LR Cheat Sheet Part 1

alexroark5

Here is an LR Cheat Sheet I derived quite a while ago. I hope it helps some of you out there.
Best of luck to all!

LR Question Type Cheat Sheet


Inference Questions (Must Be True)

General:
• Requires you to select the answer choice that can be proven by the information presented in the stimulus.
• Pre-phrasing answer choices is often difficult
• Correct answer choices tend to be conservative and free of “load-bearing” language
• Often the stimulus is a fact set and not an argument

Correct Answer Types:
• Paraphrased answers: are answers that restate a portion of the stimulus (at times easy to miss b/c stated in different language than the stimulus)
• Combination answers: answers that result from combining two or more statements in the stimulus

Incorrect Answer Types:
• Could be true answers: are attractive b/c they could be true, but are nevertheless incorrect b/c they do not HAVE to be true
• Extreme answers: are exaggerated answers that are too extreme to be supported by the information presented in the stimulus
• New information: answer choices that bring in new information without warrant (make sure it is not the result of combining two or more statements which would make it the right answer)
• Opposite answers: answers that are completely opposite from the information presented in the stimulus
• Shell Game: vey subtle shift in concept or term that makes the answer choice slightly incorrect (Alex is greedy therefore Alex is mean: greedy and mean are not the same thing despite being similar)
• Reverse answer: answer choice will reverse the relationship of two key terms

Weaken Questions

General:
• Stimulus will almost always contain an argument
• Understand the structure of the argument to gain perspective necessary to attack the author’s position (reasoning errors are usually present)
• Weaken questions often yield strong pre-phrases
• Correct answers rarely attack the premises, rather they almost always show that the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises (that is to say, the answers will attack the relationship between the premises and the conclusion made by the author)
• When you have conditional reasoning in the stimulus and a Weaken question, immediately look for an answer that attacks the necessary condition (show that the necessary condition does not need to occur in order for the sufficient condition to occur)

Correct Answer Types:
• Incomplete information: the author fails to consider all of the possibilities or relies upon evidence that is incomplete
• Improper comparison: the author tries to compare two or more elements that are essentially different
• Qualified conclusion: The author qualifies or limits the conclusion in such a way as to leave the argument open to attack

Incorrect Answer Types:
• Opposite answers: answer choices that actually strengthen the argument (tempting because it relates perfectly to the argument but in the opposite way needed to be correct)
• Shell game answers
• Out of scope answer choices

alexroark5

LR Cheat Sheet Part 2

Cause and Effect Reasoning

General:
• Causality occurs in either the conclusion (reasoning is then flawed) or causality occurs in the premises (no causal reasoning error exists, although argument may be flawed in some other way)
• Two scenarios that often lead to causal conclusions
o One event occurs before the other
o Two (or more) events occur at the same time
• When causality occurs in the conclusion, the author is assuming that there are NO OTHER possible causes that produce that particular affect!

Attacking Causal Conclusions (weaken questions):
• Find an alternate cause for the stated effect
• Show that that even when the cause occurs, the effect does not occur
• Show that although the effect occurs, the cause did not occur
• Show that the stated relationship is reversed
• Show that statistical problem exists with the data used to make causal statement
Supporting Causal Conclusions (Strengthen Questions)
• Eliminate any alternative causes for the stated effect
• Show that when the cause occurs, the effect occurs
• Show that when the cause does not occur, the effect does not occur
• Eliminate the possibility that the stated relationship is reversed
• Show that the data used to make the causal connection are accurate or eliminate possible problems with the data


Strengthen Questions

General:
• Focus in on the conclusion
• Many strengthen questions require students to find the missing link between a premise and conclusion. Often correct answer choices will help address these gaps between premise and conclusion
• Strengthen questions that contain analogies or use surveys that rely upon their validity. Answer choices that strengthen them are usually correct
• Correct answer can strengthen the argument either a little or a lot, this is what makes these questions difficult at times

Incorrect Answer Types:
• Opposite answers
• Shell Game Answers
• Out of Scope Answers


Sufficient Assumption Questions (Justify The Conclusion)

General:
• Requires you to select the answer choice that logically proves the conclusion of the argument
• Apply Justify Formula: Premises + Answer Choice = Conclusion
• Stimuli almost always contain conditional logic to allow for certainty in validity of conclusions once the correct answer is combined with the premises
• Stimuli are formulaic and questions can frequently be solved mechanistically by identifying the elements that appear in the conclusion but not in the premises
• Follow these rules:
o Any “new” element in the conclusion will appear in the correct answer. If the new element is not in the premise then it must be in the correct answer choice
o Elements that are common to the conclusion and at least one premise NORMALLY do not appear in the correct answer
o Elements that appear in the premises but not in the conclusion are USUALLY the correct answer

Necessary Assumption Questions (Assumption)

General:
• Two types of assumptions:
o Supporter Assumption: link together new or rogue elements in the stimulus or fill logical gaps in the argument
o Defender Assumption: eliminate ideas or assertions that would undermine the conclusion
o Employ the assumption negation technique to double check answers

alexroark5

LR Cheat Sheet Part 3

Resolve the Paradox Questions

General:
• Most stimuli do not contain a conclusion and will contain language of contradiction
• The correct answer must conform to the facts of the stimuli

Incorrect Answer Types:
• Explains only one side of the paradox
• If the stimulus contains a paradox where two items are different, then an answer choice that explains why the two are similar cannot be correct and vice versa
• Answer choices that do not conform to the facts of the stimulus

Method of Reasoning Questions

General:
• Identify the logical organization of the argument
• Employ the Fact Test: if an answer choice describes an event that did not occur in the stimulus, then that answer is incorrect
Incorrect Answer Types:
• New element answers: answers must be based on the info in the stimulus so new or rogue elements that did not occur in the stimulus are incorrect
• Half right, half wrong: often answers will start out well by describing something that happened in the stimulus, but they will end poorly. These answers are always wrong
• Exaggerated answers: these answers exaggerate the situation described in the stimulus

Flaw in the Reasoning Questions

Common Flaw Types:
• Uncertain use of term or concept: the author fails to use each term in a constant coherent fashion as the argument progresses
• Ad Hominem: attacks the person or source rather than the argument itself
• Circular Reasoning: “this essay is the best because it is better than all the others” in these cases the premises and the conclusion are identical in meaning
• Errors in conditional reasoning: mistaken negation/mistaken reversal (confusing necessary and sufficient conditions)
• Mistaken cause and effect- assuming causal relationship
o On the basis of sequence of events
o Assuming causal relationship when only a correlation exists
o Failure to consider alternate causes
o Failure to consider events may be reversed
• Straw man: author attempts to attack an opponent’s position by ignoring the actual statements made by the opposing speaker. Distorting or refashioning the argument, making it weaker in the process
• Takes for granted that a hypothesis has not proven to be true is proof that it is flase
• Internal contradiction: occurs when the author makes conflicting statements “everyone should join our country club, after all, it is an exclusive group”
• Appeal fallacies:
o Appeal to authority: uses the opinion of an authority to persuade the reader
o Appeal to popular opinion/appeal to numbers: states that a position is true because a majority believe it to be true
o Appeal to emotion: emotions or emotionally charged language is used to try and justify the conclusion
• Survey errors:
o Survey uses a biased sample
o Survey questions are improperly constructed
o Respondents to survey give inaccurate responses
• Exceptional Case/Overgeneralization: takes a small number of instances and treats them as if they support a broad, sweeping conclusion
• Errors of composition and division: involve judgments made about groups and parts of a group
o Includes part-to-whole errors and whole-to-part errors
• False Analogy: occurs when the author uses an analogy that is too dissimilar to the original situation to be applicable
• False Dilemma: Assumes only two courses of action are available when there may be others
• Errors in the use of evidence:
o Lack of evidence for a position is taken to prove that the position is false
o Lack of evidence against a position is taken to prove that position is true
• Time shift errors: assumes that conditions will remain constant over time and that what was the case in the past will be the case in the future
• Numbers and percentages errors:
o Increasing percentages automatically lead to increasing numbers
o Decreasing percentages automatically lead to decreasing numbers
o Increasing numbers automatically lead to increasing percentages
o Decreasing numbers automatically lead to decreasing percentages
o Large numbers automatically mean large percentages, and small numbers automatically mean small percentages
o Large percentages automatically mean large numbers, and small percentages automatically mean small numbers

Parallel Questions

General:
• These questions can be time consuming so don’t freak out
• Elements that DO NOT need to be parallel
o Topic of the stimulus
o The order of presentation of the premises and conclusion in the stimulus
• Elements that DO need to be parallel
o The method of reasoning: type of reasoning must be paralleled, for example: causal or conditional reasoning, then immediately look for causal or conditional reasoning in the answer choices
o The validity of the argument: stimulus is valid, answer must be valid; stimulus is not valid, answer must be not valid
o Conclusion and premises: the certainty level or intent of the conclusion and premises must match. Pay close attention to modifiers (most, all, some)
• If all else fails, rephrase the stimulus in simple, general terms

kclubs323

@alexroark5 This is great! Thanks for sharing.

nicole.hopkins

Nice, nice—also happy to see evidence of your synthesizing Trainer/7sage/maybe a liiiiiittle bit of Powerscore Sometimes those of us who started with the Trainer/PS speak a slightly different LSAT dialect than those who are pure 7sagers

justrandom

This is awesome! Muchas gracias!

inactive

Moved to the cheat sheet sub-forum. Good job

emli1000

Good stuff on here.

mc_meatt

Nice. Can someone post a cheat sheet for LG?

alexroark5

@nicole.hopkins actually a significant amount of thati information is from powerscore

shine.on.me

Thank you, this looks very helpful. I can see the PowerScore influence.

nicole.hopkins

@alexroark5 well you seem to have synthesized the pitfalls and shortcomings right out of it

gstar2015

Thank you !

emli1000

@mc_meatt PM me your email and I can send one to you.

jsperling

Sent you a message @emli1000

Nanchito-1-1

this is amazing, thank you.

hrjones44

@alexroark5 Excellent! i will look at this further if i find out i have to re test in December.. right now i'm putting all my LSAT study materials up for a few weeks, my desk has been covered in papers and printouts everywhere, time to clean up! even though i'm like having LSAT withdrawals i dont even know what to do !

GordonBombay

Seriously thank you for posting this !! I have been wanting to make flash cards containing info like this for awhile now, but haven't gotten around to it. You sir just made my life a lot easier.

LoraxMan

@alexroark5 said:
When you have conditional reasoning in the stimulus and a Weaken question, immediately look for an answer that attacks the necessary condition (show that the necessary condition does not need to occur in order for the sufficient condition to occur)

Another way of expressing how to attack the necessary condition is that you can show the necessary condition need not occur when the sufficient occurs (S & ~N). I think this varies -slightly- from the language you've used, which more generally follows the S -> ~N format.

The 180 Bro_OVO

absolutely clutch.