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I chose (B) originally but doubted myself because I wasn't seeing the guarantee that increased scrutiny would for sure lead to the corrected data favoring Jones's theory. Yes, scrutiny "enables researchers to detect many of these errors", however, that doesn't mean they for sure detect those errors. I decided this was a small leap, but a leap nonetheless and went with (A) instead. Looking at it again, (A) is a terrible fit and none of the other options look much better. I don't understand why (B) is correct though. And I worry about running into this on a future question in which the other choices are less obviously wrong. Would you consider (B) to contain a leap, or is it sound?

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I chose (B). My thinking was if there is better equipment in 2009, maybe we've since discovered that cobalt actually did exist before 1804, something we couldn't have known in 1955 because the tech wasn't there yet. Due to this, the discovery of cobalt in 2009 wouldn't lead to the conclusion that the painting was produced after 1804. While I see why (A) works too, I do not understand why (B) is wrong. And, more importantly, I don't understand how to tell what is fact from what is simply another factor to explore in Discrepancy problems. In other LR passages, there is sometimes a fact stated initially that is not framed as a part of that actual problem, which makes the role obviously to serve as context. It sounds like JY is reading the 1804 timeline as a fact. However, I did not read the 1804 timeline as a fact, just a part of the 1955 side of the discrepancy. Had I read it as a fact, then (A) is the only right answer. But reading it as a part of the problem makes (B) viable too.

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I'm struggling to understand why (D) is correct concerning Passage B. I eliminated it based on the following excerpt:

"Thus one of the core criticisms against the use of such sources by appellate courts is that doing so usurps the trial court's fact-finding function."

This combined with the overall disapproval regarding its use in appellate courts led me to (E).

Is it the first sentence that gives it away? "Regardless of what trial courts may do..."

Ravinder, would Propranolol do the trick? How low of a dose? I am prescribed 10mg but I don't think testing at that dose would be ideal. I can be too relaxed and not work fast enough.

#help on Q3

I chose (B) because of the word "forced" in line 28/29. To me, this indicated that the citizens of the suburbs have little say in the long-term effects as one of those effects is that they are "forced" to drive long distances on congested roadways.

I almost chose (D), however, that second half got me. The whole passage was about the impact of suburbs on the people. So many points implied that the suburbs turned people into worse versions of themselves. Made them more isolated, rigid, less social, and more stressed. I feel like using the word "reflects" is not much better than using the word "forced" in (B).

Why is (B) a worse choice than (D)? And, how can I avoid this mistake in the future? I looked for key words and matched assumptions but still got the RA and WA confused.

#help I marked (E) wrong because it does not contain a flaw. In JY's explanation, however, he points out that "one can come to appreciate" and "one has an appreciation" are actually different elements and thus could not link up to make a valid argument. I feel like this is an extremely subtle difference so I want to make sure I know what to look for moving forward. Do you think this is a likely "trap" to see in these types of questions? Or is the "trap" that it is a valid argument and thus might be picked out of habit? (similar to how lots of people choose the opposite of the right answer in strengthen/weaken questions).

#help on 23

I chose (D) and I don't understand why it is wrong. In Passage A: There are two points of support for (D).

(1 Blues musicians reflecting the tragedy of slavery

(2) The commentator's assessment that the blues musician is an extension of West African Griots. While the author disagrees from a sociological perspective, there is nothing to explicitly rule out the connection musically in terms of inherited traditions., something the author only challenges from a sociological perspective, seems to reasonably indicate that blues is derived from earlier African musical traditions.

In Passage B, the support is super obvious as Griots are West African and pass down their musical traditions.

As for the right answer, (E). I don't see support for this in Passage A. There is no set of themes that blues has to draw from. There a couple of "perennial themes" mentioned but I didn't read that as the only themes that could be used. Whereas, in Passage B, the set themes are explicit. Only singing the praises of their patrons.

Did anyone else struggle with these two AC's? Any explanation would be super helpful!

Q6 is still problematic for me. I was stuck between (C) and (E) and chose (E). I still firmly think (E) is correct. We keep hearing over and over that 4 AC's are obviously wrong while 1 is obviously right. This feels like "splitting hairs" to me and I am concerned about running into this on future PT's.

(C) I eliminated this because of the restriction of "strictly faithful" and "only if". The preference for no subtitles over subtitles that are not "strictly faithful" isn't supported by the passage. There is also no qualification for the degree of imperfection of unacceptable subtitles. Strictly faithful reads as "perfect". What if only one letter was off in the entire film? We know the author wouldn't like that, but we don't know that the author would prefer no subtitles to slightly imperfect subtitles.

The author obviously hates the modifications used to translate films. However, at no point does the author say that not having any subtitles is preferable to having imperfect subtitles. Not least of all because the author holds the successful conveyance of the filmmakers intent in high regard. How would the film be received as intended when the audience has no means of translating the language used? Even if an argument were made for subtitles being replaced with dubbing, that is also a huge leap to think the author would prefer dubbing to imperfect subtitles. The author says dubbing is far more damaging. How do we know that imperfect subtitles (how imperfect, we don't even know, they could be only slightly off) should be replaced with a far more damaging tool like dubbing?

(E) on the other hand is much more reasonable. The author is saying the entire time that there are all these problems with the way a film is restructured. Implying negligence at various points in the process as being part of the problem. Mistakes in translation accuracy being one such reference. While it is not ideal, a careful restructuring of the film for the sake of conveying the intentions of the filmmaker aligns with the author's argument and their assessment of the reality of modifying films. They never say there is a perfect solution such as never adapting films. In fact, they say there are rarely ideal conditions. The author also goes so far as to recommend that when films are adapted, they be viewed as an entirely different version of the film, rather than an identical reproduction of the original version. Again, implying that modifications are acceptable when modified versions are viewed in proper context.

So, given the several big leaps required for (C) and the lack of leaps required for (E). Why in the heck is (E) wrong?

#help on #9

I think "relieves pressure" means "reduces incentive" because it is removing the motivating force to catching so many wild fish. This is something JY highlighted in his diagram. So, up until that point, all was good. But when he added that extra piece of "causing fewer wild fish to be caught" it seemed like he was getting ahead of "relieving pressure" so that we were no longer looking at the meaning of relieving pressure, but the effect or consequence of relieving pressure.

I guess this feels like a "chicken before the egg" issue. The source of the pressure is not how many wild fish you are catching, it's what is pressuring you to catch that many in the first place. Things like market demand and the resulting income. Demand can be reduced by making salmon less scarce. When there are more salmon on the market thanks to farming, the demand for wild salmon goes down.

This has a domino effect on incentivizing ocean fisheries. Not only are you catching more fish than needed, now you are losing income (i.e. incentive) because you don't get a return on that investment. Thus, rather than waste more money and time catching an excessive number of wild fish, you scale back. You catch less wild fish which restores the wild fish population. While catching less wild fish is part of the chain of events, it is not the meaning of "relieving pressure" it is the effect.

So, to me (A) makes way more sense than (C). Can someone explain?

I'm confused about (4).

How does (E) strengthen while (C) does not? (A) seems to be a side observation of no real consequence. Similarly, (C) is an observation about how modifications are received in reproductions of film vs. non-film artworks. I didn't see how either impacted the argument. Both seem to impact support (in a very minuscule way) but not the relationship between how the support is used to reach the conclusion.

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On (17), I chose (D) because it seemed to be less of a leap than (A).

The author states in the beginning that classifying genres based on thematic similarities doesn't work as well as classifying genres based on the way in which they are read (reading protocols).

This seemed to align with (D). The way a sentence is read (i.e. the reading protocol) does not depend on the genre because the author states that the reading protocol is what determines, or classifies, the genre. I matched this with (D) because the interpretation of a sentence does not depend on the genre. The genre depends on the way the specific work is read (reading protocol used). Why is this wrong?

As for (A) I ruled it out because in the beginning the author specifically sets up the second method as having less borderline cases than the first. They never say that borderline cases still exist in the new system. I can see now that there is an implication that borderline cases exist by the author using "central works" (to me this implies there are other works that are not central). What I do not understand is why this is a smaller leap than (D).

Thanks in advance for your insight!

#help

JY doesn't explain (17) but that is a "Harder" level question that I got wrong so I am hoping someone here can enlighten me.

Question: The author of Passage B would be most likely to agree with which one of the following?

Correct Answer (A): Fictional works that were not written to exploit the reading protocol of a particular genre are sometimes borderline cases of that genre.

My Incorrect Answer (D): The interpretation of a sentence that appears in a fictional work does not depend on the genre to which the work belongs.

I have a very vague idea of why (A) might be right but no idea why (D) is wrong. If someone could point me in the right direction, I'd really appreciate it!

#help with Q2. Can someone explain why "tentatively" matches the author's tone? I can see why it matches if we only consider "reasonable to conclude". However, in the second part of the same sentence, the author uses stronger wording by saying the greenhouse theory is the "best explanation" which to me rules out "tentatively accepts". I don't feel like I'm learning from this mistake. I just feel more confused. What is the takeaway to avoid this mistake going forward?

Thank you Kevbot1314 and calvinnhobbes, I will try both of your suggestions on my next PT, they sound much more efficient than what I've been doing.

#help Writing out the conditional statements, I see that the premise V->TR cannot connect to the main conclusion CC->TR. This is something I picked up in logic games, where we have to be VERY careful not to mix up which statements can actually link up to confirm the ones that follow. I immediately caught the National vs. Large but because that was a gap in the premises and not the premise and conclusion, I did not select it.

My question is, why here is it okay to not count V->TR to CC-> TR as a gap while in a logic game we would definitely get that wrong?

Hi,

I actually couldn't find the right answer in this question so I didn't think any other answer was right, I just couldn't figure out why (A) would work. When I draw out the relationships between the different factors, I get the same maps in the video. However, when I apply (A) to the maps, increasing job creation seems to negate the increase in productivity. Because, according to the map, when productivity increases, jobs inevitably go decrease. If jobs are increasing, it seems to follow that productivity can't be going up. I assume I'm getting the relationships between the factors mixed up somehow.

Can you point out where that might be happening?

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I'm getting stuck on a tiny point of difference and I just can't wrap my head around it.

When I originally read this passage, I took the first sentence and the second sentence to combine to confirm that, yes, large companies are not being lent to because the interest it costs the bank to borrow is more than the interest they can get from large companies.

So, (A) seemed to just restate something already confirmed in the passage.

Why is this not the case? I've re-watched the explanation about 5 times and I keep missing how (A) is stating something new to fill the "gap". In general I guess I'm not really seeing what the gap was in the first place.

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I disagree with counting "years" as a red flag in D.

I took years to be a reasonably broad term to describe the possible amount of time in that has passed since volcanic activity was detected on Venus (even in his example, a millennium is still measured in years). Without that second red flag, the wrong answer and the right answer come down to one word that makes each option less than ideal ("directly" in A and "traces" in D.

I don't see how there is a significant enough difference between the impact of "directly" on A and "traces" on D to make D absolutely wrong and A absolutely right. Does anyone feel the same? What am I missing?

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There were so many little red flags I didn't catch when answering this question. The explanation helped me see where I messed up, however, I am still confused about how to implement this explanation in the future.

Is the main "tip-off":

(1) That there is no support for the statement "But the recent ads..." in the rest of the passage

(2) The word "evidently"

If it is (2), I have a question about the use of this word. When I read the sentence, I took "evidently" to signal an observation rather than the author's conclusion. I felt it was too indirect to be the MC and thus selected the previous sentence which has stronger wording (more of an assumption than an observation).

Am I thinking of wording of conclusions incorrectly? How would you advise thinking of them in future problems?

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Can someone explain #22 "zealous" vs. "sympathetic" in a slightly different way? I'm confused. I chose "zealous" because of the way the author words their opinion of Carrol and Chen's work as "Carrole and Chen's innovation...". Combined with how supportive the author is of their work throughout the passage came across as more than a sympathetic reporter. I thought of a reporter as giving a more objective evaluation, not totally neutral but skewed toward a neutral stance, while this author seems to be more "excited" about Carrol and Chen's work than that. #help

I am confused about this one in terms of figuring out the conclusion. It seems to have a similar structure as #21 from the same section and in that problem the sub-conclusion is at the end while the main conclusion is at the beginning of the stimulus.

Usually I use what I call the "why" chain to figure out which conclusion is supporting another (sub-conclusion) vs. just being supported (main conclusion).

I thought the main conclusion was "obesity epidemic is a myth" why? "because the increase in average weight over the last year was not substantial, so the proportion of obese children could not have increased substantially."

I labeled the conclusion made in the last sentence as a sub-conclusion because it supports the main conclusion of "this epidemic is a myth."

#help