Hello!

Oh this question is fun. I mean it, I love these kinds of questions, because they are really more of a reading comprehension question.

We are given a set of facts and asked, hey, with these facts what do we also know?

So let's take a look at those facts. You don't need to diagram, just read.

Q needs to increase their production by 10% or uh oh bye bye.

If they can do 10%, then actually 20% is also possible.

Let's take a different look at it with an example. Let's say I go to the doctor and tell my doctor that I've been eating nothing but Oreos and Ferrero Rochers all day every day. My doctor tells me I'm going to die if I don't start eating healthy. Let's start small and just eat healthy one day. And guess what, if I can eat healthy for one day, I can eat healthy for 2 days! Right?

Well, in both our example (eating healthy) and passage (increasing production), the entire thing rests on the assumption that we will be able to do the small thing (10%/1 day) before achieving something greater (20%/2 days). If we aren't able to do the small thing though, uh oh bye bye to both the company and me.

So let's go into the answer choices and see if there's something that is going to say something about this relationship between the smaller thing and the bigger thing.

A) What are you talking about? Do we know anything about how their production structure has made it possible for them to survive in this market? No we don't. Maybe their production structure is terrible and that's why they need to increase it. We only know that it is a structure in which if 10% is possible, 20% is attainable. NEXT!

B) Tempting like an Oreo but absolutely not. We just don't know this. This is mistaking necessary and sufficient, and if you chose this answer, I invite you to go over those concepts again. This answer says that increasing production is sufficient for preventing bankruptcy, when really it is just a necessary condition. We know if it doesn't happen, Q goes bye bye, but maybe even if it does happen they go bye bye because oh the whole time the CEO has been extorting money.

C) What? Sure it says that because of the transformation of the market there's a need to increase production, but there could have been something else that would have required it too, like idk, the extorting CEO we talked about in B.

Let's use the other example to illustrate what C is saying:

If I eat Oreos, I will die.

So if I don't eat Oreos, I will not die?

Nah that's not true, we are all going to die.

D) Ummm we have absolutely no idea about this. I want to eat healthy, but my wife just made cookies.

E) Hey there we go. This is what we predicted!

It's saying hey if the bigger thing is not able to be done, you must not have completed your smaller task. And since you have not completed your smaller task, bye bye! E is the right answer as we can point to the passage and say yup it says that

A: you need to complete the smaller task to survive

B: if you can complete the smaller task, you can complete the bigger task

So if we go backwards we would say

You cannot complete the bigger task so that means you didn't complete the smaller task which means you cannot survive.

E is the correct answer

The LSAT really does pick just the most interesting topics to talk about right?

So let's take a look at this absolutely engrossing argument about....topsoil? I swear half of this test is just getting yourself to care about these arguments.

And we should care this argument because there is a big freaking gap here.

The author is complaining about deep tillage. Do I know what tillage is? No I do not. But I know it's deep.

We then read about how it's really bad because it causes erosion. Okay, deep tillage causes erosion, got it.

So therefore, we should stop tilling altogether.

WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT????

Let's see if I can say this a different way. My problem is that I eat an entire pint of Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough ice cream. I can't help myself, it's the best ice cream there is and I will not hear any arguments about it. The problem with eating an entire pint of Ben & Jerry's is that it makes me fat (just ask my wife). So therefore, I should not eat any ice cream ever again.

What's the problem here? Well, it's not an all-or-nothing thing! I could eat just, idk, not an entire pint. I could have a scoop. I could eat healthy ice cream (what is it called, halo top? Gross).

So that's what C is saying, we need to plug the gap and say "there are only 2 options, deep tilling, and no-tilling." It's either eat the entire pint of ice cream, or no ice cream at all. No in-betweens.

What A is saying is that getting fat does not make me want to eat more ice cream. Uhhh, who cares what I want. The conclusion is that we need to eat ZERO ice cream.

Thinking about it differently, let's do a negation and say that, in fact, getting fat did make me want to eat entire pints of Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Well this is just going to wreak havoc on my body and probably my marriage. So this really just supports the conclusion because if that's the case, I really need to stop eating ice cream.

But all this is kinda moot, because take a look at the conclusion. Does it say "farmers will want to stop deep tillage"? No, it says they should.

Do I want to stop eating Ben & Jerry's? Not really, but I should.

Fun Fact: The large chunks in Ben & Jerry's ice cream is because one of the founders, Jerry, has anosmia, which is also called smell blindness, so he needed big chunks (texture) to enjoy the ice cream.

Hello!

So we need to find what these two disagree about. We should be able to absolutely point to something and say "they would absolutely agree" and "the other would absolutely disagree"

So let's gather the facts. Sarah is chilling there like "hey reporters actually always interpret the news because they actually have to choose what stories to report. They have to decide what is newsworthy"

Ramon comes in like whoa whoa reporters should never interpret the news. Just decide what is newsworthy and tell me it.

Before we even go into the answer choices, we should be able to find how Ramon was just stupid and didn't actually understand what Sarah said.

Sarah said that reporters always interpret the news because they interpret it to decide what is newsworthy or not. Maybe this is something like MSNBC's staff trying to decide if the rescued puppy in Des Moines, Iowa is national news or not. They're interpreting what happened to decide if it should be on the 6 o'clock news or not.

Ramon did not understand this. He's saying that the interpretation happens AFTER deciding if the Des Moines puppy was newsworthy or not. And he says they shouldn't actually "interpret" the news (I think he means give their opinion) the news should just tell them about the puppy.

So I'm going into the answer choices looking for that. The fact is that Sarah thinks interpretation happens at deciding what to report, and Ramon thinks interpretation is giving your opinion on the news.

A: This is wrong. Ramon would hate this, but we don't know what Sarah would think. Sarah never talked about reporting, she talked about the decision on whether to report. Nope.

B: They would both agree with this.

C: When did we ever talk about primary responsibility? We didn't, so we can't point explicitly to whether they would agree or disagree.

D - Again we never talked about this. Who is writing these? I guess we could reallllllly stretch it out here and if we are deciding what is newsworthy or not that means we are saying some are not, but neither are giving their opinion on that.

E: FINALLY. Yes. Sarah says that deciding is interpretation, Ramon says interpretation is later. This is our answer.

Hope this helps!

Hello!

First off, it's not really relevant, but I hate the word untainted. It's my "moist," ugh.

So we need to find what these two disagree about. We should be able to absolutely point to something and say "they would absolutely agree" and "the other would absolutely disagree"

So let's gather the facts. Sarah is chilling there like "hey reporters actually always interpret the news because they actually have to choose what stories to report. They have to decide what is newsworthy"

Ramon comes in like whoa whoa reporters should never interpret the news. Just decide what is newsworthy and tell me it.

Before we even go into the answer choices, we should be able to find how Ramon was just stupid and didn't actually understand what Sarah said.

Sarah said that reporters always interpret the news because they interpret it to decide what is newsworthy or not. Maybe this is something like MSNBC's staff trying to decide if the rescued puppy in Des Moines, Iowa is national news or not. They're interpreting what happened to decide if it should be on the 6 o'clock news or not.

Ramon did not understand this. He's saying that the interpretation happens AFTER deciding if the Des Moines puppy was newsworthy or not. And he says they shouldn't actually "interpret" the news (I think he means give their opinion) the news should just tell them about the puppy.

So I'm going into the answer choices looking for that. The fact is that Sarah thinks interpretation happens at deciding what to report, and Ramon thinks interpretation is giving your opinion on the news.

A: This is wrong. Ramon would hate this, but we don't know what Sarah would think. Sarah never talked about reporting, she talked about the decision on whether to report. Nope.

B: They would both agree with this.

C: When did we ever talk about primary responsibility? We didn't, so we can't point explicitly to whether they would agree or disagree.

D - Again we never talked about this. Who is writing these? I guess we could reallllllly stretch it out here and if we are deciding what is newsworthy or not that means we are saying some are not, but neither are giving their opinion on that.

E: FINALLY. Yes. Sarah says that deciding is interpretation, Ramon says interpretation is later. This is our answer.

Hope this helps!

Let's do this! PS what even is this argument? Sure let's just ignore the Safety Inspector with a potentially deadly virus. I'm sure that'll be fine.

This question is all about relevance. Some of these answer choices are things that could be true, but have no relevance with what the safety inspector is saying.

Let's take a step back for a moment and think about something different while using the same basic thing that's happening in this passage.

I'm making my wife some tea and I bring it over. I start pouring the tea into her cup while watching TV, not really paying attention to her cup. She starts getting angry with me "Hey hey pay attention you're overfilling my cup and spilling everywhere!" I simply respond "Don't worry, I've been safely pouring tea for 20 years."

What is going on here? Did I rightly respond to her concerns? No, and now I'm stuck mopping the floors.

C is saying that in my scenario, I overlooked the fact that I was pouring black tea instead of green tea. Or that I didn't notice that the tea was too hot or too cold. Whatever makes sense to you. It was the tea itself that was the problem.

But that wasn't the problem. The problem was that I was an idiot and overfilled the cup.

So E is the correct answer. The safety inspector isn't questioning the rabies virus itself, they are saying "YOU ARE (pouring) SENDING TOO MUCH"

Hope this helps!

Oh man this question should be set on fire. But with like, a fake fire, we don't want to use wood, because I hear that if we keep cutting down trees, koalas might go extinct.

Let's take a look carefully at what these two are saying. The biologist comes in and says "seriously, if we keep cutting down trees, these koalas are going to get close to extinction." Idk about you, but I 100% read this in an Australian accent.

The politician smells a political victory and it smells of eucalyptus. "I'VE GOT IT! I'll just stop everyone from cutting the trees and we save the koalas! Right??!??! There's nothing else that could possibly kill them."

The scientist is probably looking at the politician like he had just said you could cure COVID with bleach. Ugh, that's not what I said.

It's actually easier to think of this question as a kind of hybrid between where these two disagree. Where can I say something the politician would go "NO NO that's not right" but the scientist would go "eh that's possible." Consistent in LSATese just means "could be true."

A: No. We have no idea what the politican would think if they keep cutting down trees. We are searching for something that they would yell NO to.

B: Oh sure yeah that'll do it. The politician stops deforestation, smells an election victory, but turns out that it was poachers all along. The politician thought it was sufficient to stop deforestation to save the koalas, but it wasn't. NOOOO

This one is a bit weird because it's also consistent with the scientist. The scientist just says that continuing deforestation would get the koalas close to extinction. We don't know what their feelings are about other alternative ways of koalas dying. So this could be possible. We could ask them, hey is it possible koalas are just going extinct anyways and they could answer yes. We just don't know. Leave it.

C: Nah that's consistent with both of them. The politician would be happy with this.

D: We know nothing about if deforestation is slowed. For all we know, this would just give the politician the electoral victory.

E: Same with D but the politician would be angry. We again just don't know what they would think because it doesn't oppose their thing of "if we stop it, we win." They didn't stop it, they slowed it.

So B is the correct answer. Save the koalas!

Did this passage make you angry? Because it made me angry. WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT YOU BLUBBERING IDIOT JUST BECAUSE THERES HOUSING DOESN'T MEAN THEY CAN AFFORD IT.

Oh...this is a role question. Nvm. Still mad about it though.

We need to figure out what role, if any (that's the key), that the first statement that homelessness is a serious social issue plays in the argument.

First, let's take a look at the conclusion. The conclusion is what?

It's the last sentence. The claim that others are making that homelessness is because of a lack of housing is false because I looked at a paper one time and saw a $2 million mansion. If only these kids would stop eating avocado toast, they could afford this.

So does homelessness being a serious social issue relate to this conclusion? Not really. It's just kind of laying down some background, a problem that this politician and other people seemingly disagree about how to solve.

D is saying that the politician wants to discredit the statement. Is the politician trying to discredit that homelessness is a serious issue? Not at all. The politician is trying to discredit the argument that homelessness is because of a lack of housing.

C is correct because it doesn't matter if we agree with the politician or not. Nobody is arguing that homelessness is a serious problem. So you can accept the conclusion that housing isn't the issue, or you can refute it and say it is because of housing, both sides can use "homelessness is a serious issue" as the background for their solutions.

Hope this helps! I'm going for a walk.

Hello!

There is a reason I wasn't a philosophy major. Reading this makes my head hurt. But we can do this.

What do we know in this passage? Don't diagram, just look at the facts.

What should we do generally according to the author's first sentence? We should do things that make people better (more virtuous) and not make people worse (less virtuous). Let's teach people to love and not to steal.

But this weird thing happens when we praise people, the good people become worse and the bad people become better. Maybe the good people get an ego whereas the bad people want to be praised instead of punished all the time? Idk, but apparently complimenting good people makes them annoying but makes bad people cool.

But then that darn final sentence. Let's cut the weird philosophy thing and just say ONLY the virtuous people/good people deserve to be praised.

Okay so wait a second here. You're telling me that virtuous/good people are the only ones who deserve to be praised, but then at the same time you're telling me that if I praise them, they become worse people? Didn't you start this whole dang argument telling me we should only do things that make people better? How the heck do those two things make sense together?

Exactly. They don't.

It would actually be wrong of us to praise the people who deserve to be praised (the virtuous ones) because they would become worse people. We should be praising the people who don't deserve it (bad people/less virtuous) because they will become better people.

Hence, C is the correct answer. We should withhold praise from good people, and compliment bad people.

Thanks LSAT, I'm going to go take some aspirin.

Hello!

I got this wrong the first couple times I took this one.

It seems like you could tell us why 4 of the 5 answers are true, so that's good, but C should should absolutely be a red flag. Or, actually, a red light.

Did you catch that the passage said that this difference wasn't due to any difference in blameworthiness? Well hold on, if Peter ran a red light and that's why the taxi hit him, whereas Alicia drove extra super safe to make sure she didn't commit any traffic violations, there would 100% be a difference in blameworthiness. Peter is to blame for reckless driving, Alicia drove safely.

So C is the correct answer.

Hope this helps!

Hello!

This one is a tough one.

Let's say that I told you that I love cookies. Any kind of cookie is great, but my favorite kind of cookie is chocolate chip. It's the best kind of cookie there is in my opinion.

My wife comes home after going to the cookie store and says she didn't get me anything. Why? Well, they didn't have any chocolate chip cookies, so since they didn't have my favorite, I must not like any other kind of cookie, so she didn't buy me anything, even though they had a lovely Double Chocolate cookie.

What's the problem with her logic here?

.......

You should be thinking, hold on, he loves cookies, just because they didn't have his favorite doesn't mean she shouldn't have gotten him any cookies. Maybe he would've preferred chocolate chip but that double chocolate would've been good too. That's just mean.

First of all, yes, incredibly mean. It shall never be forgiven. But secondly, the author of this passage makes the exact same logical flaw.

The author is saying, well if they can't have the best, they clearly don't value anything else. If they can't have a chocolate chip cookie, they clearly don't want anything.

C points out this flaw by saying hey, wait a minute, there could be historical sources that might not be their favorite or the best, but they might still want them or use them. They might not have preferred culinary arts (double chocolate cookie) but they'll still take it. You, the author, didn't think about that, you just thought it was either the best or nothing at all.

Hope this helps!

I woke up to all of your enthusiasm for studying with me. It's made me excited and humbled.

Since there's so many of you, maybe it'd be best to group you together by score or possibly times of the week available or both.

If possible, please private message me your times that work best, your 5 most recent PT scores, your favorite ice cream flavor, Skype/Zoom username (please specify), and your best/worst question type. I'll try sorting you so that we don't have 20 people doing one session, but rather, we can have smaller sections so that everyone gets more of a chance to make mistakes and learn.

If you could create a GroupMe as well, that would be awesome! Then send me your email you use for it. I have found that GroupMe works best to create groups.

Thanks everyone!

Mind if I join the Jan. GroupMe as well? I'd love to be in a study group!

I'm not really sure what you mean by this but let me take a crack at it.

The difference between a main conclusion and a subconclusion (or intermediate conclusion) is that the main conclusion is the main point of the whole argument, whereas the subconclusion is supported by something but it, in turn, supports something else. The subconclusion is BOTH a premise and a claim. The main conclusion is ONLY a claim.

Let me give you an example.

Peaches have a lot of vitamins in them, so, therefore they are a healthy snack. They are also delicious. Therefore, some delicious things are also healthy.

Which is the intermediate conclusion, the main conclusion, and what are my premises?

Peaches have a lot of vitamins in them is my premise that supports the IC of "therefore they are a healthy snack." They are also a delicious is another premise. When I add my IC + Delicious ===> Some delicious things are healthy (My main conclusion).

When a question asks for the conclusion, it is asking for the main one. It'll ask specifically for intermediate conclusion if it wants it, but most likely, it'll be in the answer choice as something like (it is a claim that, in turn, supports another claim).

Hope this helped.

For me (Cold 164-->175) my score actually dropped for the first 2 months (Avg 161). It's because I didn't take into account that I luckily guessed some correct answers in the LR and RC section without actually understanding why they were correct. Once I started studying and taking more tests, some of the luck went away and my score dropped a bit for awhile. After about 1.5-2 months, my score started increasing, slowly, over the next 6 months.

Hope this helped! The LSAT is a test of determination and not letting the test dictate your emotions. You determine how the test goes, not the other way around.

Hey!

I want to bounce off of @sa12gill310 and not only do the Powerpoint, but also try to write your own questions before actually looking at the questions. Write a few that you think the test will ask about. This really helped me learn how to detect important parts of the passage. For example, generally, if there's a list, they're going to ask about it. Was there an explicit comparison between two things? Gonna ask about it.

Once I got more in tune with this, I was able to do it automatically when I was reading the passage. If I read a list, my brain focused. If there was an explicit comparison, I made a note. Things like that.

Good luck!

I would love to be part of a study group if I'd be allowed to. I'm studying for the October LSAT and PT in the high 160s - low 170s

Hello,

I think we can assume CMC, in this instance, means the club as a whole because, in other instances, the author uses "clients" when they talk about more individualistic actions (e.g. use clients as harvesters (Line 29)).

One trick the LSAT uses to try to trip you up is to use the abbreviation in the answer instead of the full name. If they said, "if the club requests less than 10 crops," it would have been much easier to think "Oh, the sum of people requests less than 10 crops. That's a problem." Try to read it as the full name when you read through the answers and it might help in these kinds of questions.

Let me know if this helped or not.

Saw your #help on the front page.

Let's say, starting in 1960, the commercial fishing industry (CFI) caught 50 kilograms of fish. At the time, that was 50% of the world's weight of fish.

Now, the question states that the CFI has caught more of a percentage of the world's fish every year. Until 1995, the CFI caught more fish every year, but after 1995, the amount of fish per year they have caught has not changed.

So the CFI started with 50 kg of fish being 50% of the world's fish. Then it went up to 60 kg of fish, which was 60% of the world's fish in 1994. But, after 1995, the 60kg of fish does not change. However, the 60% does. Now, the 60kg of fish is 75% of the world's fish. Then in 2010, the 60kg of fish is now 99.9% of the world's fish.

So what had to have happened? If 60kg started off being only 60% of the world's fish in 1994 (before 1995) but then ended up being 99.9% of the world's fish (2010), it means that there are less fish in the ocean (by weight).

Hopefully this helped.

Hello! My name is Eric and I just started on 7Sage but have been studying since January. My most recent PT was a 173. Would love to join a study group as I've only self-studied and could use some motivation for the October LSAT!