I had the same experience, it was burnout. I took 3 days off and my scores and brain went back to where they were before. The amount of studying you are doing is not sustainable. I did the same thing as you over the summer, but just for2-3 weeks and the return on investment curve just flattens past 15-20hrs a week. Please take care of yourself, either way, you are not supposed to be studying so hard so close to testing date.

This was a hard question, the only reason I think I got it right was because in my brain the first alternative explanation that popped up was, "oh, I bet the ethics violation accusations did not change anyone's mind," and immediately there it is.

These examples/explanations are kinda trash. They are not uniform or cohesive. The notations between explanations goes from acronyms to whole words and vice versa. Please standardize the format.

That's not true. The LSAT does not straight up ask for negation or contrapositives or really any aspect of Lawgic, but it does utilize it in questions where is necessary to diagram inferences or evaluate conditionals. It is also used in order to connect different assumptions. An LSAT question would say, "all red dogs go on to commit crimes" and it will then say "all who become lawyers, don't commit crimes"

RD -> CC

L -> /CC

What can you infer from this? Nothing yet, because to link up the 2 statements, there must be a common factor in both sides. Now, let's modify it to create the inference.

RD -> CC

CC-> /L

Inference: RD ->CC->/L

If you are a red dog, then you cannot become a lawyer. In this scenario, a question in the LSAT might give you the stimulus in the conditionals I described beforehand and then tell, you can you infer?

Or, it might give you a stimulus saying RD->CC + RD -> /L, what must be true for the conclusion to be true?

Or, what is most strongly supported? and the answer be a contrapositive or a negation instead of a straight up statement.

Or, in a flaw question, use a similar example except it is a contrapositive...

Can you still translate fewer than half as some for the purpose of Lawgic? I feel these explanations are often super convoluted too.

This makes no sense. The entire gist of all live LR lessons I have been to, Alex or Bailey always remind you to never look at the question first. So how does this make sense.

Can someone help me understand how do contrapositives help you understand conditionals and how to make this knowledge more applicable? I have been having issues translating into lawgic, but once I put it as a contrapositive everything makes sense. Now I'm just trying to understand how to put this to use for the LSAT.

I keep getting some of them backwards B->A as opposed to A->B or oftentimes I can't even get what A and B are correctly. Any tips?

I thought about it this way. Not sure if it's correct #feedback

Suspect class= SC

Immutable trait = I

Plaintiff= h

Premise 1:

SC -> I

Premise 2:

h /I

Conclusion:

h/SC

Contrapositive:

/I = /SC

If no immutable trait, no suspect class

Since plaintiff h has no immutable trait (h/I) then they can't be in suspect class (/SC).

what are contrapositives good for though?

This was a great explanation. I think another way to put it can be by replacing the words. "Tom's recipe for lasagna is easy to follow for >51% of people." Though it is saying it is easy for most (a.k.a more than half) people, it is not comparing it to Alex's recipe for lasagna. Hence why it is an absolute statement.

To make it a regular comparative claim, you could say "Tom's recipe for lasagna is easy to follow for most people than Alex's recipe."

A v. B= Tom's Recipe v Alex's Recipe

Characteristic= easy to follow for most people

Winner= Tom's recipe

Now, you could even add the context that "Recipes for pasta-based dishes are hard" -> which would make it relatively so that Tom's and Alex's recipe are both hard (yet one one is easier for most people than the other)..

Or add, "Recipes for pasta-based dishes are easy" and then that will make it so Tom's and Alex's recipe are already easy, just one is more than the other.

same here. I would think the characteristic we are comparing is how close they are related to sorghum?? I don't understand why it is sorghum v other corn :(

I don't think so, modifiers are here to bring complexity and detail, meaning they narrow down the pool of possible subjects - but the original bigger pool does not change. Think about like this, if all red dogs are named Clifford, that means that all red dogs that are at least 10ft tall and live in a tiny NYC apartment are also going to be named Clifford. Also, remember you are looking at the context within the argument - in the LSAT you are only going to work under the assumptions presented in the stimulus.

Let's say now, "Clifford, a big red dog who lives in NYC is bigger than a nasty sewer rat that carries disease."

Modifiers would be in italics: "A big red dog who lives in NYC is bigger than a nasty sewer rat that carries disease."

This won't change if you look at it like, dog is bigger than rat - the sentence does not change at all if you say "red dog bigger than nasty rat." You might know in your brain that there might be rats that are bigger than dogs but that's not the point here, you are only using the stimulus to deduce that dogs are bigger than rats.

Trying to clarify here, is referent "Medications" and the referential is "those"? thanks!

Helpful refresher especially for those whose first language isn't English. I find sometimes though I am a great writer and I have been in the US for 10yrs, I lack some of the basic bricks of innate knowledge that native speakers have.

I think it is because of the definitiveness of the arguments.

For the Disney argument, there are only 2 options in order to obtain the Genie Pass +; since he definitively did not do one, the other one MUST have happened.

For the Tigers argument, though it is true that not all mammals can be kept as pets because tigers are mammals and they would make bad pets. This answer is not as definitive because it still leaves it open to other mammals, the evidence used only accounts for a single species of mammals thus the sample is unrepresentative (and honestly, people have kept tigers are pets before successfully).

For the Fat Cat scenario, it is not definitive that the cat intentionally knocked over the trash can to eat the salmon. After all, the cat could have unintentionally knocked it over and eaten the salmon. The conclusion makes it so it must have been intentional for the cat to knock the bin which in turn makes the argument weaker because the premises might support the cat ate something but not that he did all the shenanigans mentioned to do so. Maybe he knocked it over and hit jackpot, maybe an owl knocked it over, or maybe the salmon fell out of the trash, you just don't know definitively.