I really overthought this one. To me, when I read C I read "creative solution" as "potential solution", not as a solution that actually works.

I don't agree with marking this question as a one star in difficulty when JY can't quite comprehend the argument...

I bubble after every question. It helps me reset to a new question each time.

Stimulus: A group of people don’t want a project to move forward because they believe trail users will litter the area. The argument says this claim is groundless, argues against the claim (by saying that people who use the trail will care about the environment) and then says the project should move forward.

The issue: Difficult to see at first -- the only justification that the argument has for moving the project forward is that the claim that people will litter is groundless. That’s it. The argument does a fine job of addressing the issue of people littering - but it doesn’t give any support to the project moving forward. It kind of reminds me of the flaws that conclude because there is no evidence for a hypothesis, it must be false.

A: This is the right answer but it tripped me up at first. The argument uses the word “groundless” which I felt like was a much stronger word than weak, but this is really what the argument does. It essentially says “No, their argument is bad. So the project should move forward.”

B: No. The argument doesn’t extrapolate that because certain people do something that all or most people do something.

C: It took me a long time to understand what this answer choice meant. I think it’s why I picked it first (which is a stupid thing to do, don’t be me), but changed my answer to A on blind review. Essentially this is saying that the argument was circular. But it’s not -- all it does is say, these people are wrong, so we should go in the opposite direction of what they are arguing for.

D: No, it doesn’t do this. It says most trail users will have a certain attribute, not a few have it and then imply that all will have it.

E: It does not attack the citizen’s group - it just says their claim is wrong.

I hope y'all had a great call! My spouse's family was in town and unfortunately couldn't make it. Will talk with you guys on Wednesday!

Stimulus: Argument introduces a correlation between immune systems and watching comic videos, and draws a causation about laughter aiding recovery from illness.

Then it says that the patients who had a greater tendency to laugh showed more gains in immune system strength.

It concludes then that, those who have a greater tendency to laugh will have better recovery (even if they only laugh a little) compared to those who do not have the tendency (even if they laugh more)

The issue: There are several, the first being the correlation/causation issue at the beginning that we just have to accept. But the main issue is the difference between tendency to laugh and frequency of laughing. We actually don’t know anything about the frequency. It could be that the patients in the study laughed a ton and that is what aided in their recovery. Maybe there is a minimum amount you have to laugh before you start seeing benefits. So it’s possible that, even with a tendency to laughter, it’s about how much you laugh and nothing else. People who have a tendency to laugh will probably laugh more, but at the end of the day it’s about the amount they laughed. If you have a tendency to laugh but don’t end up laughing as much, you may not see the recovery gains.

A: This is correct. This deals with the frequency issue. What if the people who had a tendency to laugh did actually laugh more and that’s why they saw the gains? That totally wrecks the connection between tendency and recovery and introduces the connection between frequency and recovery.

B: No. Your baseline immune system doesn’t matter, because the argument is talking about gains in immune system strength. Doesn’t matter if you started low or high, but how much you improved.

C: No. The argument doesn’t draw a conclusion about general population - it only ever refers to hospital patients.

D: This is tricky but it is wrong. I was down to this one and A before I chose A. This answer choice comes from having to accept the correlation relationship first introduced. Watching comic videos shows gains in the immune system, and it says that this is because of laughter. Not because of a tendency to laugh, but because of actual laughter. The argument also states that patients who had a tendency to laugh had that tendency to begin with -- so gains in immune system strength couldn’t cause something that already existed.

E: No. The argument doesn’t ever say anything about speed of recovery, it only talks about aiding in recovery.

Hey, I am assuming that "5/26 Friday - Section 2 - RC" will be going over the full section? And just to clarify, is it best for these for you to have taken, done blind review on your own, and graded or not graded? I'm deciding between whether to take it on Saturday or Monday.

Hey @ and @ - I know the post for yesterday's study group is gone but I just wanted to say thank you to you both! Looking forward to chatting with you all again on Saturday :)

@ said:

Wow. I want see an official statement from LSAC...

@ said:

Hopefully they don't revert to looking at all of your scores..

Oh I hope so too. Plus I want LSAC to allow us to erase bad scores and only keep the best one!

Here is their tweet: https://twitter.com/Official_LSAT/status/864501182202556416

@ said:

@ Yes The Saturday group will cover LR for PT68:)

Perfect! Can't wait to try this way out! The only other thing that I was wondering was, for the LR calls, have you all thought about having people pre-submit questions that they want to cover, and then going over the more popular ones with time remaining for the others? Not sure if you are doing this already, I haven't been able to make the last few calls.

Hey! Just so I understand, are we doing LR on Saturday, then?

Thank you all so much for everything you do!

> @ said:

> @ Hey, Im in Houston. Would you like to meet up?

Definitely! Send me a note

Ms. Chan retired from Quad Cities Corp. - that doesn't mean that she has entered into retirement (not working anywhere anymore). She may have retired from the corporate world, she may have retired from a field that she worked in within Quad and is in a new field now at a different company, she could be a consultant...

I think this is actually one of those questions that is a bit easier if you have been working and know that the term "retire" has more than one meeting.

Do you like doing puzzles? LG are just puzzles. That's why I enjoy them so much. I also detest math.

Hi all! Does anyone have an overview of Tuesdays webinar? Unfortunately couldn't make it! Or is it confirmed that it was being recorded and will be uploaded?

I really do think you are looking at this too strictly. The passage already says that in most cases a different drilling mud is used in deeper wells than shallow wells. It is not a stretch to say that a deeper well would require a different drilling mud. Is that assumption logically impervious? No. But it is simply not a stretch to assume that.

Thank you all for your help! I don't think I am weak at conditional logic but I'm not fantastic at it either. I have little issue with conditional logic for sequencing games - I think I am just naturally better at ordering things than grouping them!

I'll hit up the CC again and the quizzes and see where I am after that. @ @ @

You've got a sufficiency-necessary hangup here that doesn't exist. Instead read the stimulus and AC like this: "Is it possible that drilling deep wells requires the use of different mud recipes than does drilling shallow wells?"

We already know that in most instances, deeper wells do use a different drilling mud mixture than shallow wells. Is it possible that deep wells always use a different mixture than shallow wells? It certainly is, just as there is the possibility that deep wells sometimes use the same mixture as shallow wells. You got hung up on the possibility of the latter when the question is asking for the possibility of the former.

Also I'm not sure how I responded to you with my analytics-only account when I was logged into this one...

Hi there, I think you are referring to question 10 rather than question 8 (the two questions are the same, just have different answer choices).

I think for this question you might have been too strict in your eliminations. The question stem says "each of the following is supported by one or both of the passages, EXCEPT." In your explanation it seemed you went more the "must be true" route than the "most strongly supported." It doesn't have to be absolutely airtight that the passage says that different mud recipes are required to be used -- but the support is absolutely there for it.

I might focus here instead on why you eliminated B? Where did you find support in either of the passages for this?

Hi! I am a part of a study group in Houston. I am taking in June but the other two ladies are taking in September! Shoot me a PM and I'll get you hooked up :)

Boo, Houston is all full and I'm not driving out to San Antonio.

@ said:

@

If you don't mind me asking, what was your timeline like in terms of improement? I'm wondering because I am stuck in a plateau from my non-cold diagnostic (161) and am wondering what sorts of progression people saw and how quickly. I've taken about 6 PT's since beginning of March.

Thanks!

I would be cautious on making comparisons since my suspicion is our studying situations are very different. I am a full-time worker who has been inconsistently studying since August 2016. Except when going through a core curriculum I was never one to consistently put in 3+ hours on weekdays and 6+ hours on weekend. With that in mind I am still happy to share:

In early August my cold diagnostic was 154. Did another PT around that timeframe, 153. I quit PTing and just continued plugging through the Trainer and then made my way through the 7Sage core curriculum. Next PT I took was in late November and was a 165. Then mid-January - 162. Late January - 167. Early February - 169. Mid-March (two weeks ago) - 168. Then you come to my most recent PT at the beginning of April (which was the first one I added an experimental to) - 175. Do not think that I have been consistently studying throughout this whole period - I haven't.

What you wont see in that are all of the intensives I did (RC was in January I believe, and I've had some LG intensives on and off, most recently from mid-March through today) and all of the timed but separate sections that I did. My BR scores have been in the 170s since November which leads me to believe that this recent score has a lot to do with shaping up some of my timing issues.

In regards to your timed plateau, how have your BR scores changed? Are your BR scores higher than your timed scores? Are you being honest with yourself about your areas of weakness and spending time addressing each on individually?

@ said:

That's awesome! Would you mind sharing your study strategies? Thank you :)

Sure thing! Just tell me what you would like to know, I'll put in a couple thoughts on my situation:

I used more than one resource to build the foundation of my LSAT knowledge. 7Sage is an incredibly valuable resource, but I also have used the LSAT Trainer and the Powerscore LG Bible. Know what kind of student you are. I'm a student that learns best by reading. I used the Trainer first, then 7Sage, and I've been using the LG Bible to fill in some gaps I have with LG. It worked for me but wont work for everyone.

I work full-time so I have a different study schedule than most. I'm in a PT phase right now where I PT on the weekends and try to do one timed section at lunch during the weekdays, reviewing it that afternoon or that evening.

I have done both a RC intensive and I'm in a LG intensive. While I haven't done a LR intensive per se, I think it is incredibly valuable to review the questions you got wrong and do a write-up on each (generally fleshing out what the stimulus says, what the gap in the argument is, and why each of the answer choices is right or wrong [and why you dismissed a right answer choice or got trapped by a wrong one]).

Let me know if you have any specific questions. Please know that I am not perfect (and the way I have studied has absolutely not been perfect or ideal). My PT from two weeks ago was a 168 and while I hope that my 175 is indicative of fixing some of the issues I had on that test, the PT I take this weekend will be a better indicator of that.

@ said:

@ --I was actually asking @ because he is not yet a skipping convert. I think your way is the usual way to skip, but not the way I like to employ. Cross off answers that I feel are definitely wrong, pick on me of the remaining and then bubble that question. I only skip certain question types and also one other time-saving trick so that there's plenty of time to not only answer the skipped questions (usually two) but also provides time hit the questions that I circled one more time. Crucially, it means that the 5 minute warning mark comes as a welcome thing--"fuck, I still have five minutes to work", I think to myself.

You've referenced these time-saving tricks for LR a few times in this thread, care to expand on them a bit?

Thank you all so much for your kind words and encouragement! I didn't sleep much last night because I was so excited. Here's to everyone's next PT being as good or better than what they have done so far!

@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @