This is golden. Thank you for taking the time to explain everything! Enjoy your internship and hopefully some well-deserved summer vacay.
I thought this explanation felt familiar from somewhere. JY talks about the intuitive approach to deal with exceptions in his explanation for question 5.
https://classic.7sage.com/lesson/quiz-complex-conditional-translations-4-w-answers/#comment-159756
Has anyone taken the Flex with a TV in their room? I plan on taking it in my living room for superior internet connection but I'm worried the TV will be an issue - it'll be inconvenient to take it out.
The FAQ page mentions media players aren't allowed in general, not sure if TV is included.
Already emailed LSAC about this but not sure if I'll get an answer so wanted to check in with you guys.
I tried refreshing the page and re-opening it from existing problem sets a couple times but it keeps on showing the loading icon. The other sets I took around the same time work just fine.
Anything that can be done to fix it?
Hey, I'm on the same boat! I'm also scoring in the mid/high 160's with an eye for the 170's. I would say with where you're currently scoring, there's no reason why you can't improve till test day with the right state of mind. I also remember reading about plenty of people scoring their highest on the real thing so fingers crossed!!
I'm definitely considering October as a back up like you, and while it's not ideal to re-take, I think it's comforting to know that you have another chance. Personally I don't think November is too late either. Also we can always apply to schools with our June scores and tell them upfront that we're also registered for October. And hopefully with a score jump we'll be in a better position afterwards. At least this is what feels reasonable to me right now but I'd appreciate it if anyone commented on whether this look like a sound plan :)
Also is it just me or is it really unfair that we don't get an April take. It's going to be an online test so I don't see why they wouldn't give us the same opportunity...
Hi all,
I need some help on my study schedule. I've taken 4 PT's so far and despite foolproofing all LG problem sets and drills in the CC, I've only been able to score - 6 on my last PT (my best LG score). I have recently started to drill the clean games from PT 1 - 16, and I have yet to reach a level of consistency, meaning I typically score in the - 0 to - 2 band within the allocated time, but for example I got a - 4 today on a fresh game which was quite disheartening.
I still have some work to do in LR and a lot more in RC. I don't feel that focusing exclusively on LG for more than a few days is necessary, as I feel like I can improve by foolproofing throughout the week along with LR/RC specific work. But I'm not sure if this will be beneficial to do as I see many people on the threads focusing exclusively on LG for a much longer period of time. Additionally I feel like I really need to be taking more PT's at this point.
Also I'm planning on taking the June LSAT, but I have a little more time since I will be taking it in Europe on 25th of June, if the current situation allows.
So in short, do you guys recommend that I focus on LG first before serious PT'ing or is it ok to instead focus on my weaknesses in other sections as well along with regular PT'ing?
Thanks a lot in advance!
#help
Would D be a necessary assumption if it said "It is not fair for lawmakers to favor the interests of families that have children old enough to vote over those with underage children."?
Hey everyone,
I'm getting more and more nervous as the test day is creeping up, mostly because I couldn't reach my target score yet. I'm still scoring at the low 160's and BR'ing around low 170's. I average at around -5 in each section and I'm looking for ways to use my remaining time most efficiently to boost my score.
I have been taking 1 PT every two weeks during my prep stage, and I recently got it down to 1 PT every week. Now I'm wondering if next week (the week before the LSAT!) I should take 2 PT's for extra practice OR focus on problem sections that I'm more likely to see results in, being LG and LR, and drill individual sections. I thought I could divide my days into two dedicating one half to LG and the other half to LR for example and do only 1 PT for that week as usual.
The same question goes for the week of the LSAT but this time it is should I take one PT and focus on that or drill ONLY timed LR and LG sections.
And on a side note, while I feel like I finally have a good grasp on LG, the best score I've got so far was a -3. I seem to be losing points due to stupid counting/diagramming mistakes or going too fast on questions that required more time. I don't do such mistakes when foolproofing so I'm wondering if for the last weeks I should be taking fresh LG sections and then BR/review them exclusively to see the quickest results.
If anyone has other recommendations or words of advice I would appreciate them so so much.
Thanks and happy studying :)
#help
JY takes a peek at the line citations before starting to read the passage and marks them. I hadn't thought of doing anything like that before. Would anyone reccommend this approach??
That's amazing! Thank you so much for sharing. And for all those who are eager to see that much earned score jump till the June test, we can do this!
#help
I had identified this argument as causal. But can it also be thought as conditional?
JY fixes AC A by changing 'that species' to 'other species', and changing the 'necessary' for 'sufficient'. But is it possible to translate the phrase 'adapting to ice ages was responsible for the evolution of the human brain' into conditional logic as 'Adapting to ice age → Evolution of the human brain'?
Our conclusion is about how money was invented. From the premises we know that money is universal, meaning wherever we go, we'll find some form of money. How could this be? There are 2 possibilities:
1. Societies learned about money from their neighbors or travellers.
2. Societies invented money within themselves.
Our conclusion is saying that regardless of whether 1 occurred, it's probable that 2 occurred at least in some cases.
By mentioning geographical isolation, AC A is telling us that in at least some societies, 1 was not possible. It's also providing us with a necessary assumption for 2. Because if none of the societies were geographically isolated (negation of the some statement in AC A), they likely interacted with one another and so 2 becomes unlikely.
But the critical thing is that AC A is also a sufficient assumption. Knowing that money is universal AND that some societies were geographically isolated, it must be the case that some societies invented money within themselves.
So AC A is both necessary and sufficient for this argument to hold.
Takeaway: Weak language or the word 'some' does not prevent an AC from being a sufficient assumption!
I feel like this question requires separating 'beliefs' from 'facts'. We are told up front that there are 2 types of whales and their chatters differ. So when an AC mentions 'whales that only eat fish', we know that they're the cool ones and seals don't have to swim away. But the seals may not know that!! In fact we are concerned exactly with how the learning occurs. With this framework in mind, the 'mature seal' bit in AC C is no longer a cause for aversion.
I just listened to the podcast episode with Al (highly recommended!) where he mentions how he practiced LG to account for his nerves by learning to distinguish between 'brute force games' vs. 'inference based games' (he didn't use these exact terms but that was the idea I think). I just loved his idea but felt the need to solidify his approach so I can apply it too. From what I gather, he mainly practiced two things for this:
Infer the plainly obvious (for like 10 secs) and stop. Proceed to other rules/questions.
He did 2 sections this way every day.
Trying to solve the game as much as possible from the rules.
He did this for harder games (games 3 and 4) without worrying about the time.
I feel like if you're like me (and Al for that matter) and you do well with typical sequencing/grouping games but choke when you get to the toughest/misc. game because you can't find the inferences (and are also unable to brute force because you want to find inferences), I think you'll really benefit from Al's approach. Here's how I'm thinking of putting his method into practice:
I'm curious how everyone else who listened the episode thinks about his method and how to apply it. Couldn't find his username but Al, your input would be very much appreciated if you happen see this post! :)
Admin Note: https://soundcloud.com/user-737824810/41-7sager-al-156-to-172-lsat
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@lexxx745
The glaring flaw in this argument is that it makes a jump from talking about how these tariffs affect people and how people regard them to what would make a politician more likely to be elected. So the author assumes, in very broad terms, that people who are hurt and who oppose such tariffs will reflect this on election day.
AC C and D are really unattractive even at first blush, because of the word 'should'. The stimulus is descriptive so it would be really odd if a prescriptive statement was a necessary assumption.
AC B is also easy to eliminate because it's not necessary. In fact, I think it's necessary that politicians sometimes DO NOT vote according to what's more likely to get them elected. Because if they already did, how could they possibly get more votes by following the author's advice?
Now we're left with AC A and E. Notice how E is just 2 lines long and is easy to understand, versus A is 2x longer and is a comparative statement. Not surprising... Also, we essentially get 2 premises in the stimulus:
1. There are people who benefit (small percentage) vs. get hurt from tariffs - addressed in AC E.
2. The majority of people oppose such tariffs - addressed in AC A.
I already don't like premise 1 because first of all, what is a small percentage? It's likely less than 50% but it's hard to say. Also, protection and harm sound like subjective terms which may or may not affect people's voting behavior. Also do people even know how they're affected by tariffs? Aha! AC E addresses that! People who would be hurt by tariffs should know it right? But wait! We have another, better premise that already tells us that the majority of people - which is surely more than 50% - already oppose such tariffs! Do the people who are hurt have to additionally know about it? Not when the majority has already made up their mind!
Though it's not enough that the majority oppose tariffs because we're trying to conclude that politicians who vote against tariffs will more likely be elected. To connect the two ideas, we need to know that those opposing tariffs will actually vote for politicians who also appear oppose them. Because conversely if they were oblivious, or weren't swayed by such maneuvers it wouldn't matter. Since this is a NA question, we don't need everyone in opposition to vote accordingly. But at the very least, we need the opposition camp to be more active than the supporter camp, because otherwise politicians won't stand much chance at re-election.
Whew. So many working pieces to this question.
I found this to be challenging for Q3. On the face of it it's just a causal argument and we've seen that many times. But this time there are 2 causal factors.
One is the 'adverse conditions' as mentioned in the right AC (which I think is a layer of difficulty; instead of naming the conditions again, they used referencing, gotta connect that back to the stimulus). The question does not ask about this but I think an assumption here is that one of these conditions did play a causal role in the population decline - notice how the author mentions that the population decline has been attributed to these causes, so it's not definite that they have actually played a role. Still, the support here isn't too bad; the author indirectly references OPA (by saying the conditions have been attributed to the decline) and what happened to bees in the past.
The second cause that the author thinks played a role in the phenomenon is the inbreeding - which is the conclusion of this argument so our attention should fall here to find the NA. This has really come out of nowhere and we should be making it relevant to the population decline. The author seems to offer us an explanation by stating how inbreeding has limited the bees' genetic diversity. Just intuitively, this sounds like a bad thing. We think oh yeah of course stupid humans messed up their genetic diversity and look how that turned out. But actually, we're never told that this is a bad thing, and certainly there is no explanation of how this could've led to a population decline! So that's the bridging we have to make to get a sound argument. With this in mind, we get to AC E which nicely connects everything up. Over decades of interbreeding, we have reduced the bees' genetic diversity, and this is making them more vulnerable to those factors such as infections and pesticides.
I've been studying for about a year and RC has always been my worst section (currently I average around -6). I've been mainly studying by myself but I feel like I could use some extra RC help. I'm wondering if anyone has tried Graeme Blake's (LSAT Hacks) mastery seminars, particularly the one on RC. It's 200$ so I'm a bit hesitant.
I had a slightly different interpretation here than JY's. The stimulus says that it will be as if the statement (Cats are your friend) has been repeated a thousand times. When in reality, we know that it has not been repeated at all. But because of the initial command given, the subject is under the impression that it has been repeated. But we were told that for hypnosis to be effective, directions must be repeated many times. (Effective → Repeated many times) We can therefore negate the necessary condition of being repeated and conclude that the hypnosis in this instance will not be effective.
For some reason, I regarded this as a strengthening question and thought E would do the job. Now I'm not sure if it would do that, let alone accomplish the harder PSA task.
It's already explicitly mentioned in the stimulus that Ted makes unique and irreplaceable contributions, and this is despite the fact that he works shorter hours than everyone. So yes clearly it's not all about the amount of time you work. This adds nothing! And of course from a PSA perspective, it does not help justify the conclusion that Tatiana should not request Ted's replacement.
I was so hung up on the shift from lung disease to general health in the conclusion that I went for D without second thought (Took me 28 secs to get the q wrong). Should've really took D for what it is and try to gauge whether it was accurate.
FML. The idea of creating new building sites from land under water made no sense to me under timed conditions. Even in BR, I was thinking maybe they were digging up sand from under water to use in construction...
I was about to ask the same thing. It didn't work for me either. I tried resetting my password and failed at that too. Best to wait it out I guess...
Sometimes just taking a break from the question and returning back helps. For questions that give me serious trouble, I let it go for the day and return to it with clear eyes the next morning.
Also, this might sound counterintuitive but I would suggest NOT resorting to explanations right away. First really try to understand the question by mapping it out and reading it a couple times and think about how you would explain it to someone else. Having your own interpretation of the question BEFORE watching JY's explanations or looking at other resources really makes a difference - especially in the long run.
Providing necessary assumptions as strengthening ACs is a strategy employed by LSAC to confuse us I think. Another example is PT 65 S4 Q22.
It works too because providing a missing NA really does make the argument better, even if it's by a tiny bit. And that's enough to make it a correct strengthening AC!
I can see this kind of logic applying in toxic workplaces. Oh look, our best employees are white males, so we should hire white male applicants!
Imagine you're an employee in this awful place and you want to teach your boss a lesson with your stellar argumentative skills. Which one would you pick as your comeback?
B) Well, maybe your sexist and racist ass hired mostly white males.
C) Most of our clients are white.
D) Most of the people who apply for a position in our company are not white.
E) Joe, John and James (who are all white males) are not very good at their jobs.
If B had said 'Ten years ago, at least 95% of all accidents on this highway were caused by automobiles going slower than 80 km.' that would have seriously weakened the argument. Because a cause similar to that of the speed limit is there (people who get in the accidents are already driving slower than 90 km), while the purported effect (decrease in accident rates) is not.
Conversely, the correct version of C would've provided an instance where the cause is missing (people drive like there is no speed limit), while the purported effect of decreased accidents is there. The way AC C currently is, it's not enough to show us that the speed limit is useless. The correct version of C could be 'Most people break the speed limit by driving as fast as they used to 10 years ago.' or alternatively 'Almost everyone on the highway exceeds the speed limit by at least 2x'
Why isn't this a PSA question?
#help
ACs A and D gave me serious trouble in this question. Here is my attempt at fixing them:
A) Bakery B already depends significantly less on tips to cover its operating costs than Bakery A.
D) Bakery A depends on tips to cover all of its operating costs not covered by the income from anthology sales, while Bakery B depends relatively less on tips.
Not great weakeners, but these versions would at least provide us with a point of dissimilarity. And they also poke a hole at the idea that potentially making more money from an anthology may not make the magazine depend less on donations.
Analogous argument:
Bakery A attends the annual cookie fest every year, where each one of their regular cookies are put on sale. The revenue they make in this fest covers most of their operating costs. Most cookies sold by Bakery B are similar to cookies sold by Bakery A. So Bakery B should also sell each one its regular cookies in this fest. This way, they can rely less on tips.
A) Neither Bakery A nor B depends on tips to cover most of their operating costs.
D) Bakery A depends on tips for most of its operating costs not covered by the revenue from the cookie fest.
E) Bakery A always makes several special, secret recipe cookies not contained on its regular menu for the cookie fest.
Hey everyone,
I've been studying with 7Sage for a few weeks and I'm curious about your approach on taking notes and keeping track of your work, especially in terms of LR.
For instance, I used to BR problem sets by thinking to myself or out loud and did not take any notes. But lately I started taking detailed notes of the questions that I had trouble with in the problem sets by writing out the premise/conclusion and explanations for each AC on a Word doc. But I found this to be taking too much time (especially because I feel like I should review almost every question in the set) and I feel like it can become a bit of an overkill. I additionally draw some key diagrams that JY's using in his videos and noting down very minimal stuff, which I can easily review afterwards. But I'm not sure if I can/will review my question notes again.
I wonder if you have any recommendations on how to proceed with note taking/journaling. I would appreciate your insights!
I finished the CC a while ago, foolproofed all the games from PT's 16 - 35 and then started taking PT's. Seeing how low my LG scores were, I've incorporated more LG work into my schedule by drilling games from PT 1-15, and foolproofing newer games from the PT's I'm taking. I'm still working on the 1-15 batch, but it is really discouraging to see that I sometimes score as low as -4 on a new game from these old PT's. Also, among the 4 PT's that I took to this day, my LG average is -8.
I should add that even though I am putting in regular practice into it, I haven't focused entirely to LG because I also need to improve in LR and RC, and I felt like I could improve by incorporating some regular LG work into my schedule without devoting all my time to it. Because honestly, BR'ing games is a breeze to me and I always manage to get a perfect score in a short amount of time in BR. So I'm really upset that I'm not seeing results when doing the games timed. I feel too rushed and stressed even when I'm using a stopwatch instead of a count-down, and I make stupid mistakes that I can see right through in BR.
I would really really appreciate any help that you guys can provide.
PS. I'm registered for the June international exam on the 28th, and if I don't sit this one I will miss this cycle since the next exam is in November, so I'm looking to improve until then (hopefully).
I hope everyone's healthy and staying productive these days. Just wanted to check in and ask how everyone is studying and scheduling their days during quarantine. I'm wondering especially how y'all preserve your sanity and what do you do to calm your mind and just chill.
I have a full time job but the pandemic reduced my workload tremendously, which means I have a lot of time to study now, yay! But the downside is that I am now inclined to work almost all day, and everyday. I tried taking today off (that is after taking a PT :)), but I ended up deciding to study as little as possible, by foolproofing a few games and reading RC sections from the Trainer. Cause the guilt of not studying is making me feel very anxious.
But on the bright side, I now get to practice yoga every morning (highly recommended) and also try to squeeze in some meditation time. Other than that practically the only breaks I get during the day are my 2 coffee breaks and watching an episode of the Office every now and then.
Day-offs are overrated anyway am I right?? But seriously I think I need advice on how not to burn out. Also wouldn't it be great if everyone shared some ideas on how we can all preserve our mental health while going through all this shit?
I did experience the same thing! Don't be discouraged! What I realized was while I could get away with prephrasing in earlier PT's, I couldn't in the new ones because there would be a trap AC sounding like a popular prephrase, but it would actually mean something else. So I needed to adjust the rigor of my prephrasing (and eventually switched to no-prephrasing, just understanding the argument and maybe spotting the gap if it's obvious approach. But you gotta experiment and practice to find the best approach for you). Overall I think the newer tests do require more flexibility and outside the box thinking. So don't underestimate the power of BR - make sure you really dig deep into questions that gave you difficulty by coming up with parallel arguments, etc. Basically you just need to practice and get used to the newer tests. Also maybe redo difficult questions from these PT's from time to time. In time, and especially if you decide go back to PT 50s or 60s, you'll notice that the questions haven't changed all that much. That's how it went for me and I eventually did fine, so hang in there!
I work at a law firm and my current assignment is to draft a protocol to terminate an agreement, and I'm having trouble applying what I've so far learned in logic. I'd love to hear what you guys think about this particular article in the agreement that we're asked to terminate. It's something along the lines of:
This Agreement shall come into force as of the share acquisition of the New Shareholder has been accomplished.
It's not so neatly put but my understanding is that it is a conditional statement, and that it can be translated as 'Share acquisition → Come into effect'.
My first question is do you think this is the correct translation??
The second issue is (let's assume the above logical translation holds here) that the acquisition of shares has NOT taken place in our case. A senior associate told me that the Agreement has not come into effect because of this, which made me think: sufficiency necessity confusion!! We cannot infer '/Share acquisition → /Come into effect' from 'Share acquisition → Come into effect'!!!
BUT I've come to think that he has a point..
All along we learned that given Jedi → Force, it would be fallacious to infer anything from /Jedi since the rule becomes irrelevant when we negate the sufficient condition. Why? Because we simply do not know what would happen outside this world. In the '/Jedi' instance, you could be a force user or not, we simply do not have enough info from just Jedi → Force.
But in this case, we have an entire agreement to figure out what happens when. And in our agreement, there is no other condition or instance that makes the agreement enforceable. No sort of 'This agreement shall enter into force upon signature by both parties' clause, etc.
So, my second question is, since our conditional statement has become irrelevant (since the sufficient condition about share acq. has not been satisfied) and since we have no other condition to trigger the necessary condition, can we conclude that the necessary condition will also not take place (/Come into effect)??
Sorry for the length of this post but I'm looking forward to a discussion :)
B) This is wrong because the argument isn't actually trying to explain the chemical compounds. It's concerned with the variance in symptoms of mental illnesses.
E) I think this would be correct if it said the argument presumes that symptoms of mental illnesses are only manifestations of physical phenomena (or even better, organic factors).
I took a diagnostic test on paper, then I circled in my anwers to the answer sheet on 7sage. I also want to circle in my blind review answers, like in the problem sets, so I can get more accurate analytics. I hope this is possible and if so, I would greatly appreciate any guidance on this.
The flaw here wasn't readily clear to me although it seems like a basic one. It's sort of funny but an analogous argument could be something like:
Using facial cleansers by itself is an ineffective method against acne breakouts. However, they can be very effective if followed by an application of toner. Therefore to get clear skin, one should apply toner in addition to facial cleanser, rather than applying either one by itself.