Perhaps if he were a Reading Comp answer choice....

A couple of years ago, Lori Gottlieb’s MARRY HIM! The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough (like the accompanying essay she’d written for the Atlantic several years before) ruffled feathers. Everyone I knew seemed to have a strong reaction to the idea, even if they didn’t actually read the book. Settle! Don’t settle! Maybe settle! Don’t settle now but settle later!

The concept of settling implies that you’re picking a person who isn’t your ideal. You’re willing to compromise because maybe you’re just too dang picky. (I recall telling one friend who’d just gotten engaged and was on the Gottlieb side of the debate that she might want to avoid the actual term “settling” around her fiance. Call me crazy.)

It’s a controversial concept.

It’s not, however, so controversial when it comes to reading comp. In fact, it’s a useful way of thinking about reading comp. At Manhattan LSAT, we teach that you should “work wrong to right”–eliminate wrong answer choices in order to get to the right one (as opposed to searching for the right answer). “Not you. Not you. Not you. Not you. Okay, you’re fine.” You’re the best of the bunch, (E), even though your breath is bad and you should really pluck your eyebrows, at least your left one.

Settle for right answers in Reading Comp. Don’t reach for your ideal. It’s already had an affair with Angelina Jolie and adopted a seventeenth kid.

If you’ve been studying for the LSAT for very long, you’ve encountered the old correlation-causation issue: just because two things are correlated (say, use of umbrellas and rain) doesn’t mean one is causing the other (the umbrella is causing the rain?). Correlation simply means that as one “thing” changes, so does another “thing”.  I stumbled on a TED talk this week that I think presents the issue in clear (and meaningful–to your health) terms. It’s also an interesting lesson in medical research and reporting. If you have a few minutes, give it a watch.

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.

I came upon a great question on our forum that I want to bring up here, because there’s a valuable lesson in it. A student asked:

On the LSAT, when you have a constraint that says “T is performed EITHER immediately before F OR immediately after R” does that mean there is a potential for an RTF block? Or is that eliminated because of the EITHER/OR language?

LSAT guru Mike Kim answered:

On the LSAT, the statement either/or does not inherently rule out the possibility of both (though sometimes other factors, such as the design of the game itself, do “naturally” limit the possibility of both).

Not Pictured: The LSAT

Mike went on to use a great example of soup or salad on a menu. If you’re at a restaurant and given the option of ordering a soup or salad with your entree, does that mean you can have both? Not unless the waiter thinks you’re cute. You have to pick one or the other (or pay more). That’s the T.G.I.Friday’s Or.

The LSAT Or is not the T.G.I.Friday’s Or. The LSAT Or is the Cruise Or. I’m told (as I’ve yet to cruise) that on a luxury ship, as the ventriloquist makes you cackle so hard you spit out your unlimited soda, “soup or salad” means you can also have both (gluttonous places that cruise ships are). The same definition applies on the LSAT. As Mike indicated, unless there are other restrictions in the game that prevent “both” from being an option, the “either/or” language itself does not prevent it. Both is possible.

In case this post left you wanting to go on a cruise (think of all that simultaneous consumption of clam chowder and iceberg…), I recommend David Foster Wallace’s essay “Shipping Out.” It may change your mind. It’s also very good.

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:
Read more

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!

Annnnnnd we’re off! Well, almost. The October LSAT is Saturday, and for those of you wondering how to spend the next few days, here are some tips:

DO get to sleep early—and wake up early—this week. You’re going to have to do it on Saturday, so it’s good to get your body on schedule now.

DON’T go to your buddy’s bachelor party Friday night. He will be fine without you (and maybe better off?).

DO continue to do timed, mixed practice through Thursday.

DON’T work hard on Friday. If the idea of taking the day off to eat cherries while watching reruns of Curb Your Enthusiasm panics you, read over your notes or do a game or two, maybe a few hard logical reasoning questions you’ve done before. But it’s not the day to take a full-length test.

DO get a passport-size photo of yourself this week if you haven’t already. (This is in addition to your identification. See the email you recently received from LSAC for details.)

DON’T dwell on what you wish you’d done differently over the last few months. To do so is a waste of critical energy at this point, and your mind should be focused on…

DO think positively. It’s as true as it is cliché. Listen: someone is going to teach this test who’s boss, and it’s not Tony Danza. It’s you. YOU. I can’t stress this one enough. If you don’t believe you’re going to do your best, you’re less likely to. If you do, you’re more likely to. And if you can see that those two statements are not contrapositives, give yourself a high-five right now, please.

DON’T forget your analogue (big hand, small hand) watch. (Bonus tip: set it to 12 o’clock at the beginning of each section so you can easily track your 35 minutes without arithmetic.)

DO take a snack.

DON’T mistake the LSAT for a mythical tool that measures your self-worth. It’s just a test, y’all. Plus, you have more friends than it, and they’re cooler.

Now go put those red and blue and yellow balls in order like you’ve never put them in order before.

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.