/recorded differently than 2 yrs ago?

A) addresses #1

B) addresses #3

C) addresses #1

D) addresses #2

E) actually doesn't resolve the paradox because of the ambiguity of "most." "Most" can mean anywhere between 51%-100%.

What if before the law was passed 90% (most) of people killed were not wearing seat belts (nwsb). Now, 51% (still most) of the people killed were nwsb. This would suggest that people did obey the law/the law should have lowered #of TF, thus confounding the paradox rather than resolving it.

Hope this made sense. Let me know if you need some clarification!

Hey sam,

You mean S3, right?

We are told:

hotter the retina, the more molecular motion, the more error prone

From which we can indeed infer B) Animals with warmer retina are more error prone than animals with cooler retina.

Great explanation Euripides.

I would just add that if B) had the sufficient & necessary conditions flipped then it would be a contender.

Is it safe to say that B) is wrong because it's going in the opposite direction of the stimulus?

Here's what I mean:

In the stimulus,

Arthritis sufferers feel increased pain first, then attribute it to the rain

Whereas B) says that

It's raining, so they think they're feeling increased pain

Thanks!

Sure thing!

You indeed do not attack Goku.

So on the LSAT does "a significant number" just mean "some"? Is this a safe assumption to make?

Just thought I might share my thought process:

I immediately noted that they're giving us a percentage (% injured) of a percentage (%large car/small car drivers) of the 10,000. We know nothing about the second%.

For the sake of simplifying things, let's assume that only small cars or large cars (so no medium, x-small, etc cars) were driven and fill in some numbers:

90% of small car injured

10% of large car injured

but 90% of what? 10% of what? of 10,000? That's what they're trying to get you to assume but no, 90% of small car, which itself is a % of 10,000.

Depending on what we plug in for this unknown second percentage, we can either strengthen or weaken this conclusion.

Let's say, as D) does, that %small car ( %large car

1% small car, so 90% of 1% of 10,000 = 90 injured

99% large car, so 10% of 99% of 10,000 = 990 (!!!) injured

Manipulated this way, ALL THE PREMISES HOLD, we're still saying %injured small car ) % injured large car. But now it seems it would make more sense to conclude the opposite of what is concluded in the stim.

I think this is what Jon was getting at when he was talking about absolute numbers.

Usually when we're given %s, they're floating around, not really pinned down to anything, like in this problem. Obviously I didn't actually do the math for this problem; once I realized that the second % was not provided (=the assumption) I went straight to the acs to look for it.

Let me know your thoughts!