Sometimes I find myself telling people (er, myself?) that I’m not writing my novel to make money. If that were my motivation I’d almost certainly write about vampires or shades of colors. But hey, if my novel sells a million copies, and I get to retire at 30, who’s complaining?

Here’s the thing: just because I’m not writing a book in order to make money doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. This personal example is now becoming uncomfortable for me so I’m going to move on.

Logical reasoning questions can sometimes hinge on understanding this difference. I’m talking about the difference between being motivated by a certain goal and actually achieving it, even though it wasn’t your motivation or primary motivation.

Say I’m stranded on the far end of a deserted island and have to trek a hundred miles by foot to the nearest small society of humans, picking berries I hope aren’t poisonous along the way, befriending my hand to fulfill socialization needs. When I finally get there and yell, “There is a group of us stranded on the other side of the island!” and someone says, “You lost weight. You look fit,” will I say, “No, I didn’t! That wasn’t my goal!”? No, I’ll say, “Yeah, I’m sure I did because I was starving.”

            Just because it wasn’t my goal doesn’t mean it didn’t or can’t happen; and just because it does happen doesn’t mean it was my goal. These are separate things.

Be careful for this distinction on the LSAT. For a couple of examples, see Preptest 66, section 4, question 22, and Preptest 42, section 2, question 15.

How Would The Supreme Court Perform on the LSAT?

A question I often hear is, “Does the LSAT actually have anything to do with law school?” And the answer is, however incredibly obnoxious, yes and no.

You don’t do logic games in law school, I’m sorry to report (because the first semester of law school makes logic games look pretty fun). And you don’t answer multiple choice questions in which you evaluate the logic of arguments.

However, you do use the reading and reasoning skills you’ve developed studying for the LSAT: dissecting arguments to determine their structure,

evaluating their internal coherence, and identifying where and how parties (or judges) disagree on the issue.

Do the kinds of “flaws” we look for on the LSAT actually appear in the cases you’ll read? Law professor Andrew J. McClurg, in a fascinating article that you can download and read for free here, shows us the answer is yes. They do.

McClurg examined a number of logical fallacies in Supreme Court decisions, focusing specifically on Justice Rehnquist (the article is kind of old) for reasons he explains that I won’t get into here. I recently stumbled on the article and plucked a few of my favorite examples to share, followed by LSAT questions that exhibit the same flaws. If you’re curious, geek out by finding the flaws in the Court’s reasoning below and then comparing them to the LSAT questions that are analogous:
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Must. Have. Coffee.

For years, I prided myself on not being addicted to anything, and then I had a child. Now I cannot function beyond the cognitive level of a stuffed iguana if I do not have an espresso. In fact, if I do not have this aforementioned elixir within 23 minutes of awaking, I wreck the emotional stability of everyone around me for the entire day. I accept this new reality, blame my son, and plan to quit one day (though my wife will not permit me to attempt any going cold turkey experiments if I am within 200 miles of her or my son—sort of a caffeine restraining order).

To add to my anxiety about coffee, I saw a news report last week stating that excessive coffee drinking makes us much more susceptible to glaucoma. This makes sense—on occasion I have noticed my eye twitches from drinking coffee, making me look like a fish on crack. Being in Denver, where there are more medical marijuana dispensaries than Starbucks (really), if I do get glaucoma, I’ll have a fine reason to visit one of the well-named “pharmacies” near me: ReLeaf, Club Med, 420 Wellness, Grateful Meds… (Honestly, I was just trying to work in a way to list the ridiculous names – here’s a longer list.)

So, I looked up the article, and being an LSAT geek, besides wondering if I should pick up and move 200+ miles from my wife and child during a caffeine-sobering period, I also wondered about the increased risk. Whoever conducted this study (and I hope my tax dollars didn’t pay for it) reports that the “increased risk was on the order of 66 percent.” Now, on my crappy local news, (sorry, Denver 9 News), the reporter seemed to suggest that drinking coffee equals eye death. What do you think?

So, here are some questions for you to chew on (and respond to in the comment bar):

Assuming the study is correct, do you think we can say that you are now more than 50% likely to get glaucoma?

Based on the study, can we say that heavy coffee drinkers are now very susceptible to getting glaucoma?

Similarly, though with different content, think about this argument: People are more likely to pick the number three than any other number when you ask them to “pick a number, one to four” because you have effectively said the numbers one, two (“to”), and four, and so their minds fill in the number three. Therefore, when you ask someone that question, the person is more likely than not to pick three.

I await your responses!

Yes, I'm a cardinal and yes, I rule. Your point?

Recall the cardinal rule of assumptions: they are unstated. If a question is quoting a portion of text to you, that portion is stated. It cannot, therefore, be an assumption.

These questions that ask you to identify the function or role of a phrase or statement are pretty efficient to answer if you know what you’re looking for. If you identify the quoted phrase as a conclusion, you can knock out any answer choice that calls it premise, no matter how accurate anything else in that answer choice is. Likewise, if it’s a premise, you can get rid of any answer choice that calls it a conclusion.

But regardless of its role, you can always get rid of “assumption” answer choices for one reason: since it’s quoted, that’s impossible.

Check out PT64, S1, Q14 for an example.

Confession: last week in class, I nearly strangled a student. I leaned forward, pretended to put my hands around his neck, and then trembled in a strange way.*

Moments before, we’d had this conversation:

Homer Simpson does not have the LSAT score to teach for Manhattan LSAT

Mary: Why not (E), Sam?

Sam: I felt like it was already stated in the argument.

Mary: But it’s an inference question.

Sam: Yeah, but (E) was pretty much told to us already.

Mary: [Stared at him blankly.]

Sam: It’s like… right there in the argument already. Seemed too obvious.

Mary: [Kept staring.]

Sam: Is that… wrong?

Mary: EVERYBODY, SAM’S ANSWER IS (E), HE JUST DIDN’T REALIZE IT BEFORE.

Luckily, Sam and I are friends. (He’s reading this going, “not anymore.”)

Guys. Please listen. Do not eliminate an answer choice to an inference question because you think it was already stated in the argument. That’s like eliminating a strengthen answer choice because it strengthens too much, or an assumption answer choice because it was unstated. (If you just gasped at the idea of either of those, that’s a good sign.)

Your ideal inference answer choice? An exact replica of a sentence in the argument. Think about it: you’re trying to figure out what must be true. What must be true more than something you’ve been told word for word is true?

Of course, you will probably never see your ideal answer choice… you’ll have to settle for a close match with a synonym or two. But now that you know what you’re going for in a perfect world, no more “we already know that” as a reason for eliminating anything on inference questions, okay?

*True.

To make up for lack of flight ability, Pen Gwynn (pictured) took up heavyweight boxing

Inference questions in Logical Reasoning ask you to infer what must be true. This means that the answer choice you pick shouldn’t stretch beyond the scope of the text in the stimulus. You want to stay as close to the text as possible, which is why we say things like, “Be literal!” and “Make only baby inferences” (maybe that second one is just me).

Here’s an example of one way wrong answer choices try to trick you. The stimulus will provide statements in black and white—light switches, not dimmers. For example, “all artists are attentive to detail,” “no kangaroos are stupid,” or “most birds fly.” (Notice that even this third example offers a trigger, not a sliding scale. They either fly, or they don’t.)

Sometimes on these kinds of questions, you’ll find answer choices that create issues of degree that don’t exist in the argument. For example, wrong answer choices corresponding to these examples, respectively, might say that artists are more attentive to detail if they eat bacon for breakfast, or that large kangaroos are stupider than small one, or that birds fly better if they are flying with other birds. All three of these are examples of false inferences from the statements above that you can recognize because they create issues of degree that do not exist in the argument.

You can think of this kind of wrong answer as a dimmer (when the argument is a clapper), or a sliding scale, when the argument discusses no such scale.

To try the kind of problem that I’m talking about, check out PT43, S2, Q22 and PT41, S1, W2, and then check out our forum explanations of each.

When you’re looking for a necessary assumption, remember that you’re looking for what must be true, and what must be true doesn’t necessarily “fill the

Barry's suit & briefcase disguise: necessary, but not sufficient

whole gap,” as we say. It could be a small piece of the puzzle, but a critical one. Imagine a bridge supported by several buttresses, each of which is necessary (you knock it down and the bridge falls) even though it could never support the bridge on its own. Therefore, the buttresses are necessary, but certainly not sufficient, for supporting the bridge.

For these reasons, you generally want to be wary of answer choices that seem sweeping—words like “always” and “never” are tip-offs. (This isn’t to say those answers are never right, though. If the argument is extreme, there can be a necessary assumption that is, too.)

A good rule of thumb is that the conclusion caps how “strong” the necessary assumption can be. If the conclusion is on the milder side of the spectrum

—“Jenn will probably choose cake over pie” or “Jim is likely to find the suit distasteful”—it wouldn’t make sense to choose answers that read, respectively, “Jenn will always choose cake over pie” and “Jim will definitely find the suit distasteful.” These wrong answers push the arguments beyond their scope, which has already been set.

This isn’t a new concept but simply another way of thinking about the same old idea. The conclusion caps off the argument, and at the cap, it stops assuming.

Don't let your imagination run wild while filling in the blank

Fill-in-the-blank-line-at-the-end-of-the-argument questions have been known as Inference questions delivered in a fancy package. “These,” I tell students, “ask you to find a conclusion, but don’t start thinking creatively. Your task is still to find an answer that must be true.” This is easy to grasp, since something you can infer from a premise could also be called a valid conclusion. So that was that.

But there’s a different flavor of fill-in-the-blank questions creeping into the LSAT from time-to-time! For example, on PrepTest 63, Section 1, Question 1 and PrepTest 65, Section 4, Question 15, you’re asked to fill in the blank… with something that will strengthen the argument’s conclusion. “Wait!” you’re thinking, “We don’t strengthen conclusions on Inference questions…” That’s right. In fact, on Inference questions, there is no conclusion in the stimulus–your answer could be considered the conclusion. We can think of PT63, S1, Q1 and it’s comrade on PT65, therefore, as Strengthen questions–you want to make the conclusion inferable.
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As you can imagine, being an LSAT teacher carries great risks. What used to be good old fights about doing the dishes are now fights about doing the dishes AND the assumptions underneath the statement “When you leave the dishes on the sink, it makes me feel like you’re an a@#$&@(#!”

But, enough about dishes we have to wash, let’s talk about disposable dishes! Yesterday I went and bought a shredded chicken burrito (half-and-half spicy/mild) at Santiago’s, my second favorite Mexican restaurant. I also picked up a frosty soda to wash it down (“pop” for Midwesterners). It arrived in a lovely Styrofoam cup. Later, while waiting in line (“on line” for New Yorkers), I satisfied my need to be constantly doing something (“ADHD” for you youngins) by reading the cup. I faced these two statements:
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Principle Example questions on the logical reasoning section ask you to find an illustration (or example) of a principle given to you in the stimulus. The most straightforward of these provide an outright principle (generally stated) followed by five answer choices describing specific situations. For example, one might look like this:

It's an illustration within an illustration

‘Tis better to give than to receive. 

Which of the following best illustrates the principle stated above? 

(A) It is better for Jeremy to give his dad an HDTV than to give his mom a necklace. 

(B) It is better for Jeremy to get a motorcycle from his dad than from his mom. 

(C) It is better for Jeremy to give his sister the iPad than to keep it for himself. 

(D) It is better for Jeremy’s sister to give the iPad to Jeremy than to give it to charity. 

(E) It is better for Jeremy to give his girlfriend a Dr. Seuss book than to receive one from his sister. 
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