the conclusion: environmental factors have little effect on teens participating in sports.

premise: we are given one specific environmental factor, family life and it's said that not all teens participate the same in a family, some participate more than others. from this, we must implicitly conclude that this environmental factor has little effect on teens participating in sports.

premise: we are given another specific environmental factor, school programs encouraging teenage participation in sports, and yet again, they are not so successful, meaning this environmental factor has little effect on teens participating in sports.

it is on these grounds that the conclusion supposedly follows. but we're only given 2 subsets of the superset of environmental factors. this sounds a tad like hasty generalization, where we're given specific, sparse examples to make a general conclusion (specific examples = family and school; general conclusion = environment has little impact).

this is what (D) calls out, it says holdddd on a second, you want to conclude about environmental factors in general and their effects on teens participating in sports? well, you didn't include the fact that there is some other environmental factor you failed to mention that explains teenage participation in sports varying from time to time and society to society. why is this important? for instance, let's say there was a big culture in the 90s to go to zoomba class n it had the teens pullin up. for that reason, teen participation in sports increased greatly (idk man im making this up). this is an environmental factor. it did have an effect on teens participating in sports. so you see, the contexts of the decade and society provide environmental factors that actually can effect teen participation.

so, this weakens the argument as the argument as the argument claims the entire superset of environmental factors has little impact on teen participation, while (D) says nah, you've overlooked some factors that actually do have an impact.

i chose (A) but like JY said, it's baiting you to make the assumption that the athletic ability variation and likelihood of participating in sports is due to some environmental factor, but this could also be explained by genetics. which is it? we don't know because the AC doesn't specify.

the stim talks about more complex computer systems for airbags to prevent false positives (i.e., no accident yet the airbags trigger). the author says hold up: these new systems are only going to make the false positive worse (i.e., more instances of no accidents but the airbags triggering). why? well, more complex system = more ways it can fail.

note that this is a positive correlation. remember that correlations aren't perfect, that not every instance that has a complex system means its likelihood of failing also increases. this is what (A) gets at: this instance does not correspond to the correlation, and it doesn't need to because correlations on the lsat are never perfect! i completely missed this during the test lolz.

i chose (B) mostly because i didn't read the stim properly. if you read the stim, the author never makes this assumption that any failure in the system will trigger the accidental inflation of airbags. he's just saying yk there's more ways a system can now fail, so the likelihood of failure in the system means accidental triggering of the airbags. not any failure.

this is a sample bias flaw question. the storeowner concludes that crime is not affecting the # of people visiting his store. why? well, he asks the people who already come to his store about their feelings about the crime and they're not worried.

totally flew over my head. you're asking people who prob don't really care ab the crime and from that, concluding that your business isn't being affected by crime. how do you know? what if the storeowner has regulars who, because of the crime and worrying about it, no longer show up to the store, but since the storeowner was only asking people at his store, he mistakenly believes crime isn't affecting his store. but it is. those regulars aren't coming.

this is why D works, the storeowner concludes something off a biased sample (i.e., bases his conclusion only by asking people who come to his store). (C) and (E) are descriptively inaccurate as they talk about the neighbourhood (esp C) but the storeowner is very clear in his conclusion that he's only talking about his store.

this is a MSS question: remember, read the stim and find the AC that acts like a conclusion. keep in mind that sometimes, MSS stims work together to push out a conclusion (like this instance) and sometimes, it only draws from certain premises (which is why i hate these qs so much aha).

this q completely flew over my head :') but anyways we get a conditional conclusion (that i somehow missed so yay): possible-protection-grow-big-enough → 10yrs-enough

however, in the premise we get the fact that indeed the machinery firms have gotten 10 years and from the context, we have the firms arguing for more protection to grow big enough. this implies that we're failing the necessary because it proves that 10 years was not enough for 'big growth'. that's why we take the contrapositive

10yrs-enough → possible-protection-grow-big-enough

that's the conclusion we can look for, it's not possible for protection from foreign competition to enable big enough growth for the machinery industry. this is what (E) gets at.

this is a MSS question, describing a phenomenon: when researchers told subjects that the suspect might not be in the lineup, this number of misidentifications was 38%. however, when the researchers didn't tell the subjects that the subject might not be in the lineup, the number of misidentifications shot up to 78%.

what conclusion does this support? let's check the ACs.

(A) is not supported---nowhere do we talk about verbal descriptions of suspects. maybe if we altered the stimulus and included a stat about the accuracy of identifications on the basis of verbal descriptions (and this % being roughly the same) could maybe A be supported. obi, that's not what's happening here.

(B) is not supported---it's baiting you to assume that the subjects wanted to please/cater to the researchers in some way, but there's actually no mention of this in the stim. all we have is the researchers in 1 case telling the subjects something vs not telling the subjects something and we have different results.

(C) is not supported--i fell for this one ngl, and only now do i realize that it's wayyyy outta the stim's league. where are we getting this idea of 'specific direction by an authority'? again, i think the tip of rooting yourself in the stimulus becomes sooo important. just by looking at the stim, you can see there's no specific direction. again, all we're told is that researchers told subjects something vs didn't tell them something and here are the respective results. nowhere to we get a description of how the researchers went about doing so and if the subjects complied accordingly.

(D) is not supported because cmon now, where were we talking about visual clues? remember: root yourself in the stimulus.

(E) is supported! this is matches to the false positive phenomenon that the stimulus illustrates. when the subjects were not told the suspect might not be in the lineup, there is this implicit assumption/expectation that the suspect has to be one of the people in the lineup, explaining the large 78% misidentification (large false positive %). however, when told that the suspect might not be in the lineup, that eases the expectation to choose someone from the lineup, so we had a drop in false positives (i.e., misidentifications which became 38%).

this is a flaw question, relating to the ambiguity of the intersection of sets. the first premise lays out an intersection between popular novels and elements associated with journalistic writing. how many popular novels use journalistic conventions? is it alllllot? a tiny bit, like the bottom boundary for many, which we can think of as 'some'? we don't know.

then, in the next premise, it talks about the intersection of authors (of popular novels) and authors starting their career as journalists. again, like above, just how big/small is this intersection?

questioning the size of the intersection is super important because of the conclusion that a journalistic writing style will increase the popularity of a book. how do we know this based off the intersection of the sets? it could be there there were only 3 instances of popular novels and journalistic writing conventions out of 1000s. that sure decimates the argument.

this is what (D)'s getting at, if you haven't included in your consideration all the failed novels, we can't surely conclude that having journalistic writing increases the popularity.

something i read earlier that ab NA questions: always be on the lookout if the conclusion and premise talk about 2 different subject matter. for the argument to work you absolutely need to bridge the two ideas (like SA questions).

here, that's no different. in the major premise, we talk about a city never getting a new nightclub. in the conclusion, it's just about being against development is harmful for the city. therefore, we need the fact that not having a nightclub will be harmful for the city. this is exactly what (C) gets at!

the stem is asking us to find an argument that uses the same implicit principle Martin uses.

Martin concludes that doctors are not to stop giving the advice that patients eat less and exercise more for weight loss. Martin's grounds for this conclusion is that just because it may fail at yielding 1 benefit (weight loss), does not mean there are other benefits that indeed occur.

so, we're looking for an AC that says we are not to stop doing something just because 1 benefit doesn't occur, for there are other benefits that justify the action.

(A) is wrong because we're only talking about 1 benefit (participation in the marathon), with no mention of another benefit.

(B) is correct. why? we have the conclusion that their work is not a failure, on the grounds that 1 benefit failed to yield (solving the problem) yet it yielded another benefit (insights). this is similar to Martin's argument.

(C) is wrong like (A), where we really only talk about 1 benefit (success of gardening)

(D) is wrong because of its latter half. it's just saying 'u knew the project would cost more'. this in no way maps onto our stim

(E) is wrong because again, there is no other benefit mentioned and there is no failure of a benefit present.

idky but thinking about the stimulus as a phenomenon in need of explanation and the ACs as all potential hypotheses has made these questions so much easier for me (': thanks 7sage ur the best

Argument analogous to the toppled trash bin one: The math text book was left open during the exam. Student A is the closest to it when I left the room and they look frazzled when I entered the room again. Therefore, Student A opened the book and cheated.

Argument analogous to the Disney one: All contestants are eligible for a participation award. However, contestants must have either registered via phone or at the registration desk. Chris is a contestant who did not register via phone, but got a participation award. Therefore, Christ must have registered at the desk.

Argument analogous to the tigers one: Not all fish are healthy to eat. Tuna has one of the highest amounts of mercury, which is toxic for our nervous systems.

so from the premise we say that

avoiding dairy --c--> avoiding heart disease

but then our conclusion jumps to the superset

avoiding dairy --c--> maintaining good health

for me, this is where the flaw clicked (after listening to JY's explanation). sure, in one instance (heart disease) we can clearly see how avoiding it may be for the best. but surely there are other crucial aspects of maintaining good health, like bone structure. therefore, can we resolutely state that in all instances 'avoiding dairy --c--> maintaining good health'?

not really and that's what (A) gets at -- if we were to completely get rid of dairy (like milk) we could get osteoporosis or sum and that's not good health!

feel free to correct my thinking in case it's not adding up

*note the arrows reflect the potential causality as stated in stim

soooo they are critiquing the argument in favour of choice B (courthouse) instead of critiquing B itself by showing us why it sucks or why choice A (factory) is better. This matters because the conclusion is about which choice is better and as the argument currently stands, we genuinely don't know -- again, because we don't know the pros/cons of choice A and B. all we know is that there was some argument(s) for B, it sucked, so A is better (which is flawed reasoning)

I can't remember where but I swear JY said that if the stim doesn't go into depth about the experiment or 'studies' mentioned, then that's a clue to assume it was done correctly--or that the flaw/potential weakener is going to focus on something else. Because this stim just mentioned studies and didn't delve deeper, I assumed there wasn't anything wrong w/the studies themselves.

Please correct me if I'm wrong though!

Here is one of the specific examples I came up with that (hopefully) align with the principle:

“The fact that a standard is already in wide use can be a crucial factor in making it a more practical choice than an alternative.”

With the addition of hockey pads during the first NHL regular season, the size used then has remained the size today. If the pads grew in size, it would help all goalies improve their save percentage. However, it's not worth it to undergo this change because the cost to NHL teams in terms of money, practice and frustration outweighs the benefit of the goalie making additional saves.

"Most classically trained opera singers can recite the lyrics to Musetta's Waltz and most people who have not received such training cannot. It seems likely, therefore, that Anna, who can recite the lyrics to Musetta's Waltz, was classically trained."

trained opera singer ‑m→ recite Musetta

/trained opera singer ‑m→ /recite Musetta

recite Musetta (Anna)

conclusion: trained opera singer (Anna)

Essentially flipping the first premise/most statement!

Parallel flaw: we should continue chopping down the Amazon forest, no matter what. wood from the forest can be used to make houses, paper made from this can help lead to human discoveries, and the industry of wood chopping boosts the local economy.

i skipped b precisely because i was like 'it attacks the premise so it can't be right' ugh

Another note to expand on why (A) might be wrong: think about the ideal experiment and how we want to isolate for 1 variable so we can def say that whatever variable we changed had a causal impact on whatever we found in our study.

by keeping gender different in A, we now introduced 2 variables that could explain the increased heart disease. Was it gender that had a causal impact on it? the wine? both? we don't know and it would be too big of an assumption to favour one variable over the other. That's what JY was getting at when he said that we'd need the gender to be same and simply change the wine amount. If that showed them getting more instances of heart disease, then that would attack the causal statement that wine --p--> effects of high fat (i.e., one of which is getting heart disease)

7sage is so clutch with its grammar lessons

rest in pieces to me for some reason i forgot it was a strengthening q and chose d??

here's my grammar parsing of C, that uses our foundations, which helped me a lot in choosing C:

“The DNA of prehistoric Homo sapiens ancestors of contemporary humans was not significantly more similar to that of Neanderthals than is the DNA of contemporary humans.”

Break it down to its kernel: The DNA was not similar to Neanderthals than humans.

the DNA...of what? of homo sapiens. Okay got it. What about it? It wasn't more similar to the DNA of Neanderthals than it was to present-day humans. Oh yeah this works--you're saying that homo sapiens' DNA is more similar to humans than they are to neanderthals! Imagine if the opposite were true---neanderthals and homo sapiens have super similar DNA, then how on earth would this argument stand?

the whole time i was lowkey sweatin cuz i was like 'why is JY committing the sufficiency -necessity error aha' - but that inference really clears things up

the temporal flaw flew over my head! the economist says that we'll never be able to prevent recessions. why? u silly goose, it's because we're unable to currently predict recessions (the clue here is "using the best techniques at their disposal" -- the 'best' techniques are constantly shifting with new advancements etc).

just because we can't predict these events now, doesn't mean that we'll never ever be able to predict them. that means the economist's argument where he fails the necessary--it doesn't quite follow. that's why (D) is right---it's saying that in the future, we'll get better techniques, we'll probably be able to predict and hence prevent recessions.

this is that past/future flaw where just because something right now isn't working, doesn't mean it will always be that way.

totally missed the flaw on this one: just because we have 2 causal factors for accidents, doesn't mean they in no way overlap. if they didn't, the argument should have specified. but since the argument didn't, we can't assume that 1/4+ is dedicated just to accidents by failing to obey traffic regulations and another 1/4+ to accidents by lack of safety equipment. these 2 causal factors can overlap, and that means the conclusion, that more than 1/2 of the accidents is because of the cyclists, would no longer follow.

(C) points this out by telling us that of any given accident, it's not that 1 causal factor (e.g., not wearing shin pads) is the only factor that contributes to the accident. it could be multiple. that same person not wearing shin pads also switched lanes without giving a signal n got hit (thus, also not obeying traffic laws). if more than 1 causal factor is present in any accident, the proportion of cyclists being at least partially responsible shrinks, no longer being more than 1/2.

this flaw question mistakes the winners of the prize being covered by the insurance for recognizing that the insurance gives them a stable future. these are two different things. what if one of the benefits of winning the prize is that you're automatically awarded the insurance? in that case, the winners can't recognize that the insurance is giving them a stable future.

this is what (D) gets at: the winners actually chose to get the insurances. negating this answer means no winner chose the insurance, suggesting that they were forced to take the insurance. now, the argument falls apart--how could they recognize the insurance offering them a stable future if they were forced to take the insurance? (D) precludes this, hence the NA