I think I can help elucidate the example:

"All tennis players run. Lionel Messi runs. Therefore, Lionel Messi is a tennis player."

In the real world, we know Lionel Messi is a soccer player and we also know that millions of other people run. I thought something like this could help people understand this flaw better.

For A>B>C>D remember that Unless in conditional logic is Group 3, which leads us to Negate Sufficient Condition.

So now we remove the unless. 'one cannot' becomes 'one can'. Why? The negated form of 'cannot' is 'can'.

"Therefore, if one can become Jedi (sufficient condition), then one possesses extraordinary discipline (necessary condition). A>D

I am reviewing my lessons and this lesson is unnecessarily complicated. Examples 2 and 3 are quite elaborate for a beginner who has yet to experience any type of LSAT questions. 7Sage is great at explaining and I am sure they did their best, but if you are a student and are reading this, please give yourself a pat on the back and know that practice will make you have a better grasp of these topic(s).

'Failing' a Sufficient or a Necessary condition in a chain means that the following premises in the argument did not 'activate' the previous ones in the chain.

For example:

Here is a simple A>B Conditional:

"If I go to the green store, then I buy blueberry yogurt."

Satisfying the Sufficient would be 'I went to the green store". Just by me saying this, you can guarantee I got blueberry yogurt. It's valid. 100%.

Denying the Necessary would be something like "I did not get blueberry yogurt, but I got these fluffy blueberry muffins'. This is directly 'denying/not triggering' the necessary condition ("then I buy blueberry yogurt") and leads us to conclude that I did not go to the green store. Why? Because had I been at the green store, I would have gotten blueberry yogurt. I might have gotten my fluffy blueberry muffins at a farmer's market, or from my brother's house, or from a blue store.

If anyone needs help, please feel free to contact me. I had a ton of trouble with this and will gladly help anyone stuck.

Another strong hint for E being the right answer is that typically means 'Usually', 'Mostly' on the LSAT.

I'm interested! Invite me (3(/p)

Another thing to consider is how embellished and overwhelmingly explanatory the writing can be at RC. Obviously, this is an attempt to riddle us with details. For example, a considerable amount of the paragraph above is describing the bacteria and the hypothesis, but ultimately the paragraph bottles down.

I’m down.

Lightbulb moment towards the end: We are not looking for a description of the argument, but where the argument went wrong.

The explanation for D and E sucks. Isn't E doing the exact same thing? I'm talking about the Sufficient condition being an erroneous negation.

I got the question right but the explanation is bad.

One tip that’s helped is that RC is not LR. The answer is THERE in the passage. When I just can’t find the right answer, I check why the others are not right. Every word in the answers MATTERS and one wrong word completely destroys some answers from being the right one.

Instead of trying to remember the complete passage, I focus on remembering where they talked about what in the passage. The introduction and conclusion help a ton in those ‘What was this passage about’ while the body (the other paragraphs) provide information about tone, etc (along with the conclusion).

I usually get all of them right or -1 or MAX -2 on my RC drills (the hard ones).

Another tip is when they mention what did the author mean by this word or words, FOCUS ON THE CONTEXT surrounding the words — nothing else. Do not apply your idea of romantic when the passage hints that their use of romantic was in the sense of ‘hopeless romantic’ or of a ‘fool in love’.

I was in your same boat last week! I’ve been working on RC the past 10 days. Feel free to reach out so we can give each other tips and note what works!

Best of luck!

#help

Why is it that we can turn hypothetical into factual with no difference?

This is groundbreaking information for me, and I assume many others, so if it were doable to further elucidate on the topic, it'd be grand.

I assume it is because if the Sufficient is activated, then so is Necessary. Proper? With this in mind, we can always assume if --> then as factual; therefore, it's simpler to push this 'factual' statement to free ourselves from getting confused by hypotheticals when handling conditional(s).

I believe I am right, but I want to be 100%, haha.

Thank you kindly.

My partner is a Doctor so I answered A because it's true. Sigh.

Got topped by this question :(

I see strengthening as a missing premise. What's missing that completes this argument/adds weight to its veracity. Some 'wrong' answers go against what the premises say. Keep an eye out for that, y'all! We are not fighting with the premises, we are helping complete an otherwise weak(er) argument.

This question is a bit iffy. Assuming and equating less car thieves as automobile thefts declining is a huge assumption and contrary to a lot of lessons here on 7Sage. This comes from someone who owns car dealerships, lol, so it is not a 'naive assumption'.

I initially picked A then switched to E because the assumption gaps on A were just massive.

POE is so effective for me in MBT. There are obviously 4 answer choices that are wrong, but eliminating answers that are outright ridiculous is so helpful in narrowing down the most plausible answer choices.

I think what's tripping everyone (including myself) is the fact that there is no active member in place for the sufficient condition. Prior to this, we had Cats and Force Users helping us visualize Sufficient Conditions, so that's why this problem was much harder to process. Let me elaborate:

Firstly, we are given the following conditional statement:

"Students are cited as "late" only if they arrive more than five minutes past the last ring of the homeroom bell."

Then we are told:

"Kumar arrived 17 minutes after the last ring of the homeroom bell."

We assume Kumar is late because it's common sense in normal English conversation, but we have to consider that in the LSAT, we are thinking in Logic terms.

The following statement:

"Kumar arrived 17 minutes after the last ring of the homeroom bell."

simply 'triggers' the Necessary Condition: "only if they arrive more than five minutes past the last ring of the homeroom bell," but that does nothing to help us know if he's late. I know this sounds super ridiculous at first, but this will get easier with practice.

[Remember that the sufficient conditions needs to be triggered for the necessary condition to trigger as well. (The is what 7Sage refers to 'the oldest trick in the book').]

I initially picked E, but there are tons of assumptions to make for E to make sense. Just because you get a pay raise DOES NOT MEAN you will splurge and start purchasing houses -- even if you can afford it.

Damn JY, what did Dr. Broder do to you?

I'm commenting to note how handy the last linking image is. It perfectly shows how LR is connected and how the process goes; this helps keep the previous lessons fresh in mind.

I love y'alls explanations for MBT.

I'm confused as to how B>C is a could. The stimulus clearly notes it would lead to an economic disaster. I understand the military example is used to elucidate the analogy, but I do not see how we arrived at a 'should' when there is a would. #help

I will surely revise other questions but I am sure students in the future will be confused by this as well, so I thought I'd ask.