If you had a hard time verbalizing the flaw, here's how I eliminated the wrong answers and selected the correct one:

Skeleton from stimulus =

Premise: USUALLY A → B → C

Conclusion: Must be true that USUALLY C

_

A) Wrong, does not match.

Premise: All A → B

Premise: C → B

Conclusion: A → C

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B) Wrong bc USUALLY/MOST ≠ SOME

Premise: SOME A → B → C

Conclusion: Must be true that SOME C

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C) Wrong, does not match.

Premise: MANY A → B → C

Conclusion: MANY A → C

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D) CORRECT. MOST = USUALLY, so this is an exact match.

Premise: MOST A → B → C

Conclusion: Must be true that MOST C

_

E) Wrong. Does not match.

Premise: MOST A → B → C

Conclusion: Must be true that MOST A → C

For Identify the Main Conclusion questions, the conclusion MUST be stated in the stimulus.

A is wrong bc it is never stated. The LSAT wants us to select this answer by assuming that this must be true, however, just bc people are paid for this work does not mean they won't volunteer. People could believe in Marcia and volunteer for free. Then it might not be true that Marcia will probably not be elected.

Analogous argument -

Premise: Taking care of a dog is very time consuming.

Premise: Anything that is very time consuming is unacceptable.

Conclusion: You should get a pet other than a dog.

Flaw: This argument is flawed bc they are assuming that other pets will not be very time consuming. What if being very time consuming is a quality that every pet has to some degree? What if they get a different pet (cat), and this pet is still very time consuming? Then the conclusion falls apart.

Possible Answer choices:

- Overlooks the possibility that the other options may also have this quality.

- Fails to consider that the other available pets could all be very time consuming to some degree.

Stimulus -

Context (conclusion): Kramer's book claims that coal companies are to blame for economic difficulties.

Context (support): Bc people Kramer interviewed said the coal companies did not invest.

Main Conclusion: Kramer's claim in the book is wrong.

Main Premise: Bc the coal companies did invest.

Flaw: The Editorial reaches his conclusion by stating that the premise in support of Kramer's contention is wrong, then the Editorial proceeds to claim the opposite (coal companies DID invest). So, he attacks Kramer's argument by saying his premise is wrong, so he has a bad argument.

E) Correct. The Editorial claims that the support/premise for Kramer's claim is bad, therefore, Kramer cannot reach the conclusion that coal companies are to blame. So, the Editorial is attacking Kramer by saying he has made a bad argument.

A) Wrong. The Editorial never blames another party.

B) Wrong. The Editorial never discusses the reputation of the coal industry.

C) Wrong. The Editorial is not attacking Kramer for his ulterior motives.

D) Wrong. There is nothing about sufficient/necessary conditioning in this argument.

Question Type: Flaw

Premise: Every vacation significantly reduces psychological exhaustion (PE) from work.

Conclusion: Workers should take several short vacations instead of 1 or 2 long vacations to reduce the amount of PE as much as possible.

Flaw:

- What if one long vacation significantly reduces PE more than all of the short vacations combined? What if you can reduce your PE much greater with 1 long vacation than with 5 short ones?

- Example: let's create a hypothetical where "Significantly reduces" can be on a scale from 1-100. If each small vacation only significantly reduces by 10 on the scale and you take 5 vacations, then the worker will experience a significant reduction in PE of 50. BUT, what if 2 long vacations cause each worker to experience a significant reduction in PE by 50. Then 2 long vacations could significantly reduce PE by 100, while 5 short vacations only significantly reduce by 50. Therefore, the conclusion would be false.

- So, the author fails to consider that long vacations could reduce PE by a lot more than a short vacation could.

Answer Choices -

E) Correct. This directly addresses the flaw discussed above.

A) Wrong. This does not identify the flaw bc it is just saying that all of the short vacations each reduce the PE by the same amount. It does not address the flaw whatsoever.

B) Wrong. The office manager is not assuming that vacations are the only means necessary to reducing PE. The office manager is just concluding that they should take many small vacations over less longer vacations.

C) Wrong. It doesn't matter that some office workers would vary in the amount of PE reduced. The author is just concerned about reducing as much PE as possible for the workers.

D) Wrong. The office manager is not concerned about changing the amount of vacation time given. The manager is only talking about dividing the time that they are providing.

Conclusion: A reduction of academic plagiarism will lead to a reduction of professional misconduct.

Premise: Students who plagiarize are more likely to engage in professional misconduct.

Flaw: The author assumes that a correlation can indicate a causation.

A) Wrong. We are told that the surveys are anonymous, so there should be no reason to lie. The strength/reliability of the survey is also not the central flaw between the premise and conclusion.

B) Wrong. This does not happen. All of the premises are relevant in the argument.

C) Wrong. The author does NOT assume that a certain phenomenon (reduction of academic plagiarism) is the ONLY cause/contributing factor. We just know that it is A cause, the author never claims that it is the only cause.

D) Wrong. This never happens in the argument.

E) CORRECT. The author assumes that a reduction of plagiarism will cause a reduction of misconduct, from a mere correlation between students who plagiarize and professional misconduct.

I initially missed #9, but during the BR I was able to get it correct through process of elimination.

I did not really have a clear picture in regards to what paragraph 2 was about. However, I did know that it was about how the system worked for widows (how women acquired land).

A) Wrong bc the conclusion drawn is in the first paragraph, not the third paragraph.

B) Wrong bc the paragraph was not narrating a sequence of events. I initially chose this bc I thought the mention of the Magna Carta and the mention of 1272 classified as a sequence of events. However, the main purpose of this paragraph was to outline how women were actually owning land, since it listed ways in which they acquired it. B is also wrong bc the outcome is not discussed in the 3rd paragraph. If the outcome was discussed, then it would have talked about what happened as a direct or indirect result of the laws. Instead, the third paragraph elaborates on the power the women held with land.

C) Correct, bc the first paragraph explained that widows having land gave them power. Paragraph 2 explains the ways in which the women acquired the land. So we can conclude that the ways in which the women acquired the land explains how the circumstances (women having power) occurred.

D) Wrong, bc there was no specific event mentioned in the first paragraph. And it wasn't mentioning effects of anything, it was discussing HOW women had land.

E) Wrong, the first paragraph never discussed the "arguments of a group"

Flaw: What if there are other incentives besides just increasing corporate profits and increasing the exec's salaries that might cause an exec to lower the wages of their lowest paid employee? What if this law only helps to protect against these specific incentives (increase corp profits & exec salaries), but fails to protect against other incentives? We cannot conclude that this law will PROTECT the lowest paid employees, we can only conclude that it will help to protect the lowest paid employees. There could be other incentives causing the decrease in salary.

A) Wrong bc this does not have to be true. First of all, the number 50 stated in the stimulus is just an example. The number is subject to change, but A is saying that the number IS 50.

B) Wrong for a couple of reasons. First, it also sticks with the number 50 when the stimulus indicates that it could be a different number, so automatically this answer choice is false. Second, it is discussing execs below the exec salary ceiling, meaning the lowest paid employees are still subject to getting salary decreases. If the exec is making $100,000 a month but the salary ceiling for them is $200,000 in the new law, then they can keep increasing their salary by decreasing the salaries of their lowest paid employees until they hit this ceiling. Therefore, this may not protect the salaries of the lowest paid employees.

D) Wrong bc it does not have to be true that the execs would NEVER CHANGE the wages of the lowest paid employees. The word "change" can mean increase or decrease. So this answer choice would eliminate the possibility of execs raising the lowest paid employees' wages too, but this does not have to be true bc it is never stated in the stimulus. The negation test for answer choice D also fails to destroy the argument. The negation test states that "if execs could not increase their own salaries by cutting the pay of their lowest paid employees, then they would sometimes change the wages of those employees." This does not destroy the argument, bc the stimulus states that "the wages of MANY of the lowest paid employees would be protected." The stimulus implied that there will be some employees who's wages still change after the law is enacted.

I missed this question bc I thought the second premise (analogy) was an extension/continuation of the first premise (few other recipes from Rome have survived). However, it is now clear that they are 2 different forms of support for the conclusion.

Conclusion: The conclusion that the recipes compiled by A are a reliable indicator of how Romans prepared their food is too hasty.

Premise 1: Few other recipes from Rome have survived.

Premise 2: Analogy - The recipes of A may have been atypical, just like the recipes of modern chefs.

When looking at the argument like this, it is clear that the author does 2 things to show that he is not convinced of the historian's argument:

(1) He points out the small sample size (insufficient evidence).

(2) He makes an analogy.

So, A is the wrong answer choice bc it states that the author made the argument based SOLELY on the premise about insufficient evidence (1). It completely ignores the fact that the author also made an analogy(2) to support his conclusion. A is also wrong bc the author does not REJECT the view, he just states what he thinks is wrong about it.

From the stimulus, we can make these conditional chains: (I made 4 chains on the computer, but on paper I drew these as only 2 different chains. I don't know how to show two things pointing to the same necessary condition on computer)

~respect like --> kind --> prosper

fully content --> like --> kind --> prosper

&

prosper --> kind --> ~like respect

prosper --> kind --> like --> fully content

A is wrong bc the conditional arrows do not point in a direction that allows us to conclude that some people that like each other are not fully content. The only thing we can conclude from people who like each other is that they are kind and they want them to prosper. Therefore, we don't know if it must be false, since it COULD BE TRUE.

B is the correct answer bc it directly counters what our conditional chain states, so it must be false. Our conditional shows that fully content --> like --> kind --> prosper. So we know that if they are fully content, then they must want each other to prosper (fully content --> prosper). B is correct bc it shows that there can be some cases where fully content --> ~prosper, but we know that this can never happen since our conditional shows that prosper is a necessary condition for fully content.

C is the wrong answer choice bc it COULD BE TRUE. Our conditional confirms that this very answer choice could actually happen: respect like --> fully content.

D is the wrong answer choice bc we don't know whether or not this could happen. Our conditional change does not show any connection between prosper and dislike, so we cannot conclude that this must never happen. It COULD BE TRUE since we know that it doesn't counter anything in the conditional chain. It is wrong for the same reason as answer choice A.

E is the wrong answer choice bc it COULD BE TRUE. From our conditional, we know that ~respect like --> kind, so we can say that some who are kind to each other don't show respect.

Tip: For Must Be False Questions, look for answers that DIRECTLY counter what is stated in the conditional logic. In this instance, we know that fully content --> prosper, so the wrong answer choice claims that in some situations fully content --> ~prosper.

Another potential correct answer choice could have been something like this: "some people who like each other are not kind to one another."

The conditional logic would look like this: like ~ kind

This would be incorrect bc our conditional chain shows that like always leads to kind (like --> kind), so that answer choice must be false.

Conclusion: Total Bank lending to companies is less than it was 5 years ago.

Premise 1: Interest rates that banks pay to borrow are higher than the interest rates they can receive from large companies.

Premise 2: Banks won't lend to companies not financially strong.

Premise 3: Total lending by banks to small and medium sized companies is less than it was 5 years ago.

Flaw: What if, despite the fact that Interest rates that banks pay to borrow are higher than they can receive from large companies, banks are still lending more to large companies to a point that it is either equaling or exceeding the Total bank lending from 5 years ago. We know that the total lending for small and mid-sized companies are smaller, but we don't know anything about the size of the total lending for large companies. Since this is a SA question, we have to completely fill in this gap. We can do this by stating that Banks will not lend to companies that have interest rates lower than what the bank pays to borrow (aka they will not lend to large, financially strong companies).

A) Correct. This directly addresses the flaw. If banks do not lend to companies that pay interest rates lower than what the bank pays to borrow, then they will NOT lend to large, financially strong companies. We know that they will also not lend to large, not financially strong companies (addressed in Premise 3). Since the Total Bank lending to small and mid-sized companies is less than it was 5 years ago, and they are not lending to large companies, then we can conclude that the total bank lending is less than it was 5 years ago.

B) Wrong. We don't care, we need an answer choice that directly addresses the size of the large companies having money lent to them by the bank.

C) Wrong for similar reasons to B. We need an answer choice that will address the size of large corporations being lent money.

D) Wrong. It does not seal the gap. This tells us that the rates are higher than 5 years ago, but it does not tell us whether or not they will be lending to large companies. For this reason, we are unable to determine that the total lending has decreased, bc the banks could still be lending to large corporations even if the banks are borrowing at a higher rate.

E) Wrong. This also does not address whether or not banks are lending to large companies.

This is how I approached this Strengthening question -

Conclusion: It is the burrowing activities of T that causes FC to form.

Premise: T colonies are found in every FC.

Flaw: what if the colonies are there just to hunt? What if they don't use the FC for burrowing. Just bc they are present does not mean we can conclude that they are there to burrow. Even if they are there to burrow, what if something else is causing FC to form?

A is correct bc it could strengthen the conclusion that the burrowing is causing the FCs to form. If the plants in the new FCs are only damaged at the roots, then that indicates there is some underground activity going on. So if the colonies are found in the FC, and only the roots are being damaged, then that helps us to conclude that there is some underground activity (potentially burrowing). If they are only damaged at the roots from the burrowing, then this also shows that this is most likely the cause of the formation.

B is incorrect bc we do not care about the plants growing around the FC. They could be thriving for various reasons. It does not help us conclude that burrowing activity is occurring.

C is incorrect bc the water content does not tell us anything about burrowing causing FA.

D is incorrect bc it does not help us conclude that burrowing is going on.

E is wrong bc it requires us to make an assumption. We are assuming that if a predator lives nearby, then it lives near where it's prey burrows. What if predators choose to stay away from burrows and only attack T where they hunt and look for food? We cannot make this assumption that a predator nearby means that the prey's burrow is present, so this does not strengthen. Since we cannot do this, we cannot assume that the burrowing is causing the FC.

Tip - It helps to focus on the conclusion when going into the answer choices. A was the only answer choice that could actually indicate burrowing being a major cause of the formations.

A is wrong bc we don't know what utility companies TYPICALLY do. We were never told anything about this in the stimulus.

B is wrong bc it is directly countered in the stimulus. The stimulus states that wind blowing across a line cools it more than parallel winds, hence it can carry greater loads. The answer choice states the opposite: wind blowing parallel cools more than wind blown across, hence it can carry greater loads.

C is correct, bc we know that an increase in the electrical load causes an increase in the line's temp. We also know that the line's temp is affected by wind speed and direction. Wind cools the lines. So, we can infer that if there is any kind of increase in wind speed, the line's temp will be decreased, the electrical load can increase more without reaching the max OT.

D is wrong bc we do not know anything about air temp (since the stimulus never mentioned it), let alone compare it to wind speed.

E is incorrect bc we have no information indicating to us that max OT can change. All we know is that wind speed has the ability to cool the line, which allows the amount of load to change. For all we know, the max OT is ALWAYS the same. For example, say the max OT is 70 degrees, and every time you increase the load by 1 it increases by 1 degree. So, if on non-windy days the line temp is 60 degrees, then you can only carry a load of 10 before reaching max OT. If the line temp on windy days is cooled to 50 degrees, then you can carry a load of 20 before reaching the max OT. The load that can be carried is what changes, not the max OT

I'm not sure if this is properly answering your question, but here is how I interpreted the scientist's conclusion:

By stating that "we should not conclude that volcanic activity caused the spike on Venus," the scientist is stating that she believes that the volcanoes did not cause the spike on Venus. So the meaning of the argument remains the same if you read it as can't conclude vs didn't cause.

Either way, the flaw in the argument is the same:

Conclusion: We should not conclude that volcanoes caused the spike on Venus. (can be translated to "volcanoes did not cause the spike on Venus" since that is the scientist's opinion, and she is informing others what they should not do)

Premise: No active volcano has been identified on Venus.

Premise: PA are known to undergo cyclical variations in chemical composition.

Flaw: Lack of evidence does NOT equal evidence of lacking. The scientist is assuming that just bc humans have not identified an active volcano, it must be true that no active volcanoes actually exist on Venus. However, this is a major flaw since it could be true that humans just didn't detect any active volcanoes.

A directly addresses this flaw.

I hope this helps!

I initially missed this question and chose answer D. However, upon review, it is quite obvious why E is the correct answer.

Stimulus Translation -

Premise 1: Well-Intentioned people sometimes try to help.

Premise 2: Attempts are usually ineffectual & foster resentment.

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Conclusion: attempts usually UNJUSTIFIED.

In other words, the argument can be simplified to the conditional logic:

Ineffectual & fosters resentment --> Unjustified

A) wrong bc it does not conclude that it is unjustified.

B) wrong bc it does not conclude that it is unjustified. We are also told in the stimulus that the actions were wrong despite being done with good intentions, so this contradicts.

C) wrong bc it does not help us conclude that the actions were unjustified.

D) is also wrong bc it does not enable us to conclude that the actions were unjustified. All D does is tell us that the INTENTIONS of the action are IRRELEVANT, which in itself is completely irrelevant to strengthening the stimulus. It does not make it easier or help us conclude that the actions are unjustified.

E is correct bc it actually allows us to conclude that it was unjustified. It forms a connection between the premises --> conclusion:

~Succeed (Ineffectual) --> Unjustified

If it does not result in success (the action is ineffectual), then the action is unjustified.