"Typically" and "often"

aribanks25

Hi everyone,
I have a question about seeing the word typically, and I know that I have specifically seen this word in LR questions and I'm wondering what we can take the word to mean. For example if a stimulus says that "Winners of a Nobel prize for science, who are "typically" professional scientists..." how should we interpret this? Does this mean most, many, or some other amount? I am leaning towards interpreting it as most, but I'm not sure if this is logically correct. Additionally, if the word "often" is used in the same way how should it be interpreted?

Heart Shaped Box

You’re correct on typically. On the LSAT, typically/generally means ‘most’.

‘Often/frequently’ logically implies some but not ‘equivalent’ to some, so be careful on the negation with NA Qs. If we negate some, it becomes ‘none’, but not necessarily the case with negation of ‘often’ if that makes sense. The bar for some is very low, all we need is just 1. So if we have ‘often/frequently’, for sure it would imply a some relationship cuz we know they definitely meet the bar of just 1. But it would also be unreasonable to assume often/frequently means just 1 (equivalent to some). If something happens only once, it’d be unreasonable to call it “often or frequently”. So I would interpret ‘often/frequently’ as at least a few (2 or 3) and could all the way up to 100.

I actually just had a similar Q asked about this so thought it would be helpful for more folks to see.