#feedback there are a couple of minutes of black screen / no audio towards the end of the video

I went with A, but on second look a while later, I'm contemplating D's wording:

It says that two birds increased, which means MORE birds, but leaves the fact that the number of species decreased alone. That is the argument: increase in spiders is because of loss of bird species. The reduction from 12 to 2. Does not matter what the 2 remaining did, the reduction in species count can still be held, and this could still be a plausible explanation (maybe each different species had a taste for a different kind of spider, and so by reducing the species type, some spiders now thrive and have no natural predator).

After typing this all out, I do see that although this rationale shows it does not WEAKEN the question, it still does not strengthen it. Really, its merely consistent. More birds. Great. Still more spiders.

The hypothesis is basically default "fear" and swim away, and then learn over time that some things aren't that bad.

C supports this, giving a case of an adult seal that defaults fear, because they have not learned that something is not really dangerous.

E is wrong because it supports a different hypothesis. It supports that seals learn TO fear, not learn to NOT fear. In E, a seal is approached by a technically harmless but accidentally harmful killer whale, and then learned to fear it, whereas the default (of all the other seals) is to not avoid it. Not what the hypothesis of the experimenters is!

thank you so much

God tier explanation, thank you. Hope you’re well on your journey!

I have a question on the rationale for this question and how it applies to the split approach for comparative passages:

if here we go with answer choice B despite Kim never having mentioned technology (which I agree both actors in the stimulus would support), how can we eliminate answer choices in the split reading format based on "which would A and B agree on" if answers can be out of the scope of what they mentioned but they may agree on it?

Fully agree. I think its very misleading, especially because on another similar question, they could flag an answer wrong for this very reason.

Imagine a scenario where the question asked "which of the following is most supported" and then they removed the answer choice depicting resource-provider as being solely concerned with extent of use because the passage did not preclude other factors. No one would bat an eye. Its just inconsistent at best and makes it difficult to properly prepare for these question types and nail down the patterns.

the way i see it, D "function" is referring to the purpose of the courts (finding facts) and not really to the cross examination method. If it had said fact finding method or procedure then it would very well be a right answer, but here, legal engine refers to cross x and is better

was just about to write this. 100%

E does say several were nearsighted in the study after using nightlights as infants, but it doesn't tell you anything about the number that are nearsighted that did not use night lights.

Lets say its 4 and 4 in each out of the 50 per group. Well, then, based on that, you find no correlation. This is because if the numbers are equal, you can't point to nightlights causing nearsightedness.

In this answer choice, its all about the fact that it doesn't provide a comparison.

In the argument, it says if there is an effect, it disappears with age. Then we are looking in E at those of older age, and we need to show the alleged effect disappeared. To do this, we need to show what it was initially and then how it dropped. If we don't know what the baseline is, we can't really say anything about the finding that some had nearsightedness.

B says the average age increased.

Either new undergrads (that are young) are not applying to PhD or more older applicants ARE applying. We know the total app numbers are down, so it would have to be that at least some new grads are not applying immediately. They might be applying down the line, and need to accrue more pre-reqs or something.

The argument says since total apps reported are down, the interest is down. After having looked at B, it really does nothing for the argument, and thus is the "except" since it does not weaken.

E is tricky since it creates a new correlation. The assumption bait is that since premature births were more likely to receive inadequate care, then we assume being premature is a cause potentially (based on E) for low birth weight and also for receiving inadequate care.

If its the case that being premature caused these two, then its weakening the argument that poor care caused low birth weight. But... this requires a bunch of unreasonable assumptions.

What makes you think that the inadequate care received was because of being premature?

And just because one thing causes another doesn't preclude the other from also being a cause too!

Tricky question!

D is simply about probability. Even if accountants are less likely to make an error, if I have more of them, then the likelihood that its one of them over an actuary changes! Thus when we assume initially its equal, and then this assumption is challenged, it moves the odds over to accountants. Slight weakener (since we know accountants are less likely to make an error), but weakener nonetheless.

C about a report requires too many assumptions in order to weaken. Who was the independent report shown to? Internal? External? You can't assume the public saw it. It just says independent report! Also, given its MAYBE external, did a person see it outside and say hey lemme embezzle since they are vulnerable? Equally likely that someone internal saw the report and decided that with their access they can exploit the vulnerability. Realistically a point that is simply consistent but does not strengthen nor weaken the argument.

tricky!

For 1, could you also push the hunting permitted into domain? Such that domain is surrounding countries where hunting is permitted.

And then the argument proceeds:

last 8 years -> /pop deer increased

pop deer increased -> /last 8 years

color coding is helpful! good addition thanks

good explanation!

excellent explanation, thank you

Kevin just wanted to say your ability to work through every question methodically is an inspiration. Every objection my brain comes up with, you have thought of and thoroughly explain the reasoning to overcome it.

Thank you.

One thing I think is a lil dangerous about eliminating answers after reading A but before reading B is that B might regard something as a mistaken assumption that A did not actually mistakenly assume. B might be making a faulty argument!

For example, imagine A said "wow its probably so sunny outside today, as it always has been this week".

A assumes past sunny means future sunny.

And then imagine B responds "well, A forgot its currently raining!" B is saying this statement because they think A is assuming it is not raining, but it actually is. But A never said its NOT raining. Maybe A believes / agrees that its both!

I just remember an LR question about placebo vs therapeutic effect and two people disagreeing, and the answer was actually something the second arguer mistakenly thought the first was saying.

If it is true that B makes a logical argument, then yes, you can eliminate things A did not assume right off the bat. But if LSAT is trying to trip us up, there's a chance the right answer may be something B regards as mistaken even though A never even assumed it in the first place.

glitter.

you are right in that negation of some is none. but in this case, B says "some did NOT ingest mercury", so negation, as you pointed out, would become: "none did NOT ingest mercury", and if no one does NOT ingest mercury, then that means everyone DOES ingest mercury.

After some further thought, I believe the problem lies in the stimulus generalizing the findings.

The findings that snoring and abnormalities are correlated is only really known for the studied population (those who got the surgery). So when the stimulus attempts to generalize, you can only do this with research findings that have a representative population. Given that answer choice C shows the population is NOT representative, you cannot conclude that snoring causes abnormalities in general (only can do this in those with throat surgery).

IF the stimulus were making the case that snoring causes abnormalities in the studied population, I can see option C as eliminating confounding variables and strengthening the claim since it is specific enough about the given population.

I'm a bit confused as to why C weakens the argument rather than strengthens it. I fully understand why E is stronger, as it eliminates a competing hypothesis, but in the case of C, it says that 3 variables were in essence held constant and thus cannot be confounding.

If they were not held constant, then one could point to age being the reason, for example, that some people had more snoring and more abnormalities.

Given that those 3 factors are equal, they cannot be reasonable explanations as to why some people had more snoring and more abnormalities. If this WERE the case, every person should have increases in snoring and abnormalities, but only some people had this increase!

Like most New Yorkers, Dave loves the Statue of Liberty.

In fact, most people who are not New Yorkers don't like the Statue of Liberty.

Thus, Dave is a New Yorker.

Flawed because:

Dave actually lives in Australia. Most people abroad don't even know of the Statue of Liberty, but there are still tons of Europeans who love it, and they outnumber the New Yorkers!

New Yorkers ‑m→ Love Statue of Liberty

New Yorker ‑m→ Love Statue of Liberty

Dave (loves statue of liberty)

--------------------------

Dave is a New Yorker

- reverses "most" arrow, thus false