I think it is eay more important to remember the form of inferences or even organization. For sequencing game it is really worth noticing something like s is not first. Usually that statement is there cuz whe you combine these rules the chance is that s is not just first or third forth and fifth. There definitely are pattern of inferwnces and we gotta remember them

I dont think the link you provided is the game you are talking about.

It is of course impossible to run negation test on every answer choices. In a way you should find the missing link between the premisea and in a sense expect the answer. Negation test is a powerful tool to verify answers not so much of a selction mechanism i would say.

Find discrepancy in wording that is all you need to do. Even if the premise seems like to support the conclusion theres gotta be a premise or even a single word that cannot be equated with the word in the conclusion

I am still not convinced why E would be the only answer choice. I would definitely say that this is one of the questions that LSAT test makers go way too far. In an attempt to make questions difficult they just make MSS answer choices so unwarranted.

I was also split between C and E.

I thought E needed more assumptions than C. In order for E to be correct we necessarily have to assume that computers dont share the same problem that early typewriters had. For instance the computer in the era could not have had same jamming problems when typed in succession. My thought was "is this an acceptable assumption?" We have no information regarding the computer in that era. It is equally possible that these computers might have had same problem.

For C however, I asked myself, given the reasoning in the passage, is it probable that the designers could have deaigned some other form other than QWERTY had they known that technology to resolve the problem would be developed in the near future? It still needs assumption but I would say yes.

For me both choices necessitate assumptions unwarranted by passage and at this point it becomes quite subjective. I think ill have to forget this question cuz it really messed up my thinking process in approaching MSS question.

The only reason I got to E was through POE and in a way E is also logically fallacious I think.

It is essentially like argument

Look it is really difficult for a planet like earth to have water but it happened. Mars has a far better environment to have water. Therefore the fact that earth has water strengthens the hypothesis that Mars contains water.

Just because an unlikely event happened that doesnt mean a more likely event would happen nor does it strengthen the argument. The chance of A happening would have no effect on the chance of B happening.

What a joke. Im also an international student but LSAC never asked me for a transcript in the origianal language.

I had an exactly same issue when I took LSAT and I think your answer was quite well addressed already but I'll just write out what I think my problem was.

For me, MSS questions were what gave me the most trouble. Sometimes, answer for MSS question is a necessary assumption, sometimes it literally is the mostly strongly supported inference (like quasi-MBT.) And the ambiguity and randomness of how some of the MSS answers could be had given me some serious headaches.

I think why I had trouble tackling MSS questions was because I tried to eliminate answers rather than making the most-likely inference. I used negation for most of the inference type questions such as strengthen and weaken and usually it had no problem. And for some MSS questions, approaching to negate answers does work.

My problem was that I tried really hard to look for the reason why certain something could be wrong in all answers. Although I knew I shouldn't do it, it is just that my way of thinking is so attuned to finding reason "why not" rather than "why it is" when approaching MSS questions. All the answers in MSS questions, on most of the occasions, are never MBT. And many wrong choices are also could be true ( merely because they are irrelevant to the stimulus, therefore, strictly could be true.) The aim of "support" of "MSS" was to select answers that have the highest probability and minimum contact to the stimulus. Changing my habit of looking for why not? on answer choices and thinking "why correct?" helped me improve on MSS type questions. Although I am not sure this was the problem you had in mind when you posted the question.

you can definitely replace both words "if not" so the function and category except and unless are pretty much same at least in LSAT reasoning ( I think)

Everyone will go to University except the ones who can't pay for it.

Everyone will go to University unless they cannot pay for it.

Exactly the same meaning. I just swap all these words except, until, unless, into if not and for me it kinda worked.

@

Thank you for your honest opinion and awakening me into senses.

Yesterday was painful and I was in some sort of a state of self denial. As a person who also served in army as a KATUSA (dont know if you know about em) for two years I also know how honest contrition and accepting the mistake are far better than pointing fingers. Your advice definitely helped me. I should accept my mistake and the consequence. That is the right thing to do.

Being branded as a transgressor is humiliating no matter how trivial the mistake might have been. Ive studied LSAT for a year and with that one silly decision at the end of the test I blew all my efforts away and now I will carry that stigma all along. I never got into trouble in regards to academic dishonesty or unethical conducts all my life and this was simply hard to take. But I guess ill have to suck it.

Again genuinely thankful for your advice

And just to rant on question we NEVER know that the actual hailbuts quantity supplied would be ever affected. If we are to do so we must assume hailbuts are always caught to the maximum amount as the ceiling allows and ceiling is imposed only if the supply is higher than the desired amount . The quantity supplied might as well increase even with lower ceiling.

Lets say previous ceiling was 5000 catches but in reality the total number of hailbut catches were 3000. Even if you lower the ceiling to 4000 the hailbut catches could increase say to 3999. Government's setting up ineffective ceiling is very very common in real life. The only reason why price could increase in this circumstance would be exorbitant leap in demand which makes A only necessary assumption but not in any way a sufficient assumption. If demand stays the same the price could be lower.

I know. But had it been computer I would not have needed to do it. When I said incomplete marks it was not as if I narked two answers and erased one of em but rather I already erased it but felt like it might interefere with the score processing.

I think I technically violated the rule in which case I can definitely explain the circumstance and hope for understanding. But how serious is this violation. . Do they cancel the score if this type of violation happens??

So i got 169 . This was my first test btw. This definitely isnt the worst case scenario but i really wanted to score higher than 170 so im kinda disheartened. My average score was around late 160s so i have no complaint. How did everyone feel about this test? Personally think this was below the average difficulty so was expecting 11 or 12 curve. Would this mean i scored about -15 or -14?? Im taking october test and tryin to gauge where im at. I didnt have time to solve last 3 questions on LG and made guesses on all of em. Any way how was the test generally?

It made me way faster. I virtually solved every single question from 1 - 35 around three times. For some questions more than 5 6 times I think. It is time consuming and not time efficient but I get max 1 wrong on PT so far.

Some non traditional erratic games in the old PTs were also greatly helpful.

I think memorizing some common types of flaw are really helpful.

The trap of degree/or comparative statement.

The LSAT usually tries to confuse us by meddling with

"Look A is much higher than B"

"A is High. " or "B is low"

One great example was.. I can't remember the exact question number. But it went like this. It was weakening question FYI.

Conclusion: When a heavy tax is levied on smoking, the sales of cigarette dramatically decreases. Therefore, smoking is reduced by a heavy tax.

The wrong answer choice said something like

"People are still more likely to purchase cigarettes when cigarette price increases due to heavy tax than when it increases for other reasons."

Why the statement above is completely irrelevant to conclusion is exactly because it is a comparative statement. And comparative statement tells us nothing about absolute number. The cigarette sales may still dramatically decrease, let's say 50% when 60% decrease would have been still possible if it were not due to heavy tax.

It may not be flaw question but I think even in flaw questions this type of flawed reasoning is often employed.

Proportion/ Absolute number

"Only a very small fraction of competent women working in the 20 largest corporations who nonetheless have the same or even greater achievements compared to their male counterparts ever becomes the members of Board of directors. This clearly shows that women are under-represented in the most important key managerial positions of our country due to the glass ceiling that persists to be the chronic problem of South Korea. "

This reasoning is flawed.

My rule of the thumb is when we don't know baseline ( or base number) We don't know anything.

Just because small number of women outperforming men makes it to BOD, this doesn't mean they are marginalized in BOD.

Why? Because we don't know the absolute number of BOD positions. If there are only 5 positions of BOD and there are 1 million women outperforming men, even if all 5 positions are filled with women, only a small fraction of women get to make it to BOD.

The analogy I used to understand this concept was congress.

Just because less than 1 percent of californians ever get to be congressmen, that does not mean California is under-represented in Senate. Again, no base number, no conclusion.

SC- NC confusion.

It's sometimes hard but it gets really obvious. I think this is one of the most common types.

Takes for granted that A is the only way to~~ is usually the wording I find (though not always.)

Correlation- Causation error.

A is correlated with B . Therefore A caused B.

The answer says something like "the author disregards the possibility that B might cause A. ... or C caused A " something along that line.

Minor errors

-Ad hominem- attacking the person rather than argument~

-Term shifts in meaning~~

-Outlier argument-

But we see a case where A is not B. Therefore, A must not be B.

-Unrepresentative samples~ Biased individuals like movie guilds surveying about the movie policies and all..

I believe these are some of the errors that usually repeat.

Idk if that helps but I think it is one of the question types I now find "yes, it'll save me some time"

though weakening strengthening question types are killing me.....

I think once you get accustomed to how "flaws are expressed in words in answer choices" It'll get easier. What I did was I took all the answer choices in flaw question set and categorized them in the word document.

Also I made up my own flawed-argument using the phrases and words I found in the sample question sets. I don't know it helped me but that's what I did and I don't find flaw questions so difficult now. What I wrote above is part of my own note from flaw question analysis in my own word document.

Hope you found it helpful thanks.

@

It is a great point. I see why this wouldn't be a conditional statement.

To my understanding, this sentence was either a conditional or causal statement.

It can be paraphrased as you had suggested.

Commercial feasibility was achieved "because of " LFV spun by machine was bred.

In this case, this would be a causal statement.

It was machine spun LFV that "caused" ( or achieved) commercial feasibility because well until machine Spun LFV was developed, these cottons were not commercially viable. So machine Spun LFV was the cause that achieved commercial feasibility.

So,

Cause: Machine spun LFV

Effect: Commercial feasibility

As the causal reasoning in LSAT goes, if there is no effect there must not be effect.

So a hand-spun LFV would not achieve commercial feasibility.

And this might be the right approach. ( No cause No effect)

But again, even if it were causal statement, there is no contradiction in interpreting

only A when B as A only when B . The sentence is saying "the only point of history" when commercial viability of these cottons were achieved is "recent period." Anyway, I see no contradiction in understanding Only A when B as A only when B.

I could think of sentences like this.

I-phone was only recently commercially viable when LTE technology was finally developed.

Whether this is a causal statement or conditional statement, in terms of sentence structure, what only refers to is the recent period "When LTE technology was...."

Maybe it simply doesn't matter lol. Sometimes just get the nuance of the sentence is enough.. Especially for this question, the answer was pretty obvious because other choices were flagrantly unsupported by the stimulus...

For q1

I do think this is a conditional reasoning .

NOT all artistic works represent something but some do.

This means some artworks represent something while others dont represent anything

So

AW somr Represent something

AW some RS not

Because Aw represent something and representing so is relevant to our experience it is aesthetically relevant property

the author establishes the premise

AW some RS -> ARP

He further goes on and says that this Arp is dependent upon context so

AW some RS -> ARP -> context

He then says we cant determine whether something has context dependent properties there fore we cant detetmine whether any object is art .

What he is trying to say is because the last necessary condition .. context ...cannot be proven to be there or not we cannot determine whether something is art

Following the condtional chain we cant determine context is there then we cant know ARP is there we dont know whether art represent something.

Of course it is unclear whether there is no criteria for determining somethings would immediately mean negation of necessary condition but I think it is safe to say you can negate it. If there is no criteria to determine only necessary condition , as the reasoning goes, we cant determine whether sufficient is there .

For instance suppose the only way to determine whether something is an apple is to identify it is red.

I do not have any method or criteria to classify something that is not red from red.

Then i cannot relaibly say anything is apple.

For one this reasoning is logically fallacious.

Just because ARP depends on context it does not mean context is the only n.c for ARP.

What if ARP also depends on Idk... for instance their drawing style or something. If I can determine drawing style I may be able to determine whether it is ARP or not

More fundamentally however the conclusion cannot be drawn at all.

The entire chain of reasoning established applies only for some art work that represent something. So even if it were true the author cant claim anything about all artworks.

For other artworks that represent nothing we dont have any idea. What if these artworks have no relevance to context? Then just because we cant determine their context that doesnt mean we cant determine it is artwork.

For instance there may be one artwork that represents nothing and it depends on whether it appeals to our emotion. Then if we can determine whether something is emotionally appealing or not we can determine that it is in fact an artwork.

I dont know if this answers your question and not sure if I am right either but I do think this is a conditional logic.

Thank you @

As a matter of fact yes

From MBT question set 6

Lsat 24 S3 q11

Special kinds of cottom that grow fibers of green or brown have been around since the 1930s but only recently became commercially feasible when a long fibered variety that can be spun by machine was finally bred

I initially made a mistake of translating this sentence into

Machine spun ->> commercially feasible

but the relationship is actually exactly vice versa.

Cuz what it says is that the special cotton could have been commercially feasible only when ... machine spun.. was possible. So long fiber being able to be machine spun was actually the neceasary condition.

The answer choice was also about this relationship

Green and brown cottons that can be spun only by hands are not commercially viable.

Is MBT cuz necessary condition was negated and sufficient was also negated

Sorry i couldnt add any link because im on a phone right now

Thanks for your help:)

I think hard NA question is hard no matter what. Theres no way other than minimizing the time spent on formal logic. flaw . and conclusion questions. These questions only ask us to identify the structure so gets relatively easier as time goes by.

I would say other than negation test there really isnt any other method to effectively tackle na questions.

I eliminate things that would be irrelevant and run negation tests only to two to three candidate choices. It works for me fine most of da time

I think this question was important in that we cant simply blindly identify n.c or s.c in a technical way.

Green and Brown cottons .... only recently became availiable when a long fiber variety.... can be spun by machine.

If I were to follow the identifiers

Recently became availiable = should be NC

long fiber .... machine = sc

But what ONLY really refers to is after When . So the conditions are actually vice versa.

So GB cottons recently became availiable only when they could be spun by machine and thats how B makes sense.

and i i think this is generally the case for ..only when.. sentence.

I will only study when the exam is near.

In only when sentence structure even if a verb is sandwiched in between only A when B it just means A only when B

For me it was the way I read that troubled me. I agree with above in that reading economist certainly could help but doubt how much it would help.

I personally think my problem was in two areas.

Speed reading didnt work for me.

Due to excessive time pressure I often skimmed the entire passage within two minutes and tackle the question right away trying to fill in the gap by going through questions. While this technique works for some passages I think it is worth spending more time actually understanding the passage its structure and central argument.

By solving more and more questions youll start to see the pattern. I think you can in a way expect what questions would be asked. For instance they will always ask about rhetorical purpose on certain paragraph or why certain example popped up. If you read and mark the relationship some questions would take less than 10 seconds.

Reading and LR are in the same vein. Improvement in LR naturally improved my RC.

Rc for me is essentially an extended version of LR. I think it is rarely the case that someone great at LR is poor at Rc. Game is a different story but I think if RC questions are unbearably difficult maybe it is because one is thinking RC and LR have seperate disciplines. Do POEs and make inference as you do in LR. I think applying same principle and process of LR in Rc definitely helped me improve

Forgot to add sectiom 1

Instead of complicating things I prefer replacing unless without or untill with 'if not'

It just simplifies things.

If Bob doesnt tell you to stop you gotta add those pennies.

This specific sentence on the other hand creates certain confusion because it is an order. If Bob tells you to stop you gotta stop.

According to group 3 way of translation on the other hand it does give you trouble.

If you stopped adding these pennies then necessarily Bob had told you to stop.

On the other hand it is also true vice versa. If Bob had told you to stop then also necessarily you should have stopped adding these pennies.

In a sense it becomes a bi conditional statement and it does so because of the nature of imperative.

I was gonna cite categorical imperative as an example but realized that is simply too much.

Sometimes thinking about conditional statement strictly in a technical way gives you headache.

Here is an example of hypothetical imperative.

If you wish to be a great piano player, you must practice.

Now what would be the contrapositive? Commonsensically speaking it is something like if you dont practive you cannot be a great piano player. And normally that is gow we would interpret that statement.

But technically that is not a contrapositove. It yields something like if you dont practice then you dont wish to become a great piano player.

And that is clearly a weird statement though it is exactly what it says. An 'opinion' or 'order' likewise is not exactly a great object for conditional analysis.

This debate should go way back to 78 century German idealism i guess. Some would say choosing inevitably invokes action as if action and our will are one and the same same thing. If you will to buy the desk then you will buy the desk. After all you cannot buy the desk without your will or without choosing to do so. Some would argue that it is not the same. To will and to act are fundamentally different. Any way for lsat it would not matter or at least I hope

uhmm... really? I never time myself on BR. But I always time myself when I first tackle any question sets. I think it is important to get the right timing or kind of a sense that lets you notice maybe this is taking too long. Especially pattern of reasoning/ flaw and formal logic I think timed exercise is integral. Without timing, I think it is easy to think "I'm good with this type" or something like that...

I think there are definitely NA questions that asks you find exactly the same answer as SA would ask you.

My approach isn't so different at all. but I mainly go through these steps.

My first step is looking for the words that could be equated. For instance can I equate prudence= judging things only after weighing in different options? Cuz most of the time the stimulus try to confuse me with discrepancy in describing the same term.

Look for the gap, as all people should

Select candidate answer choices. There should be at least two or three answer choices that would be obviously irrelevant in establishing the conclusion or bridging the premises.

Within the left choices, I do negation test.

Negation test, I think is the best way to confirm an answer although it is time consuming. So I have to be very careful in selecting the candidate choices.

The fundamental is this.

If conclusion is true-> the assumption must be true.

If assumption is not true-> Conclusion must be false.

If an answer choice is a "necessary assumption," then when the choice is negated, it should destroy the conclusion.

Suppose it is an Necessary Assumption question.

Premise: All marines are rich. (M->R)

Conclusion: All marines are devil fruit eaters. (M->DFE)

If it was SA question the answer choice should say something like all rich people eat devil's fruits.(R->DFE) Then the connection is established. So this is a sufficient assumption.

But this is definitely not a necessary assumption.

Suppose some rich people don't eat devil's fruits.( negate the condition: all rich people eat devil's fruit) Does it falsify the conclusion? Not really.

All marines may be awesome fighters and awesome fighters always eat devil's fruits. (M-> GF-> DFE)

The very fact [rich-> devil fruit eaters] is not the only connection to make the conclusion valid means this is not a necessary assumption.

But consider this condition " At least some rich people can eat devil's fruit"

Negate it.

And I get " Every single rich person cannot eat devil's fruit."

If this is true, the conclusion is made invalid. I would say most of the NA answers do not contain definite language such as A is B or All As are B although sometimes they actually do. But it is definitely a good reason to doubt on the answer choice.

May be I went on too long and probably you know this. I kinda wrapped up my thinking while writing this so anyway. In short, my strategy for NA is to identify the candidates and go though negation test.