LG Highlighter Hack

Comments

• 1 Like

  AudaciousRed Alum Member

  July 2019 2689 karma

  I think that is awesome that you found a method that helps you study, but going forward with the digital testing, we wont have highlighters anymore during the tests. Just a pen, I think. It's something to consider when studying. If you need that highlighter as part of your timing strategy, it could hurt you come test day.
• 2 Likes

  Jonathan Wang Yearly Sage ⭐

  July 2019 edited July 2019 6874 karma

  A pen would work even better. I'm guessing s/he's only suggesting to use a highlighter because that's the only non-pencil writing implement s/he's allowed to have in the paper test.

  I've had my students doing variations of this for years now and it's a fantastic tool to have in your toolbox.
• 3 Likes

  Lawster9 Alum Member

  July 2019 edited July 2019 393 karma

  @"Jonathan Wang" @for_since_because I'm confused, why does using a highlighter or pen instead of a pencil eliminate the need for sub gameboards?
• Jonathan Wang Yearly Sage ⭐

  July 2019 edited July 2019 6874 karma

  For games where you're not splitting, it's just a straight-up win, especially for games with large/complicated diagrams like grouping/chart games.

  For games where you're splitting, it doesn't eliminate the need for sub gameboards, but it does force you to find the best, or at least a good, split first (which is a good habit regardless). Once you split the game boards out, being able to work over the top of the scenarios instead of redrawing every single time is IMO still a pretty substantial net positive in most cases.
• lsat4life Alum Member

  July 2019 255 karma

  @"Jonathan Wang" said:
  For games where you're not splitting, it's just a straight-up win, especially for games with large/complicated diagrams like grouping/chart games.

  For games where you're splitting, it doesn't eliminate the need for sub gameboards, but it does force you to find the best, or at least a good, split first (which is a good habit regardless). Once you split the game boards out, being able to work over the top of the scenarios instead of redrawing every single time is IMO still a pretty substantial net positive in most cases.

  What do you think about the loss of ability to re-use prior work for help eliminating answers on "global" questions? You believe the benefit of pen/highlighter + pencil over main diagrams is worth the cost?
• 1 Like

  Jonathan Wang Yearly Sage ⭐

  July 2019 edited July 2019 6874 karma

  I don't see it as much of a cost. I haven't (personally) had to use prior work in a logic game for years, and my students don't seem to miss it much either.

  From a practical standpoint there are ways to get around that - simply jotting down your valid arrangements as questions demonstrate them to you, for example. There's no reason that you can't keep your old game boards, you just have to 'actively' keep them instead of 'passively' keeping them. "But that's a pain in the ass!" - sure, but is it any more so than having to recreate your diagrams and inferences every single time? Plus, if you're drawing a bajillion game boards in any given game in the first place, it's probably a good indication that you're doing something wrong anyway. AND, if you really want to, you can continue to recreate your diagrams if you want to in situations where it makes sense to - nobody is forcing you to pick one over the other in all circumstances.

  From a practice/learning standpoint I think it's an actively positive thing to not be able to refer back. Referring to old game boards is a crutch of the highest order. It can be extremely effective and I have no problem with it at all as a test taking strategy, but it does not absolve you of being able to understand how you should have gotten to an answer in the absence of prior work.

  Relying on prior work means that you are counting on 1) the LSAT asking you that 'previous' question at all, 2) the LSAT asking you the questions in the 'proper' order so that the 'previous' question is actually previous to the one you need it for, 3) that you get the 'previous' question right for the right reasons, and 4) you don't accidentally forget a condition or leak a scenario from the previous question that is relevant to this one (for example, maybe the previous question didn't force you to put A next to B, but the new question does - do you notice that when you're frantically scanning through old work?). None of that should be taken for granted.

  If it would be extremely difficult/impossible for you to solve a question if it were the only question of a set, i.e. without prior work, then you have a problem even if you wound up getting the question right. It means that you don't understand how to solve the question the 'right' way. What if those dominoes don't all fall like that? Are you just screwed at that point? And even if you can get away with it most of the time, is that an acceptable position to put yourself into when you're trying to -0 the section?

  Maybe the 'right' way doesn't matter to you if all you care about is the point, but it absolutely matters from a skill development standpoint. You can always go back to using your shortcuts once you have the theory behind it, so you lose nothing, but you gain a ton from understanding what you're actually supposed to see. This is how skills are honed and intuition is sharpened, and this is how high scorers are able to look at a game and quickly understand what to do - they understand how it works and where the pressure points are, so no brute forced prior work necessary. When you eventually reach the point where you can do everything that way, then by definition you won't need prior work nearly as much as you probably think you do. And frankly, as far as I'm concerned, if you want to say that you've mastered logic games, then you shouldn't need it at all - ever.
• lsat4life Alum Member

  July 2019 255 karma

  @"Jonathan Wang" said:
  I don't see it as much of a cost. I haven't (personally) had to use prior work in a logic game for years, and my students don't seem to miss it much either.

  From a practical standpoint there are ways to get around that - simply jotting down your valid arrangements as questions demonstrate them to you, for example. There's no reason that you can't keep your old game boards, you just have to 'actively' keep them instead of 'passively' keeping them. "But that's a pain in the ass!" - sure, but is it any more so than having to recreate your diagrams and inferences every single time? Plus, if you're drawing a bajillion game boards in any given game in the first place, it's probably a good indication that you're doing something wrong anyway. AND, if you really want to, you can continue to recreate your diagrams if you want to in situations where it makes sense to - nobody is forcing you to pick one over the other in all circumstances.

  From a practice/learning standpoint I think it's an actively positive thing to not be able to refer back. Referring to old game boards is a crutch of the highest order. It can be extremely effective and I have no problem with it at all as a test taking strategy, but it does not absolve you of being able to understand how you should have gotten to an answer in the absence of prior work.

  Relying on prior work means that you are counting on 1) the LSAT asking you that 'previous' question at all, 2) the LSAT asking you the questions in the 'proper' order so that the 'previous' question is actually previous to the one you need it for, 3) that you get the 'previous' question right for the right reasons, and 4) you don't accidentally forget a condition or leak a scenario from the previous question that is relevant to this one (for example, maybe the previous question didn't force you to put A next to B, but the new question does - do you notice that when you're frantically scanning through old work?). None of that should be taken for granted.

  If it would be extremely difficult/impossible for you to solve a question if it were the only question of a set, i.e. without prior work, then you have a problem even if you wound up getting the question right. It means that you don't understand how to solve the question the 'right' way. What if those dominoes don't all fall like that? Are you just screwed at that point? And even if you can get away with it most of the time, is that an acceptable position to put yourself into when you're trying to -0 the section?

  Maybe the 'right' way doesn't matter to you if all you care about is the point, but it absolutely matters from a skill development standpoint. You can always go back to using your shortcuts once you have the theory behind it, so you lose nothing, but you gain a ton from understanding what you're actually supposed to see. This is how skills are honed and intuition is sharpened, and this is how high scorers are able to look at a game and quickly understand what to do - they understand how it works and where the pressure points are, so no brute forced prior work necessary. When you eventually reach the point where you can do everything that way, then by definition you won't need prior work nearly as much as you probably think you do. And frankly, as far as I'm concerned, if you want to say that you've mastered logic games, then you shouldn't need it at all - ever.

  Of course, true masters of LG wouldn't need to rely on prior work ever. I agree. I also think true masters would be able to redraw game boards, even complicated ones, for individual questions and not have whatever extra time is taken up by that cause any timing issues, no? In other words, when it comes to what constitutes true LG mastery, both the pen/highlighter strategy and the prior work strategy are unnecessary, right? An LG master should be able to make the proper inferences and connections quickly enough and think in a way that is organized enough that the extra time saved by writing over pen/highlighter are meaningless.
• 2 Likes

  Jonathan Wang Yearly Sage ⭐

  July 2019 edited July 2019 6874 karma

  I think you've misunderstood my point. Once you achieve mastery of the material, it honestly doesn't matter what you do. You can redraw diagrams, work over a pen diagram with pencil, eat a cheeseburger with one hand while diagramming with the other, phone a friend while you work, whatever. The question is how you achieve that level of mastery given that you're not already there. You don't get there by relying on prior work as a primary problem solving methodology (i.e. if your explanation of how to do a question is 'look at question #X', you're doing it wrong). You get there by understanding how the questions work individually and independently.

  Put another way, an expressed worry about not being able to use prior work indicates reliance on something that ought not to be relied upon. It is a perfectly acceptable thing to use, and it may even be the most efficient thing to do in a given circumstance. But there's a big difference between using a strategy because you've determined it to be the best way to dispose of a question, and using it because that's the only way you know how to efficiently dispose of that question. The former demonstrates command over the situation; while the latter attempts to skip over that part by way of a crutch. (Yes, I am aware that it's not always one or the other)

  I absolutely disagree that there is negligible time savings by using the pen/highlighter tactic. OP highlights grouping/chart games, which is the most obvious example of where this is extremely effective. The time savings garnered by not having to redraw 4x6 grids and rewrite all the inferences is substantial for even the fastest of us. I've done those games in a number of different ways over the years and I would never, ever go back to recopying the charts. And even in 'normal' sequencing or grouping games, I've come to prefer it. At the very least, it's not disadvantaged and is sometimes significantly advantaged from a time perspective, and how you weigh that against the prior work issue is ultimately your call. I don't value it much, but you might (and my previous post is geared toward getting you to start thinking about why you might care, instead of just accepting it as an unqualified good). It's not perfect, but nothing is. One size doesn't fit all. Hence the comment about it being a fantastic tool for your toolbox, and the significant caveat early in my previous post where I say you can mix and match - you don't have to use every tool every time, but you do want to have it accessible for when it makes sense to use it. When it works, it saves gobs of time, and the totally valid objections to it can essentially be entirely avoided if you actually know what you're doing (and if you don't, it also happens to be the best way to develop yourself along that avenue - when you get used to not having your prior work as a crutch, then you've made significant progress on the theory side of the game, at which point even if you go back and do what you used to do, you're doing it with a much greater understanding and appreciation for the situation, which is beneficial no matter what).
• lsat4life Alum Member

  July 2019 edited July 2019 255 karma

  @"Jonathan Wang" said:
  I think you've misunderstood my point. Once you achieve mastery of the material, it honestly doesn't matter what you do. You can redraw diagrams, work over a pen diagram with pencil, eat a cheeseburger with one hand while diagramming with the other, phone a friend while you work, whatever. The question is how you achieve that level of mastery given that you're not already there. You don't get there by relying on prior work as a primary problem solving methodology (i.e. if your explanation of how to do a question is 'look at question #X', you're doing it wrong). You get there by understanding how the questions work individually and independently.

  Put another way, an expressed worry about not being able to use prior work indicates reliance on something that ought not to be relied upon. It is a perfectly acceptable thing to use, and it may even be the most efficient thing to do in a given circumstance. But there's a big difference between using a strategy because you've determined it to be the best way to dispose of a question, and using it because that's the only way you know how to efficiently dispose of that question. The former demonstrates command over the situation; while the latter attempts to skip over that part by way of a crutch. (Yes, I am aware that it's not always one or the other)

  I absolutely disagree that there is negligible time savings by using the pen/highlighter tactic. OP highlights grouping/chart games, which is the most obvious example of where this is extremely effective. The time savings garnered by not having to redraw 4x6 grids and rewrite all the inferences is substantial for even the fastest of us, non-masters included. I would never, ever go back to recopying the charts in those games. And even in 'normal' sequencing or grouping games, I've come to prefer it. At the very least, it's not disadvantaged and is sometimes significantly advantaged from a time perspective, and how you weigh that against the prior work issue is ultimately your call. It's not perfect, but nothing is. One size doesn't fit all. Hence the comment about it being a fantastic tool for your toolbox, and the significant caveat early in my previous post where I say you can mix and match - you don't have to use every tool every time, but you do want to have it accessible for when it makes sense to use it.

  Thanks for clarifying. Reliance on prior work is not the best way to learn games and if one must actually "rely" on it (rather than strategically use it as a time-saver when available), then there's a gap in LG understanding. I agree.

  I suppose I was just a little bit confused in that I was hoping for a discussion of pros and cons of pen/highlighter approach vs. prior work approach when it comes to actual test-taking strategy and your position on that wasn't clear -- the bulk of your response seemed to be aimed at the idea that prior work isn't something that we should be using anyway, and by saying that there wasn't "much of a cost" to forgoing prior work it seemed as if you were saying the time save by using prior work was negligible. I see now that you're saying we shouldn't rely on it, but seem to accept that it may actually be ok and even more time-efficient to use it when the opportunity presents itself. That's what I'm curious about.

  1. Pen/highlighter approach, no re-copying boards.
  2. Prior work approach.
  3. Pen/highlighter approach + re-copying boards to use prior work.

  Which approach, on average, saves more time? It probably depends on the student.

  As an aside, given your thoughts laid out above, I assume you're against the "local questions first then global questions after" approach that JY is taking in the more recent LG explanations? That approach is a kind of "crutch", isn't it? I don't mean to be combative; I just like getting into the controversial weeds of LSAT strategy.
• Jonathan Wang Yearly Sage ⭐

  July 2019 edited July 2019 6874 karma

  Well, if prior work isn't something you should have to be using anyway, and the better you get the less you need it, then it suggests that as you get better at the test the disadvantage to pen/highlighter (no prior work to crib off of) fades, while the disadvantage to redrawing (time taken to redraw) does not. So at the very end of the rainbow, I'd argue that pen/highlighter is unequivocally better even without jotting down boards (plus,when you're that fluent, you probably won't need to use them much anyway). But since most of us will not be there when we take the test, it's kind of a useless statement. What's best for everyone at any given moment varies with the circumstance. And the fact that you can mix and match makes it sort of a moot point regardless.

  Practically speaking, I will always teach my students to work on their theory first. Theory forms your foundation and sets the floor; strategy is a multiplier. So regardless of pen/highlighter or redraw, I will always have my students treat each question as an isolated entity to start. We build their foundations first, and then multiply their baseline with efficiency tricks later. Perhaps that should be the major takeaway here.

  I do not personally like local-then-global, you are correct, though I acknowledge once again that it can be a useful tool at times and I don't hesitate to have students utilize it when necessary (usually when they're utterly lost in a setup). Main issue there is that the LSAC constructs their games in such a way that big important stuff you need to see/understand tends to be tested first and utilized/iterated on later, so skipping over an early global question just because it's global risks missing out on an opportunity to discover a critical inference or pressure point. See, for example PT72 G4 (if you're not there yet, minor spoiler coming, but not a huge one) - the major core inference is asked about early on in a global question, and knowing it makes the rest of the set a lot easier. I'm not that adamant on this one though, because as stated above I approach questions as isolated and independent by default. Since I can do them in any order, it doesn't make sense for me to object too hard to a specific order, and it doesn't really harm you nearly as much to just do questions in a different order as it does to fundamentally try to skip over parts of the process entirely.
• 1 Like

  caffeine powered human Alum Member

  July 2019 414 karma

  @AudaciousRed said:
  I think that is awesome that you found a method that helps you study, but going forward with the digital testing, we wont have highlighters anymore during the tests. Just a pen, I think. It's something to consider when studying. If you need that highlighter as part of your timing strategy, it could hurt you come test day.

  I forgot about the digital testing. I'm writing the LSAT outside of the U.S., and the digital testing has not been implemented here yet!
• brigitte Free Trial Member

  July 2019 432 karma

  @"Jonathan Wang" said:
  Well, if prior work isn't something you should have to be using anyway, and the better you get the less you need it, then it suggests that as you get better at the test the disadvantage to pen/highlighter (no prior work to crib off of) fades, while the disadvantage to redrawing (time taken to redraw) does not. So at the very end of the rainbow, I'd argue that pen/highlighter is unequivocally better even without jotting down boards (plus,when you're that fluent, you probably won't need to use them much anyway). But since most of us will not be there when we take the test, it's kind of a useless statement. What's best for everyone at any given moment varies with the circumstance. And the fact that you can mix and match makes it sort of a moot point regardless.

  Practically speaking, I will always teach my students to work on their theory first. Theory forms your foundation and sets the floor; strategy is a multiplier. So regardless of pen/highlighter or redraw, I will always have my students treat each question as an isolated entity to start. We build their foundations first, and then multiply their baseline with efficiency tricks later. Perhaps that should be the major takeaway here.

  I do not personally like local-then-global, you are correct, though I acknowledge once again that it can be a useful tool at times and I don't hesitate to have students utilize it when necessary (usually when they're utterly lost in a setup). Main issue there is that the LSAC constructs their games in such a way that big important stuff you need to see/understand tends to be tested first and utilized/iterated on later, so skipping over an early global question just because it's global risks missing out on an opportunity to discover a critical inference or pressure point. See, for example PT72 G4 (if you're not there yet, minor spoiler coming, but not a huge one) - the major core inference is asked about early on in a global question, and knowing it makes the rest of the set a lot easier. I'm not that adamant on this one though, because as stated above I approach questions as isolated and independent by default. Since I can do them in any order, it doesn't make sense for me to object too hard to a specific order, and it doesn't really harm you nearly as much to just do questions in a different order as it does to fundamentally try to skip over parts of the process entirely.

  Just because one doesn't need to use prior work to solve a game doesn't mean that it's not a significant timesaver in certain situations. For example, rule equivalence questions. yeah, sure, you can do it without prior work. But I can't really accept the idea that using prior work to help eliminate answers isn't extremely helpful on this type of question. Not necessary. But helpful.
• Jonathan Wang Yearly Sage ⭐

  July 2019 edited July 2019 6874 karma

  I never said it wasn't helpful; I said I don't see it as a huge loss in the grand scheme if you don't have prior work (and I even specifically noted it's not an either-or proposition). I addressed that specific point and my precise reasons for weighing other things more heavily multiple times above.