Quick Tip: Using Analytics
Are you familiar with 7Sage’s Analytics tool? If you’re not, you should be! Your Analytics can be a huge help when building your study strategy and deciding where to focus your attention. One of its most powerful features is Question Type Analysis, which compares your PrepTest scores question by question with other users in a similar score range to calculate which question types you’re weaker and stronger in. And it doesn’t stop there! For each question type, the tool uses your relative strength and how common the question type is on the LSAT to automatically generate a priority list. In other words, Analytics shows you exactly where you can get the most mileage out of studying. Next time you’re wondering what to work on, give it a try!
Discussion: Understanding Sufficient and Necessary
Translating from English to Lawgic can be time-consuming and difficult, especially when you’re working with the kind of convoluted wording that the LSAT loves to throw around. So what can you do? If you haven’t familiarized yourself with translation groups yet, that’s a great place to start. It’s a lot easier to understand Lawgic with a grounding in the types of relationships you might encounter. But one other strategy you can use is to think about the meaning of the words themselves, and what that tells you about their role in a relationship!
Sufficient
Let’s start with the sufficient side of the relationship. In normal English, sufficient means that something is enough to achieve a goal or fulfill a purpose of some kind. And as it turns out, it actually means the same thing in Lawgic! Whenever you want to find the sufficient side of a relationship, consider whether one side is enough to give you the other. If so, that’s the sufficient clause. In practice, this could mean one element causes another (e.g., rain [S] causes the ground to get wet), or that one element’s presence leads us to conclude that the other is there (e.g., if you get an A+ [S], you must have handed in your homework).
Necessary
The flip side of sufficient, of course, is necessary. If sufficient means enough, necessary means that something is needed. In other words, if the sufficient is present, the necessary must be present. This could mean that the sufficient always causes the necessary (e.g., lightning causes thunder [N]), or that the necessary is an enabling factor for the sufficient (e.g., if you’re baking, you need flour [N]).
Putting It All Together
So, when you run into a complex sentence like “Unless Talula doesn’t forget to set an alarm, she will certainly fail to wake up in time,” you can speed up the translation process by asking if the first thing is sufficient (i.e., enough) to tell you the second, and if the second is necessary (i.e., needed) to tell you the first. Likewise, in Sufficient Assumption questions, the correct answer choice will be enough to make the conclusion follow from the premises. In Necessary Assumption, the correct answer will be needed, or else the argument falls apart. Lawgic can throw anyone for a loop, but considering how the relationships function can really give you an edge when you need it.