the person talking with the driver on a cell phone is unable to see the driving situation and can't immediately recognize situations in which driving becomes difficult. but a passenger in the vehicle will either be quiet or even provide helpful warnings in such situations.

therefore, conversing on a cell phone while driving is more dangerous than conversing with a passenger in the vehicle.

the key or let say reasonable assumption here is that when the person can't immediately recognize the situations in which driving becomes difficult, at that moment, the person on the phone will still keep talking.

D. no, it's in the wrong direction.

E. conversing on a cell phone while driving is the same or less dangerous than talking to a passenger? no

C. I don't care what they believe in. no thanks.

B. I need the comparison between passenger and someone what keeps talking. what if a driver having a conversation with a passenger is more likely to have an accident than is a driver who is not talking? so what? the cell phone person is talking, and I need to prove that the cell phone one is more dangerous.

A. /help → speaking would increase. what /help, still no increase? the cell phone situation, that means no increase. in the passenger situation, quiet, still no increase. so, they can be the same. therefore, the argument is wrecked.

this question is hard not because of the embedded conditional rules but about how to contradict the elements of the rules. how do we contradict the statement of "mistakenly believe it's fatty?" it should be something like /mistakenly believe it's fatty. what is that? D spoke to me at the end but no way I could have anticipated that.

For B, even though it is about highway accident rates, it's still not as good as D because people could just ignore the 80 speed limit. and when they saw the new 90 speed limit policy, they started to drive more carefully.

M: heckling the performer is a long-standing tradition of stand-up comedy. the performers know this and learn to respond entertainingly. that's why it's unwise for comedy venues to prevent audience members from heckling.

C: heckling is only a long-standing tradition of comedy because it's tolerated, and it's only fun for the heckler. in most cases, heckling is just a distraction from the performance.

A. C would say no. what would M say on this? M doesn't mention anything about tolerance, so keep it.

B. M will say yes. C would say no, because it's a distraction.

C. the best stand-up comedians? I don't know if M would agree with that. what about C, IDK. seems like C is the best so far.

D. does M agree with that? IDK, it could be because M says the performers will learn to respond entertainingly. for C, it's a no.

E. M would agree with that. C will disagree with that.

left with A, D and C, I would choose C because it is the safest out of the three.

after WW2, many builders found that air-conditioned houses lacking the high ceilings and thick walls that kept residents cool during extreme heat generally sold well.

therefore, the increased availability and affordability of ac changed the residential architecture after WW2.

so, those not high and not thick houses with AC sold well after WW2. and because of that, it contributes to the changes of the architecture at that time. I need to say it's not because of the AC that these buildings went through these changes.

A. so? I don't know what to do with this. I mean, the AC still could be cause I guess? so no

B. ok, AC type of houses cost more to heat in winter. keep it. can't see how it can be relevant. but like, what if in the summer, because of the increased availability of AC, the houses were built this way? so no.

C. perfect... even with no demand for AC, the houses still were build that way.

D. ok, it seems to weaken I guess? like the thin walk can't retain the cool air.

E. ok... I don't really know what to do with that...

C is so right that we should choose it and move on.

to boost milk production, some farmers treat cows with BST. consumer groups have opposed the use of BST even though BST-treated cows' milk is identical in nutritional value to that of untreated cows. ok, do we know why this group opposes it? no. classic belief and facts distinction trap. the treated cows run a greater risk of infection and hence are more likely to be given antibiotics, which may show up in their milk. in high levels, these antibiotics may be harmful to humans. yet the milk of treated and untreated cows alike is regularly screened for antibiotics. ok, if both types of milk will be screened, the treated milk should be fine I guess? but what if other risks of consuming the treated milk, like stress related factors? IDK, I am just making things up.

A. no legitimate reasons? hum.. keep it. #16 with strong worded answer choice and put in A, keep it.

B. seems good. because they both will be screened. but what if they have other unknown risks?

C. no. it can help with the milk production I guess.

D. seems good two. but high levels of antibiotics? the stimulus just says they will be screened. keep it

E. no. only threat? we don't know that.

when I got down to E, I feel like the same reason could knock B out... and compared to D, A is nonsense.

if we do the contrapositive of the statement, it says /successfully screened for high levels of antibiotics → can't be presumed safe for humans. perfect! here, I think presume is the key word.

some residents complain that the city has no right to require homeowners to connect to city water services. but they are wrong because we will charge them a fair market price for the service and our plan will benefit all of the residents by increasing city revenue and by making the city a healthier and safer place in which to live.

ok, the conclusion is they are wrong. it means the city does have the right. to put it in another way, we could say something like someone says one has no right of doing something is wrong if ...

D. the sufficient condition seems great. but has no right to complain? no...we just want to say they are wrong...

C. has no right? no thanks.

D. should have right is the sufficient condition? no

A. correct

E. no thanks.

a good design ‑m→ gone through many drafts. each an improvement over the previous one. ok. a sketch of the idea allows a designer to see an idea's advantages and flaws. ok, I guess that's the reason why it's all going to be better than the previous version. the ways in which the sketch appears muddled or confused tend to reveal to the designer ways in which the design has been inadequately conceptualized. ok, another explanation. I can't really put things together to make further inferences.

A. turn out best? we don't know that. no

B. many good designs emerged from ideas that were flawed. flawed? hum, keep it.

C. don't turn out well? we only know designs that turn out well.

D. I think that's the opposite of what the stimulus is saying.

E. never? no

choose B and move on.

don't know why I got this one wrong...

the alternative security options are more expensive. and they can replace passwords only if they become standard on most of the world's computers.

therefore, passwords are not going to be replaced by other options anytime soon.

I need to trigger /become standard on most of the world's computers and only D mentions it.

maybe I got caught up on the distinction of can replace vs. will replace and the concept of sooner...but if we know the argument structure, D is really true in the sense that it has to be right. can't replace I think does mean will not replace. but will not replace doesn't mean it can't replace. to do something, we have to be able to do that thing.

the ocean S has armor which is used to protect them from their predators. while the lake S doesn't. the armor limits the sped of S's growth.

therefore: having a larger size is a better defense against the lake predators than having armor.

here, to weaken it, we need to say having a larger size is not a better defense against the lake predators than having armor.

A. I think it's attractive because it's famed in a classic LSAT way. if the S with armor can't swim fast, that means the S without armor can swim real fast. if that's the case, the lake S can run away from the predators instead of having the larger size as the dense mechanism. it weakens the conclusion by saying the larger size doesn't necessarily. but, do we know if there are fast-moving predators in the lake???

B. prefect. if that's true, it's more likely that having a larger size is not a better defense against the lake predators than having armor.

C. there's a lot of ways to interpret C. it could be like strengthening the argument by saying larger size can scare away the insects or weakening by saying larger size doesn't help to protect them from predatory because no larger fish prey upon them and just small fish bit them instead of being scared away. in fact, JY points out a good reason to eliminate C or at least helps us to divert more attention to B is that it's a comparative statement. it's dangerous, no matter how great it sounds, don't choose it unless you have to. that's a strategy how we get questions right and fast.

D. E no thanks.

I chose C confidently because I told myself it's a sufficient assumption...

anyway, a lot of people are asking how to distinguish between NA and SA. most of the time, when you see a conditional statement in the question stem like which one of the following, if assumed, would ..., it'a SA. And if we see words like requires, depends, rely, usually they are NA. Also, NA question stems usually would read like what has to be there. I do think for most of the time, it's not that hard to tell whether it's a NA or SA. this question is kind of distinct I think.

classic classic.

K: because the company wants to make money by selling the insurance to you, it's unwise to buy that insurance.

B: sure, the company is for profit. but it doesn't mean it's unwise to buy the insurance.

here, B's response is a red flag. because it doesn't say it's wise. B simply says the premise can't help to support K's argument.

A. direct conflict with her conclusion? that means saying wise? but no

B. denying K's premises?

C. toward its being false? it's like what A is trying to sat...

D. great. B didn't deny the conclusion.

E. no.

some anticancer drugs work by depriving growing tumors of needed blood vessels. the creation of blood vessels is called A. and the drugs work by inhibiting this process of A. the same drugs have been found to prevent obesity in rodents.

here, we notice there's a weird shift from cancer to obesity. our focus should fall on obesity because it's a LSAT question. they do love having the answer choice that is about the last seemingly unrelated element.

A. we don't know fat cells and other cells.

B. obese humans? but the stimulus is saying the prevention of obesity.

C. fat tissue? but we are dealing with overweight here. we don't know their overweight is due to fat tissue.

D. E just no

I didn't like C because we need to assume fat is contributing to the obesity and we need to assume the fat tissue has A. the key is to know prevention of something is not the same thing as curing that something already in place I guess.

I found something interesting for strengthening question. when the stimulus's premises say like most of X tend to have most of Y, we can strengthen it by saying more X and more Y. when the stimulus's premises say more X tend to have more Y, we can strengthen it by saying when most of X, then most of Y. the same kind of logic repeats a lot of time in strengthening questions...

stress causes both negative emotions and impair physical health. therefore, improving the negative emotions helps to improve one's health.

I think some people would misread this because in our daily life, we kind of know stress could be caused by negative emotions and impaired physical health...

I could find the answer choice I wanted because I read it wrong. the worse part was I spent 2:22 on this question...

read the stimulus more carefully I guess.

the correlation here is sung, kept. /sung, /kept.

I disagree how JY interprets the stimulus.

we are told that few carbonated beverages contain C. some very popular ones contain caffeine and consuming caffeine causes people to excrete more C than they would otherwise. however, teenagers who drink this kind of beverages containing caffeine tend to suffer more broken bones than those who don't. since we know that C deficiency can lead to broken bones (that means it's nothing to do with C because we know caffeine helps to excrete more C), we should say the broken bones are due to caffeine.

when we first read the stimulus it would feel weird. it's stated that caffeine helps bring more C, why the hell you mention C deficiency can lead to bone issues? here, we need to read between the lines: the author is trying to say: C deficiency is known to lead to the bone issue, but you know what? caffeine helps to bring C to the body, so we should exclude the possibility that these teenagers drinking the beverages with bone issues are caused by C deficiency. but as what A addresses, it still could be the case that it's caused by C deficiency.

B. we only care about those we drink that kind of beverage.

C. same as B.

D. great, so more C then. so it helps to establish the argument then?

E. no idea what it is. do these people consume C a lot?

six med students were each separately presented with the same patient, whose symptoms could be the result of any one of several medical conditions. here, I was thinking. hum, symptoms vs. medical conditions? ok, it's saying the symptoms might be caused by one of the medical conditions. one physician asked each student a leading question: what tests should we order to try to rule out a diagnosis of X, where X was filled in with a different medical condition for each student. so, there's X1, X2 ...X6 of 6 different medical conditions for each student. also, it makes sense to call the identification of the causes as a type of diagnosis I guess. and then next week, with the same set and without the leading question, each student began by testing the diagnosis that had been suggested by the original attending physician.

A. correct.

B. what? most likely to lead to the patients' symptoms? we don't know that

C. we don't know if the second attending physician was aware or not

D. we don't know that.

E. I think it contradicts the stimulus because it says each student began by testing the suggested one, meaning that they are aware other potential medical conditions.

this question is hard because we need to know what symptoms, medical conditions and diagnosis are and the relations between them. I do think LSAT deliberately does this to lose us. when we are reading the stimulus, we really need to try hard to make sense of it. otherwise we will lose the battle.

JY points out a really helpful and mechanical way to clearly solve this question. when I read the stimulus, I was thinking the answer choice must be something like the total number of rodents in NA is more than any other species in NA. in this case, I chose D and moved on. I didn't know what D was actually saying... but what D is saying is that one of the species of rodent species has the most individual members in NA. it doesn't have to be true.

For each set, we draw a circle to represent that set and the member of that set. with most of the circles are nonrodent species, the few rodent species circles have the larger area of the map. we need to do this in our head really quick. B says tend to. it's fishy but it can be right here.

the authors would disagree with XXX

both authors would disagree with XXX

THEY ARE DIFFERENT!

this is due not so much to XX as to YY. YY is the position being supported...

if we map out the second long rule, we know that no way we can conclude should change. we can only conclude /change. then, we are left with C and D. C is obvious the right answer choice.

other than = except

Real tough question.

We are told that EZ is more harmful than 400. the first difficulty to overcome is to know that what the "two pesticides" refer to. I was so confused because E and Z can be the two pesticides.

For A to work for us, we need to trigger the contrapositive, that means 400 is not more harmful than the EZ, then, they should both be legal. in fact it is right in part. keep it.

B. one of them is harmful, ok they shouldn't both be legal. same as A, partially right.

C. if it's not both are harmful, ...., I don't care anymore because it doesn't trigger here.

D. this one is so tricky but to give this answer a chance to be right, we need to negate this. so the former is not less harmful than the latter, OK, the former should be the EZ, the latter should be the 400. 400 legal or EZ illegal. correct....

E. harmless? no thanks.

the key to solve this question is to know what need to be triggered in order to have a chance to be a right answer choice.

this one is hard for me. I think the difference between C and E is that C is more specific and E is too board. E is saying all the treatment towards Clemens is indicative of its treatment of public figures in general but here, the stimulus just talks about deference type of treatment out of all types of treatment.

takeaway: if got stuck between answer choices, choose one that has the key word.