E threw me off because I wasn't sure to what extent I could infer "crucial details" to contribute to the argument's broad conclusion and hence D seemed more straightforward in that regard. But bc the conclusion is stronger than the answer, "crucial details about calculus" would be included by the "discovered calculus" set.

@LiaWang Great explanation. And D made me pause for a sec as I referenced "depend" in Arjun's argument, but which led to no other indicators of conditionals.

@ionicinstinct Also "resulting in a contradiction" should have thrown you off for B because there isn't a contradiction in the AUs argument. Another way to see the flaw issue with this argument is through a degree/dichotomy lens, where the conclusion talks about understanding of other people as degrees ("the best way"), whereas the evidence talks about understanding as if it's black and white ("no way at all" "impossible"). Seeing it this way led me to C instantaneously

@JoelOmolade Yes it's just confusing sufficiency and necessity. More specifically, it reverses w/o negating.

Is the no highlighting going to be permanent? Do we know what the official LSAC plan is for upcoming tests?

@dulciexue49 The conclusion is actually in the question stem. That's the thing they want us to support. So I view this as a strengthening question.

@Haleh Yay!! I'm so happy it helped. I know, sometimes it take just a few words to make the whole thing click, lol!

Hey, I'd be interested! I've been scoring inconsistently but I'm at the mid 150s range. Would love to benchmark knowledge and get better at articulating arguments etc. with someone!

Premise: The law--

>$100 + /residents + /former residents --> registered

/registered --> />$100 OR resident OR former resident

---

B's campaign complied --> residents AND former residents

What is the assumption here?

Since we are told that the subjects we are dealing with are only residents and former residents (this is the negated sufficient of the premise), and means that they must not have registered their contributions (this is validated by the contrapositive of the premise).

C- matches this perfectly-- that any contribution to Brimley's campaign did not have to be registered (not necessarily that they must not have been registered). Answer E is attractive in this regard, but it only states an action whereas B captures the actual obligation.

I chose B incorrectly, but this could be false. We don't have enough information to trigger the sufficient condition.

@BettyBishop Thanks for your comment-- I think I may have meant to say that most of people who died were NOT wearing seatbelts (I was basically restating E). however, I don't think I fully understood why E doesn't resolve the discrepancy.

Now I know that it's because E is the only answer that does not actually give a cause for the discrepancy but only states an effect of not wearing seatbelts. Since we're looking to resolve the causal discrepancy, we are looking for potential causal explanations.

I also noticed that all the other answer choices use very active, causative language (notice the tense) vs. E uses very static, factual language. I think that's something that could potentially help assess a causative question like this one next time-- at least it's my takeaway for this question. Lmk if you have a different perspective!

@ebanta Totally agree with you both about this one. But I read another explanation that helped this click. E does not describe a particular cause for the discrepancy, as all the other answers do, but only describes an effect of our purported cause.

Notice how A-D all describe a potential cause for the discrepancy

A- higher speed limits may have prevented the decrease in traffic deaths.

B- official stats of the city may have prevented decrease in traffic deaths (including pedestrian deaths in the stats would likely increase the count)

C- take this as increased traffic may potentially cause more deaths (although I originally perceived this as traffic is slower, so there wouldn't be more deaths), realistically there would be more cars on the roads so chances of traffic could increase.

D- lack of traffic law enforcement has prevented the decrease in traffic deaths.

E- Although it almost seems to be explaining something similar to D (where not wearing seatbelts would prevent a decrease in traffic deaths), it does not actually provide a potential explanation but just gives us a consequence of not wearing seatbelts (which is just one aspect of the discrepancy).

On second pass, notice how even the linguistic structure of E sentence stands out from the other answers (which are all phrased in active, causative language) whereas E is just a static fact.

@marchagu I made a similar error. Even though I recognized the flaw correctly initially (that just because her brothers could have been the ones giving her the recording does not mean they actually did), I eliminated all the answers on the basis that nothing matched this pre-phrase (obvi overlooked D). I reassessed the argument based on what A was saying and thought that maybe it was her change in mind. Aghh, tricky one but the correct answer is so obvious now.

D- Fails to establish that something true of some people (brothers potentially giving Hana the recording) is true of only those people (it ONLY could have been the brothers who gave the recording).

Okay PT 120 Section 3 was HARD! Is this known to be a difficult section? I did a lot worse on this than any of my other sections

How can I get this right next time? I'm not understanding it ;(((( . I retook it weeks later and STILL got it wrong.

THANK U Kevin for the explanation!

The difference between C setting a necessary requirement ("is required in order to establish") versus D setting a sufficient trigger ("establishes the truth of the argument's conclusion") really helped clarify this. I think I implictly thought about this when I was choosing between C and D, but didn't think of it in the conditional logic way since I thought the stimulus was too probabilistic and less definitive (another aspect addressed in the video).

For D to have been correct, would a sufficient condition of some sort had to have been established in the stimulus? For example, if it said "there could have been microbial life on Mars prior to there being such life on Earth, making it possible for such microbial life to be transmitted to Earth."

#help #admin #tutor

E- if you apply it to the stimulus, it becomes so obvious:

The degree of development of a set of neural connections (the higher the connections from the amygdala to the cortex) is directly proportional to the influence transmitted across those connections (the greater the amygdala's influence on the cortex)

Okay, this one was not obvious to me at all, I got it X on timed and BR wowowow.

What I noticed from this one as a lvl 5 is that each of the answers answers that "resolve" help explain one aspect of the paradox explicitly, but do not obviously explain the second aspect of the paradox, as in our typical RRE questions. Even though I'm typically hesitant to pick answers that don't fully resolve the paradox, this seems like a quesiton where where we have to make some assumptions for each of the answers to work with the stimulus, and to get to the correct answer.

For example, from A, it's only obvious that the avg number of books would decrease because there are less "contemporary" options available. The assumption I made here to connect it to the stim is that people are likely to want to read contemporary novels because they are recent and the most available (out of mere definition of contemporary). However, it's not obvious how this would explain an increase in profits without making an even more leaping assumption....

Same with E. I think it's a bit more obvious how this relates to both parts of the discrepancy, but I think it mostly helps explain that they are buying more from bookstores (and hence contributing to increased profits), not that they're necessarily not reading books. Granted, if we include "magazines" in the avg number of books, then this assumption can make this answer more attractive.

If this wasn't an "EXCEPT" question, B is attractive because it includes elements that would more obviously target your own assumptions-- like if books aren't being stolen than maybe this would cause profits to increase--- but actually this has no direct bearing on the argument at all.

Has anyone noticed similar patterns? What is helping you process each answer choice and decide what can explain versus what can't?

I'd love to be considered!!!!

@arieatsoranges Same please!!

#help #admin #tutor

How would we know that the "even if the companies..." clause is irrelevant information that's not actually used to support? Maybe I need to revisit the foundations, but do words like "even if" indicate extraneous context given by the author to set a qualifier that accounts for some reason that we must not worry about? If someone has any perspective or has seen more patterns like this, I'd love to know!!

Argument: It's wrong for medical researchers to keep their research confidential.

Why?

Because if it's kept confidential, then the development of effective medical treatments may be delayed and humans may suffer.

Answers: We need some rule that will explain why it's wrong to keep the research confidential (so essentially the rule will strengthen this conclusion).

C says that if sharing information would prevent unnecessary human suffering, then medical researcher's shouldn't keep their research confidential.

This matches the stimulus exactly.

A- This is a fake "strong" question. Although it looks like it might capture the probability, it's actually too specific for this stimulus (it applies to cases of absolute certainty). It says that if a researcher KNOWS that an action WILL suffering, then we should keep the research confidential. (but note that we don't know,

Consider the cookie example that John is a bad guy and the evidence we have is that he may have stolen a cookie.

Rules that can potentially justify this are:

1) Anyone who we know for a certainty stole a cookie is a bad guy.

2) Anyone who even might have stolen a cookie is a bad guy.

Even though Rule 1 looks strong, it actually doesn't help us at all because we don't know for certain that humans will suffer (our evidence is not dependent on certainty; it's merely probabilistic).

C says that if its POSSIBLE that sharing info could prevent suffering, then they shouldn't do it. This is a much broader rule and thus captures the possibility of the evidence we are given in the stimulus.

To justify the argument, the answer choice must accept the premises as they are written, hence the difference in strength and language between wrong ac A and correct ac C.

@ImanMozaffarian Super helpful, thank you!! I'm trying to get better at building an intuition on finding the assumptions and in doing so I sometimes get lost/drift away from how the premise relates to the conclusion (I think I'm getting caught in the assumption jump myself, lol).

I have one other question-- Was your immediate thought process for this one that you would search for an alternative explanation (since the conclusion that being a "poor" plumber just on the basis of having complaints filed against you is strong and obviously requires a major assumption by the author)?

Have you built a good intuition for when to see the "alternative" explanation as the argument's assumption in non-causal arguments like this one? I think I associate the "alternative explanation" so much with causal arguments that it's not the immediate assumption my mind went to when I did this one.

Correlation/Causation Flaw--

Argument gives a correlation between banning of lead paint and the decline of lead poisoning in children.

He gives stats that 25% of an area's houses still have lead paint.

So, author concludes that eliminating lead paint in remaining homes will eradicate childhood lead poisoning in the area (in general).

Core Assumption: The author is assuming that lead paint in homes is the only remaining cause of childhood lead poisoning in the area.

Flaw: Be aware of absolute claims like the Au's. The author cites the elimination of only two sources of childhood lead poisoning: gasoline and lead paint but concludes that by eliminating the remains of one of these sources, we could totally eliminate lead posioning. In causal arguments, the "No cause, No effect" prediction is unrealistic because it fails to account for alternatives (rather it's attractive in strengthen answer choices for causal arguments).

He takes for granted/overlooks the possibility that there are other sources. LSAT loves to ignore Plan B, C, D, E while the author only looks at A.

E is tempting because it tries to make us connect ideas of homes with lead painting and children. But this goes beyond the argument's scope, which focuses on whether lead paint is the only relevant source of poisoning.

@ZackDow Good question!! I have seen facilitated used as a sufficient indicator before, but I missed it in this question. I'd be curious if someone can provide guidance on how/when we should treat this word as a conditional