I'm not entirely sold on the reasonability of the assumption for C (what if it's nothing worse than a cold?) but I am convinced that the assumption required for C is more reasonable than the assumption required for A (which I initially fell for).

Me when I fall for the oldest trick in the book:

:(

I had trouble with E, maybe someone can explain to me what's wrong with my thinking:

The word "proportion" tripped me up. Because say last year there were 100 violent crimes, and the news reported on 50% of them (that's the proportion), so they reported on 50 total. Now say there were only 10 violent crimes this year, and the news nearly doubled the proportion of reporting, so they reported on 90% of them (so 9 in all).

Doesn't this answer choice not work? Because even if the news media nearly doubles their coverage, depending on how steep the drop in crime was, the media coverage can't fully explain the phenomenon.

Am I missing something?

#help

Is there any downside to writing this after the test (just a day or two afterwards)? I understand that LSAC won’t release my score until I've written it, but is there anything besides that which I should consider?

I finished the curriculum a while back, but I've returned to this section because my analytics show that MSS questions are a weak point for me. Something that has really helped during my review is to recall that you cannot treat MSS questions like Must Be True questions---you can't just ask "Okay, so what makes this answer choice wrong?" You can do that in MBT, but assumptions are allowed in MSS, and so the question you have to ask is "What assumptions do I have to make in order for the answer choice to be correct?" The way to come to the right answer is by weighing which choice requires the fewest and most reasonable assumptions---not by looking for a perfect fit. To ask the wrong question can lead to square pegs and round holes.

Ahh so obvious once you watch the explanation, but was I ever stuck on this beforehand!

This one is brutal lol

#feedback

In the full diagram, it says that ambiguous quantifiers have "sharp upper and lower boundaries." But in the next lesson (ie. lesson 3) it says that the ambiguous quantifier, 'Some,' "does not have an upper boundary."

This seems to me like either an error or improperly explained.

If I'm getting the right answers, but not always using the same (or even all that similar) logic as is elucidated in the explanations, is that a cause for concern? Or is the fact the fact that I'm coming to correct conclusions a sufficient indicator that I'm on the right track?

#help

For Question Two ("Plant life cannot survive without atmospheric carbon"), would it not be reasonable to treat 'Plant life' as as a sort of modifier for survive?

In other words, what kind of survival are we talking about? The survival of plant life.

In this way, you could translate to Lawgic without the conjunction so it's simply:

plant life survive → carbon

Mechanically, I think this is similar to 'kicking it up to the domain.' In other words, the condition of plant life is not likely to be challenged, and so it is reasonably safe it to attach to 'survive' without a conjunction.

Does this present any pitfalls I'm not seeing?

The same goes for Question 4 and few others.

Thank you for your #help

Shouldn't the contrapositive for 7.4 be: "If students who excel in science and mathematics are not likely to have a more fulfilling educational experience than those whose strengths lie in the humanities, then the school curriculum is not heavily focused on STEM subjects"?

Doesn't this more accurately reflect the original statement? Or am I missing something? Am I confusing negation with opposition?

#help

I thiiink I've got my head around this. At this stage, I'm still finding it helpful to imagine what the English equivalent for the Lawgic here.

Unlike Argument 1, Argument 2 doesn't provide any context as to the breadth of what might otherwise be a superset. That is to say, maybe there are other things that would improve living standards for downtown residents (new sidewalks, for instance), but the premises don't tell us that. Argument 1 is different in this way. We know that cats are not the only type of mammal, and so therefore the sufficiency-necessity relationship can be situated as a subset-superset relationship.

But we can make Argument 1 look more like Argument 2 if we say this:

If cats exist, they are mammals.

Cats exist.

Therefore, cats are mammals.

While similar to the initial structure, this revision removes what we might call 'X,' right? It removes Garfield. It keeps the structure of subset and supersets (ie. cats->mammals-> existence), but doesn't tell us about membership. This more closely matches Argument 2 (in English, that is), which itself might be rephrased as:

If new restaurants exist (ie. open), they will improve the downtown living standards.

New restaurants exist.

Therefore, the downtown living standards will improve.

Now the question of supersets and subsets is all meddled up, but the form remains the same between both examples. Hopefully this makes some sense!

If you're having any trouble with this section, it might be helpful to familiarize yourself with linking verbs. Linking verbs, as a rule, are not followed by direct objects. I also noticed that, throughout this exercise, many of the predicates began with linking verbs. So, familiarity with these sorts of verbs might help you identify why a sentence doesn't have a direct object and where the predicate begins.

Some examples of linking verbs are "is," "am," "are," "was," "were," "seem," "become," "appear," "feel," and "look." In 8.1, which I see some confusion about in the comments, "depends" is a linking verb, and so 'conditions' is not an object.

There are some exceptions, as in this sentence: "Maya is reading a book." Because 'is' (an auxiliary verb in this case) leads into another verb (ie. 'reading'), and 'reading' is not a linking verb, 'a book' is indeed a direct object (as it is the recipient of the transitive verb 'reading').

I realize this is a little jargony (and I should admit that my own grasp on these grammar rules is somewhat rudimentary, so please feel free to comment and refine my explanation), but as a rule of thumb, if you see one of those linking verbs, you're probably safe to assume the sentence does not have a direct object.