#help

J.Y. - I think you need to further qualify your explanation here. This recommendation is based on my meta-observations of strengthen questions involving scientific studies.

The justification for A is not that it affirms a control, the justification for A is that it corrects the fatal flaw in the design of the study. In fact, if you look for answers that affirm controls in questions like this, you can very easily pick the wrong answer - there are at least 2 other answer choices here that affirm controls in the study.

Typically these sorts of questions will have a fatal flaw w/r to their experimental design if just taking the info from the stim. Here that flaw was the implicitly stated uncertainty w/r to the application of the IV (Independent Variable) - that breakfast may not necessarily be absent from group B

There was a similar question involving measuring nitrogen levels from bear bones in one experimental group for species A and comparing those with nitrogen levels in bear blood for species B; and trying to make a conclusion about differences between species A and B based on those nitrogen concentrations - again the fatal flaw being a potentially asymmetrical application of the IV (are nitrogen levels consistent between blood and bone of any single bear? - the correct answer affirmed that)

The correct answer choice will almost always correct a flaw or provide a necessary assumption for the conclusion of the experiment. This is not the same as affirming a control; it goes further.

Why affirming controls don't necessarily strengthen:

There are theoretically an infinite number of ways to affirm controls in a study and the stim cannot reasonably cover all of them, so each one really only provides weak support/strengthening. If you really think about it, when we read the stim we essentially make gigantic assumptions regarding experimental controls - we assume there were no asymmetrical equipment upgrades at the plants, we assume that there weren't any major personnel changes at one plant that would increase or decrease average productivity as a function of basic arithmetic, we assume that the plants were equally free of contagious illnesses or other environmental conditions that may impact worker productivity, etc. There is an exception where if a missing control is the fatal flaw in a question of this nature, that control or the potential for asymmetry w/r to its conceptual basis will be highlighted in the stim, and the correct answer will correct that asymmetry.

In other words, unless a control is specifically mentioned in the stim, we take all other unmentioned controls to be assumed, and the conclusion of the study as being qualified with the "all other things being equal" to reflect these sufficient controls. Control-affirming answer choices are therefore tantamount to restating a premise*

For example, the same time of day choice for instance (B), in the most scientific terms, is affirming a control. If this was an actual study, that factor would need to be in place for the study's results to carry weight and get past peer review; productivity can vary based on time of day - especially if a nutritious breakfast is the IV.

Answer choice C similarly affirms a control w/r to adequate sample group selection; how hard it is to raise productivity is heavily impacted by how productive a plant is to begin with. If A was extremely substandard and B already close to optimal, it would clearly be much easier for confounding factors to produce an increase in productivity at A that could erroneously be attributed to the independent variable (introduction of breakfast), and B sees no increase because because it gets marginally more difficult to improve productivity the more productive you already are

However, neither of these correct the fatal flaw in the study which is a potentially inadequate application of the IV. A flaw is introduced in the stim - that flaw is that one group is being provided a nutritious breakfast, and another group is not; however this fails to address the extremely high likelihood of a moderate to high proportion of workers in Plant B eating their own nutritious breakfasts. Answer choice A addresses and corrects that fatal flaw.

if you negate answer choice B, the study may still hold water (Group A starts work at 8, Group B at 8:01),

if you negate answer choice C the study may still hold water (Group A and Group had a productivity variance between 0.5-1.0% in the prior month)

if you negate A (Almost all workers in B consumed their own breakfast), it completely wrecks the study

In the bear blood question, if the nitrogen levels between the blood and bone of a bear vary, no conclusion can be drawn inter-species, similarly destroying the study's credibility.

Hope this makes sense. My main concern was STEM graduates may here this and attack these questions on the basis of affirming controls based on their scientific interpretation of that concept.

Thanks for reading!

Hari

*It's important to note that In a weaken question involving a scientific study, the right answer may undermine one of our assumptions around controls, whether or not that control was introduced in the stimulus.

This question was akin to when you hear an argument so stupid you literally have no clue how to respond to it

That said I feel like B was super obvious intuitively, very tough though if you approach it mechanically

I chose D because it was ironclad. smelled something fishy about B but couldn't put my finger on it. This explanation was masterful. Feel like my iq just went up

#help

If the bridge disappeared before the first Clovis point was made/invented - how did the cache end up in Siberia?

Also - both A and B have the problem of saying "that have been found" so we can't eliminate either simply on those grounds

#help

for 22 - why would the author mention the timeframe unless it implied that such a timeframe is one in which biological adaptation can take place? For instance, if I tell you that if you go outside right now you'll get heat stroke (the thermometer is reading 110 degrees). Is the purpose of the parenthetical statement merely to state that the temperature is high? or to indicate a temperature at which you're likely to get heat stroke?

Remember the kid in your class who used to remind the teacher to hand out homework when she forgot?

That kid grew up and authored passage B

#help #help #help

didn't like 21. Picked B and changed to E in BR. While it was in the passage that left-to-right is explained by axis rotation, the passage was stating the views of physicists when it highlighted this, while the question is asking according to the passage what is the reason. The passage/author took no firm stance on what is or isn't - he simply described explanations offered by physicists.

The only view that the author/passage seemed to endorse was that in any explanation of a phenomenon the observer has to be taken into account, and based on the author's rationale mental constructs explain what the observer experiences. That makes a very strong case not for B but E

LSAC often traps test takers in RC MSS type questions using this very distinction between author's views and cited views, so I'm not sure why they broke their own rules here

I may just need to better understand the author's implicit endorsement of hypothesis 1/field of view. I feel like identifying that in the last paragraph is making a stretch

I didn't select D for 6 because I figured it's possible that in the 1960s the term "Color Field" wasn't yet used to describe his art. Thought that was one of LSAC's clever traps. but I guess if we said it today, and he was around, he would agree.

fool me once, LSAC, shame on you

however you've now fooled me like, 500 times, so shame on me

love the art samples!

For people who picked C, I can guess why because I did too. Here's why we were wrong:

My justification for C:

for C - if less food = less thorough cleaning, wouldn't that suggest that the amount of food is what determines how thoroughly a container must be cleaned?

even if we assume every container comes in contact with garbage juice, the mere fact that less food residue permits a less thorough cleaning indicates that its the amount of food residue, not germs, garbage juice, or kooties, that determine how thorough the container must be cleaned

Now, given that something determines the extent to which an action should be taken, does it mean it's the main reason to take an action? It does not

For instance, the reason for the cleaning could easily be to remove germs, or to prevent lawsuits, or to keep customers, but the amount of food residue determines how thoroughly the container needs to be cleaned.

If a car hits you while on a bike, the amount of protective gear you're wearing will determine the extent of your injuries (how thorough cleaning), but the main reason you have the injuries at all is because a car hit you, not because you were wearing light (less residue) protective gear.

https://gould.usc.edu/students/journals/rlsj/issues/assets/docs/issue_18/Decline_to_State.pdf

The above paper takes the following stance: there are two reasons to check "prefer not to say" on an application. The first may strictly be a function of utility on the part of the applicant to increase their chances. The other reason is a fundamental disagreement with the presence of racial considerations in admissions.

The author presupposes the latter reason to be problematic, and the paper is essentially a guidance to educators and peers on how to address and re-educate such a "problematic" student.

Such a view is in my estimation utterly abhorrent. The position of the author is that an ideological preference for colorblindness is a defect to be corrected. As much as you/we may disagree with that perspective, the fact is that it does exist in law schools and among law school adcoms, to what degree obviously being variable.

Theoretically the safest bet is to check the box indicating your race, and if that happens to be white or asian, score the requisite additional points on the LSAT to compensate for whatever decrement your race affords.

It's an imperfect solution for an imperfect system. The silver lining is that you have sufficient reason to push yourself that much harder w/r to the LSAT, which can only benefit your faculties in the long run. That's something for which to be grateful in my view.

with flex I've been doing one a day and reviewing it without issue; no burnout or score dropoff. 1h:45m of cognitive effort even if intense shouldn't result in a degree of mental strain that 20 hours of rest/recovery cannot alleviate.

All spaces have been taken 🙌

Thank you 7Sagers for the overwhelming positive response!

Tuesday 8/11 - PT 79 - Full

Saturday 8/15 - PT 80 - Full

Tuesday 8/18 - PT 88 - Full

Saturday 8/22 - PT 89 - Full

Hey folks, final update. We're all filled up but do still have one space open for tomorrow's BR session of PT 79. First person to DM me gets it! 😃

Tuesday 8/11 - PT 79 - 1 spot remaining

Saturday 8/15 - PT 80 - Full

Tuesday 8/18 - PT 88 - Full

Saturday 8/22 - PT 89 - Full

that's good for those lakes

proper technique - passage B could easily be describing the totally wrong way to go about research. it just says what researchers did, not what they should do

Spaces are filling up fast, folks. Get it while it's hot!

Tuesday 8/11 - PT 79 - 2 spots remaining

Saturday 8/15 - PT 80 - Full

Tuesday 8/18 - PT 88 - Full

Saturday 8/22 - PT 89 - 3 spots remaining

also re. q16 choice E - effective enforcement is far weaker than ensuring compliance

Update on Availability:

Tuesday 8/11 - PT 79 - 2 spots remaining

Saturday 8/15 - PT 80 - 1 spot remaining

Tuesday 8/18 - PT 88 - Full

Saturday 8/22 - PT 89 - 3 spots remaining

@ said:

Great question!

We ran numbers on a large sample actual student PrepTests. We pretended they did Flex by (A) skipping first LR section or (B) skipping second LR section, applied our Flex Score Convertor, and looked at the average difference in scores.

We found that the spread between the averages for A and B was small. Across the 95 PTs, the biggest spread was a 1.38 (PT 9), and 78 of the 95 PTs had spreads of less than 0.7. For reference, the standard error of the actual LSAT test is 2.6 (https://www.lsac.org/lsat/taking-lsat/lsat-scoring/lsat-score-bands).

That is why we chose the uniform rule of removing the second LR from each PT for Flex simulation. It keeps things simple, and the difference between A and B are small relative to the standard error of the test itself.

thanks for the super detailed explanation and numbers to back the rationale - super helpful and reassuring. You guys are on it!

Sorry if it's already been asked, but would be great to get some input from 7sage admins on how you guys selected which section to omit? I'm not expecting sophisticated methodology; not sure one would even be possible. I have found however that the two LR sections on tests aren't always equal in difficulty. I expect the single section on the flex will be of roughly balanced difficulty.

In your data have you guys noticed a higher number of question misses in one LR section of any given test over the other? I'm thinking that if significant differences exist on certain PT's, indicating that to students after they score their tests would be really helpful.

If for example on a certain PT a statistically easier section was the one retained and the difficult one omitted, that would be really critical information to students for gauging/predicting actual test day performance.

Just my two cents; feedback appreciated

@ said:

I switched to flex simulation the other day because, from what I've heard, we'll probably be taking a flex. Seems like more representative practice for the real thing. I can't imagine extra LR training would hurt, but if you're like me, your flex score is quite different from your normal score. I feel like practicing with a flex gives me a better idea of how I'll do on the real thing.

on most tests I find that one LR section is kind of hard and the other is kind of easy. Sometimes they're of equal difficulty, but not always. I'm not sure how 7sage determines which section to omit for flex purposes - but if they're picking at random that could be why your scores are different. Maybe one of the mods can chime in on methodology here?

I expect however that on the actual flex test they'll balance the difficulty of the one section that's included. For that reason I generally like to include both LR sections, as they theoretically should balance out in difficulty much like the flex section would - providing a roughly representative score.

(example, on a traditional test if on the hard LR section you get -4 and on the easy you get -2, on the actual flex test LR section you should get -3; assuming LSAC is doing their job in balancing the test for difficulty)

holy moly...the most astounding thing in this (at least to me) is -0 on your diagnostic for logic games. Without having been familiar with the methodologies you must either have an exceptionally high aptitude for drawing inferences, or insanely fast mental processing speed for brute force - perhaps even both.

Either way, amazing job. Sounds like you worked smart and worked consistently. Should hopefully inspire a lot of test takers; certainly inspiring to me.

Q16 required knowing that oxidation takes away metals' shine. I think knowing that is expecting a lot from test takers. It's a fact known by many but hardly general knowledge

edit: actually, synthesizing the information about chrome in the next passage enables answering this q correctly without that pre-existing knowledge. To JY's point though knowing about oxidation makes this question a lot easier.