Drill 12 pg. 83 Question Help.....?????

[joyb443]

I purchased this book and I love it. However, I'm confused about Drill 12 pg. 83. "redaction"?. Please explain. This is my first time seeing the word "redaction". I have no clue what to do.

I do not understand. Start me off. Why is question 1 and a few others no redaction?

Also, on Drill 4, where can I find more practice? This is good...... !!!! Thank you.

[Gerald]

When you redact something you typically take away key, but sensitive pieces of information.

For example social security numbers and names could be redacted, i.e. removed, from a document to maintain privacy.

Or, to preserve national security and the safety of agents in the field, a mission report obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request might read “<redacted> entered the compound of <redacted> in <redacted> under cover of night to retrieve the stolen <redacted> before it could be used by agents of <redacted> to <redacted> and plunge the world into <redacted>. However, the mission failed when <redacted> by a herd of geese and now the end times are imminent unless <redacted> can find <redacted> and pizza before <redacted>.”

All this to say that, while it’s undoubtedly more James Bond-like for drill answers to refer to “redactions,” we’re not really redacting anything with this drill — since redacted stuff is the good stuff. Instead, we’re getting rid of any fluff that’s not actually related to the argument core.

When the answers say “no redactions,” what they really mean is "every part of the original was necessary to deconstructing the core," e.g. there was no fluff. Everything is either a premise, conclusion, or in some other way necessary to understanding the logical flow of the argument.

The point of the drill is to see if you can tell the difference between core and fluff, keeping one while striking the other.

For example, in the following argument, “Coo-coo Cola is a soft drink that launched in 1927 with the tagline, ‘They said it was crazy to make a soft drink that contains 3,000% of your daily allowance of both sugar and caffeine. Well, call us Coo Coo!’ Recently, Coo Coo Cola changed their logo to yellow from blue, so today there are more soft drinks with yellow logos than blue logos.”

Here, the only parts of the argument that matter are the premise, i.e. blue logo to yellow, and the conclusion, i.e., more yellow than blue. Everything else re: founding year and tagline etc. can be “redacted”, i.e. cut, because it won’t help me evaluate the logic of the core, i.e. can I tell if there are more blue or yellow logos from my premise?

As to the borrowed language drill, I applaud your drive to get more practice in this tricky area! I don’t have any specific drills to point you to, however one thing to keep in mind as you proceed with your LSAT studies is you can create your own drills by cannibalizing old prep tests with specific goals in mind. In your case, you might look at a logical reasoning section from, e.g. PT 33, then a.) determine whether a question is in the Assumption family or otherwise concerns itself with main points, (i.e. Main Point questions or Function questions) b.) if initial analysis indicates the problem is worth doing, challenge yourself to rapidly ID the conclusion; c.) if the conclusion contains borrowed language, restate the conclusion without the borrowed language in your own words; d.) work the answers; e.) analyze how well you understood the borrowed language in review of the answers.

This cannibalization of prep tests for a specific purpose tends to work a bunch of skills, from identification to execution, and often pushes to mastery on a concept better than a spoon fed drill might.