Triangulating topics in Logical Reasoning and 5 lb guide

[PrashantG41]

Hello Manhattan,

I have purchased both these guides, and to be honest - they are, imo, the best self-study resources out there - comprehensive (to say the least), yet crisp (yea, its paradoxical), and engrossing (its as if the author is directly talking to you)!

I do have a question- I noticed a few differences in categorization of LR families - and I found the 5lb book's categorization of LR families much more MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive).

For one, the 5lb book in its introduction has categorized all the questions into four categories (vis a vis 2 categories in the strategy guide, with the second one sort of being a dump category).

Two, I could not come across certain categories in the strategy guide which were mentioned in the 5lb book such as "Evaluate the Question" type.


Is there anyway I can align my studies more towards the 5lb classification while going through the strategy guide? To be more precise? are there any supplementary resources for the strategy guide which can better align my studies for a uniform approach?

Thanks for clarifying.

Prashant

[ohthatpatrick]

Sadly, no.

The 5lb book is the latest release, so some of its terminology is where we teachers would like to take the organizational taxonomy of the strategy guides in future editions.

Also, the 5lb book was created as a standalone work, allowing for students who don't otherwise have any Manhattan terminology / resources in their heads.

In a sense, we teachers were allowed a little more freedom in creating / writing the 5 lb. book, because it didn't need to tie in as consistently with the rest of the MPrep materials (the strategy guides have to blend well with LSAT Interact).

Your example, Evaluate questions, is something that doesn't appear in the LR strategy guide because the question type was always rare and hadn't appeared in like 20 tests. However, since there's been an uptick of them over the last 10 tests, we're now putting them back into the vernacular of question types. I'm sure in the next edition of the LR Strategy guide we'll have a more explicit nod to Evaluate.

I don't think you'll find stuff in the 5 lb. that is at odds with anything in the LR strategy guide. You might just find some bonus layers of categorization / patterns --- things that were too granular to get prioritized in writing a strategy guide but can be dealt with at some point in a 5 lb, 1000 page book.

Anyhoo, no, there's no resource to account for the stylistic or terminological discrepancies, other than the forum that you're currently on. There's a folder in the forum for 5 lb Book questions, so if you end up wondering how to connect any dots, just ask us there.

Good luck.