Mastering Logical Reasoning for LSAT

Welcome back to the Inside LSAT Prep Course. This is lesson 5, our third and final lesson on the logical reasoning section. In the past two lessons, we talked about LR question types that had arguments in their passages. There were front-end question types, where your main strategy was executed before looking at answer choices, and there were back-end question types where your main strategy was executed after looking at answer choices. Today, we'll finish things off by talking about three question types whose passages don't have arguments. These are inference, unexpected result, and apply the principle. As you'll see, these question types are technically back-end questions, because we do the bulk of the hard work after reading the answer choices. But their most defining quality is that they don't have arguments. The passages are just sets of statements or little situations. No conclusions and no support. Before we get to question types though, let's review yet again our general step-by-step approach for tackling LR questions. I introduced this in lesson 3 where I discuss it in more depth. But it's important to internalize this process, so going over it again and again is helpful in the beginning. So here it is. Again, we start by reading the stem so that we can identify the question type and read with purpose, that is, with a sense of our task in mind. Next, we make a mental note of the question type. Actually say it to yourself in your head. Structural analysis, necessary assumption, flaw, etc. This will keep you focused on the task at hand while you read. Which is what you do next. Read the passage, and while you're doing that, or right after, find the conclusion if applicable. That is, if the question type has an argument. The questions from today's lesson won't have arguments, so we'll skip this step. We'll also skip the next one, which is to do a more thorough argument analysis if applicable. We'll also skip the next one, which is to execute your main strategy if you're dealing with a front-end question. We will have some things to do before moving on to the answer choices with today's question types. but these are all primarily back-end in nature. Next, you give the answer choices a quick first pass. With your task in mind, do some seem better than others? Can you knock some out straight away? Once you get a sense of the answer choices as a whole, go back and read them more carefully, informed by what you saw in your first pass. Now is when you can execute your main strategy if you're dealing with a back-end question. The strategies we discuss today will mostly be executed at this step. You then use those strategies to do the last step, which is to choose your answer. Keep this list in mind. I've been trying to model it so far with our sample questions, and I will continue to do that today. Alright, let's move on to our question types. As before, I'll follow a standard format when discussing each one. I'll begin by giving an overview of the type. I'll then mention some other question types that you shouldn't confuse it with. I'll give you the frequency with which the question type appears on the test, and I'll also give you some sample stems so that you can recognize the type when you see it. Then we'll move on to strategies, and we'll practice these strategies on some sample questions together. Finally, I'll conclude with giving you some homework questions that you can do on your own as practice. After we get through these final three question types, I'll finish this lesson off with a discussion of how to improve at LR going forward. I'll give some advanced tips, and I'll also talk about how to structure your preparation over time in order to encourage progress. But we'll get there when we get there. For now, let's move on to our first question type without an argument, inference. Inference questions can be challenging for people. Their passages don't have arguments. Instead, they have a series of statements that are related to one another. The question stem then asks you to draw something out of those statements. In other words, you need to pick an answer choice that is supported, inferred, or suggested by the statements above, assuming those statements are true. There are two types of inference questions, must be true and most strongly supported. They are fundamentally quite similar. The difference is in how strong the connection between the passage and the answer choice needs to be. With must be true, the connection is quite strong. The correct answer choice absolutely must be true if the statements in the passage are true. For example, consider the statement that every country has citizens. If this is true, then it must also be true that Canada has citizens, because Canada is a country. There's no wiggle room there. On the other hand, most strongly supported inference questions aren't as demanding. The correct answer choice doesn't have to be true, but the passage makes it more likely to be. For example, if I tell you that Maria studies every day after school for at least four hours, this strongly supports the idea that Maria wants to do well in school. Strictly speaking, this second claim doesn't have to be true, given the first. Maybe Maria just loves studying and doesn't really care about the results. Maybe her parents are forcing her to study while she wants to drop out. But without knowing these things, it certainly looks like Maria wants to do well. That's reasonably supported by the previous statement. I sometimes think of must-be-true and most strongly supported as the strong and weak versions of inference, respectively. They both ask you to do pretty much the same thing, find an answer choice that is supported by the passage, but in one case, that support has to be maximally strong, while in the other, it can have more wiggle room. One question type that you should not confuse with inference is structural analysis. In particular, the version that asks you to find the conclusion. When it comes to inference questions, your answer choice does not need to be the conclusion to an argument. Occasionally, you will see one like this. The passage will usually end with a blank, and you'll have to fill in the blank with the answer choice, which will be the conclusion that the statements are leading up to. So inference questions like this sort of almost have arguments, but they're not complete. And anyway, most inference questions are not like this. More commonly, you're just picking something that is supported by at least one of the statements in the passage. Interestingly, it is pretty common for the inference to be drawn from just one bit of the passage. This is a trick the LSAT likes to play on you. They string together a bunch of complicated claims, but then the answer choice is implied by just one part, potentially even a minor looking part. In any case, this is all quite different than structural analysis questions that ask you to find the conclusion. In those, the conclusion is already there in the passage and you just have to locate it. The next type that you should not confuse with inference is strengthener. I mentioned this when we focused directly on strengthener's last lesson. Some strengthener stems ask you to pick an answer choice that most strongly supports the conclusion of the passage in the argument. The support there is moving from the answer choice up to the passage. In the most strongly supported version of inference, The stem asks you to pick an answer choice supported by the passage, so the direction of support is from passage to answer choice. Finally, don't confuse inference with necessary assumption, as I mentioned in lesson 4. Yes, the correct answer choice in necessary assumption questions has to be true, but that's because if it is false, the argument will not work. Remember, necessary assumption questions have arguments, while inferences generally don't. In must-be-true inference questions, There's something in the passage that implies the answer choice. This will be either one claim alone, like every country has citizens, or it will be some combination of claims. So, while there's a similarity between certain inference questions and necessary assumption questions, that the answer choice must be true, this occurs in different contexts. And as a result, as I hope you will see over time, the two questions feel very different to work on. You think differently and your strategies are different. different, so running them together will only lead to confusion and frustrated progress. Inference questions are very common. They occur about 14% of the time. You're definitely going to want to invest some time getting better at these, especially because they require you to think differently than most other question types. In some ways, working on any question type that has an argument helps you get better at the other ones with arguments. You just keep getting better at working with arguments in all different ways. But because inference isn't like that, and because it's not really like unexpected result or apply the principle either, you need to give it special attention. Here are some sample stems that indicate inference questions. Which one of the following statements is most strongly supported by the information above? If all of the statements above are true, which one of the following must also be true? Which one of the following can be inferred from the passage above? Notice how they all gesture at support coming from the passage to the answer choice. This is the defining quality of inference questions. When it comes to dealing with inference questions, we'll have one general, let's say, light strategy. and two more specific heavy-duty strategies, one for each of the two versions of inference questions. I suggest starting with the light one and seeing how you do. Pull out the tougher stuff only if you need to. The light strategy is to make very specific connections between the answer choice you are considering and a very specific part of the passage. For your first pass, it is fine to narrow things down in a very rough way. Okay, yeah, this answer choice seems to be in the spirit of the passage. Or, no, this actually goes against the spirit of the passage. But then, get more precise. Which part of the passage exactly supports the answer choice? Then, if you're still left with more than one contender, you can use the heavy-duty strategies. There's one for each of the two versions of inference. For the weaker, most strongly supported version, just use the skeptic's perspective. Point your gaze at the answer choice and say, why should I believe that? Is there something in the passage that provides a reasonable answer to that question? If so, your answer is probably correct. For the stronger, must-be-true version, use negation like we did in the final stage of Old Reliable back when we were doing Necessary Assumption questions. Just negate the answer choice. Now, this time, when you're considering the negated version, you're not wondering if it destroys the argument. Instead, you're looking for some contradiction. Because the answer choice has to be true, making it false will result in a contradiction with something in the passage. Let's try all this out on some examples. As I mentioned in the previous lessons, it's really better that you try out each sample question on your own first. You'll get a lot more out of the lessons that way. So pause the video now and work through this one alone. I'll give you a moment to do that. And then, as before, I'm going to enable insight mode, which here is a simulation of a cool feature we have on the insight training platform. Usually it will highlight any signal words and the conclusion, but there are no arguments in this lesson so you won't see that. You will, however, see hints for each answer choice. Let's bring those in now. I like to provide these. because they serve as a nice middle ground between seeing the question on its own and getting a full answer explanation. Before giving it all away, I want to nudge you in the direction of how I'd like you to be thinking about answer choices when considering them. So that's the purpose of the little hints. I recommend pausing the video again after I enable insight mode and giving things a second thought. I'll give you a moment for that too. And we're back. Now... I will walk you through this one, starting with the stem. If the statements above are all true, which one of the following must also be true? Okay, an inference question of the stronger variety. Our answer choice will have to be true if we grant that everything else in the passage is true as well. Okay, on to the passage then. Philosophy has no immediate application to life outside of academia. Studying philosophy is personally fulfilling, but majoring in the discipline... will not help a student secure employment after college. Nevertheless, many students choose each year to pursue a major in philosophy. Okay, I hope you can see that there's no argument here. Nobody is trying to persuade you of anything. There are just some related statements being made about some topic. When reading inference passages, just make sure you've understood everything. There's no conclusion to find and no argument analysis to do. Just make sure you're clear about what's going on. And then... we move on to the answer choices. Just a first pass initially. A. A major that cannot help a student secure employment after college is not worth pursuing. Okay, I don't remember anything about what is worth pursuing, but there were some potentially negative things said about philosophy. I'll just leave this one alone for now. It doesn't look great though. B. At least some students are not motivated by the idea of making a lot of money. Hmm, okay. I guess because students still major in philosophy even though it doesn't help them get work, I could see something like that. I'll leave it alone for now. C. It is because philosophy has no immediate application to life outside of academia that majoring in it will not help a student secure employment after college. This brings in a causal claim, which is something substantial that doesn't have to be true here. The passage doesn't state anything about causes. I think we can safely knock this one out. D. More students would major in philosophy if it would help them secure employment after college. This one is problematic too. It's a prediction about what would happen if things were different. Something like that definitely doesn't need to be true. I'll knock this one out as well. And finally, E. At least one activity that has no immediate application to life outside of academia is nevertheless personally fulfilling. Hmm. At least one activity. That would be studying philosophy, I guess. India? It has no immediate application to life outside of academia. The passage says that. And yeah, it is personally fulfilling. That's all in the passage. This one looks very promising. Let's go back to the others that we passed on, though. A. This is a general claim about any major that cannot help a student secure employment. So it's already going beyond the bounds of the major we're talking about, philosophy. And then it brings in this other idea about being worth pursuing. Worth pursuing according to whom? For what purpose? No, this answer is all over the place and goes way beyond what we have in the passage. It's out. And now B. This one is a little closer to the mark. If E is right, then this is going to be the challenger. But okay, let's take a closer look. At least some students are not motivated by the idea of making a lot of money. Again, I guess this is because they decide to major in philosophy despite it not helping them secure employment. That seems to suggest that they don't care that much about making money. But does that have to be true? Remember how high that bar is. Is it even possible for them to still major in philosophy while being motivated to make a lot of money? Yeah, for sure. This passage doesn't tell us what's going on in these students' heads. So this answer choice that talks about their motivations doesn't have to be true. We can knock it out. And that just leaves E. Let's double check it using the more heavy duty strategy. Remember, for a must-be-true inference, we can negate the answer choice and look for a contradiction. This is one of those trickier negations because of the quantitative language, at least one. If you recall from last time, in lesson 4, when we negate some, we get none. So the negation of this answer choice is something like, there are no activities that have no immediate application to life outside of academia. that are nevertheless personally fulfilling. Okay, a bit of a mouthful, but hopefully you can see that this will in fact produce a contradiction with the passage. The passage states that studying philosophy has no immediate application outside of academia. It also states that it is personally fulfilling. So that means there definitely is at least one activity that has both of those properties. Yet our negated answer choice directly denies that, creating a contradiction. That's what we want from an answer choice of this type. So we can safely and confidently select E, which is in fact our correct answer. On to another example. Okay, pause the video and try this one out on your own first. And enabling insight mode now. And we're back! Let's start with the stem. Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the information above? Alright, now we've got the weaker version of an inference question. The answer choice won't have to be true. It'll just need to be supported. Let's read the passage. Recently, our state government passed legislation requiring retail stores to offer hand sanitizer to customers upon entry. Prior to this legislation, most retail stores did not provide hand sanitizer. Studies show that hand sanitizer significantly reduces the spread of illness-causing germs in high-traffic areas, even when only a few people use it. Alright, nothing too crazy here. Some statements about hand sanitizer and this new law. There's a study in there. It all seems relatively straightforward. Let's check out the answer choices with a quick first pass. Hey, most retail stores would not choose to offer hand sanitizer to customers unless required to by government regulation. Um, I'm not sure. They didn't offer sanitizer before the legislation. Maybe they wouldn't without it. I'm just going to leave it alone for now and move on. B. The new legislation will lead to a reduction in the spread of illness-causing germs in retail stores. Hmm. Because there will be hand sanitizer in the stores, I guess? Maybe that study can come in here. Not sure yet. But let's definitely leave this one in. C. Using hand sanitizer is the best way to reduce the spread of illness-causing germs in high-traffic areas. The best way, huh? That's a very strong claim and a comparative one. I don't think we have support for it in the passage. I think we're going to have to knock this one out. D. There are no illness-causing germs that are impervious to the effects of hand sanitizer. None at all, huh? This one is actually a lot like C, a super strong claim. When big sweeping claims like this are made, they are really hard to support and generally easy to defeat. You would just need one counterexample here. Just one illness-causing germ that is impervious to the effects of hand sanitizer. So this answer choice is not good. I'm knocking it out. And finally E. Most people do not carry their own hand sanitizer for personal use. Okay, I'm actually not sure what to make of this one at first. It seems a bit out of the blue, but yeah, I just don't know. I'll come back to it. Alright, knocking two out on such a quick first pass is pretty good. Let's go back and take a closer look at A, B, and E. We'll start with A. Most retail stores would not choose to offer hand sanitizer to customers unless required to by government regulation. We saw something like this in the last example, where there was a prediction about what would happen in some circumstances that don't actually hold here. Usually it's hard to support something like that. Of course, this isn't a must-be-true, So there is more wiggle room though. I guess the best we could say for this answer choice is that the stores didn't offer the hand sanitizer before the legislation. Maybe they wouldn't without that pressure. We're stretching a little here. And then we need to recognize the quantitative claim, most. That's more than 50%. Do we really have good reason to say that more than 50% would not offer sanitizer without regulation? That's tough. I mean... What if they were asked to do so by their customers? Or the government just suggested it instead of requiring it? Hand sanitizer is pretty cheap after all. Maybe some would do it. Okay, after working with this one for a little, I think it's a stretch. I don't really think we have much support. I won't go as far as to knock it out, but I'm hoping that we find something better. Let's try B. The new legislation will lead to a reduction in the spread of illness-causing germs in retail stores. This seemed sort of promising in the first pass, but I also recognized in the first pass that I would have to think a bit more about it in order to figure out the connection. Let me do that now. How is this supposed to work? Let me try the skeptic's perspective. The new legislation will lead to a reduction in the spread of illness-causing germs in retail stores. Why should I believe that? Well, let's see. Because the legislation requires stores to offer hand sanitizer? And the study shows that hand sanitizer significantly reduces the spread of germs, even when only a few people use it. Right, so now all the stores have the hand sanitizer. And sure, not everybody will use it, but some probably will. And the study suggests that just a few would be enough. Yeah, this all adds up. It does seem like the passage supports the answer choice pretty well after all. I definitely like it better than A, so we'll knock A out at this point. And then what was going on with E again? Most people do not carry their own hand sanitizer for personal use. Yeah, I still don't really know what to do with this. I don't see any support for this, certainly nothing like what we have for B. And, you know, sometimes that's just how it is with these weaker inference questions. It can be hard to give a super clear explanation for why an answer is wrong when it's just not supported. It's not like there's something positively bad about the answer. It doesn't contradict anything. I just don't see any support for it, especially in comparison to B. So this one is gone, and I'm going with B, which is in fact the correct answer. And now here's a list of homework questions for you for inference questions. As I mentioned in the previous two lessons, these lists are really only for people following the self-guided study track for this course. For those of you who are doing the more comprehensive program on the Insight training platform, you should just skip these and do the exercises on the website. You'll get questions of the difficulty appropriate for your skill level. And as you get better, the program will adapt and give you harder material. It will also tell you what to focus on when. Anyway, for the rest of you, take a screenshot, write it down, or just go access the list at insightlsat.com slash homework. All right. Just two more LRQuestionTypes until you've seen them all. Inference questions, I admit, can be a bit of a pain. But next up, we have a question type that I actually think is pretty fun. Unexpected result. Passages in this question type present you with some strange outcome or situation, some unexpected result. And you need to pick an answer choice that resolves that strangeness. Your task is to make sense of something that is surprising or odd. The only question type that you might confuse unexpected result with is really Strengthener. And even then, I don't think that that's likely, especially given how experienced you've become at this point. First of all, unexpected result questions don't have arguments in their passages, while strengtheners do. And second, explaining a weird situation is just pretty different from strengthening an argument. With unexpected result, you don't make anything more likely to be true. You're not in the persuasion game. You're in the clarification game. That's quite a different thing. Unexpected result questions show up about 7% of the time, so medium to low frequency. As for stems, there are a few different ways of asking the question. Here are some samples. Which one of the following, if true, most helps to resolve the apparent discrepancy described above? Which one of the following, if true, most helps to explain blank? Which one of the following, if true, contributes most to an explanation of blank? Which one of the following, if true, most helps to resolve the apparent paradox described above? The blanks are there because questions of this type fairly often make direct reference to the unexpected result that needs explanation. So you'll often see that blank filled in with a specific description. The basic strategy for dealing with these questions is going to be to first, make sure you understand the weirdness, and second, ask yourself of each answer choice Do you clear things up? People can often be too quick with the passage here. The stem often points out the unexpected result, and this can encourage you to be lazy. You have to sit with it for a moment. Why exactly is that result unexpected? What would you expect in such a situation? Take a moment and consider these questions carefully for yourself before just moving on to the answer choices. Sometimes the situations are quite complex. Take your time to understand the weirdness. Then, you'll be better prepared to assess answer choices. And the way to do that, again, is to ask them, Alright, I know what's weird about this. Do you clear things up for me? The correct answer will make the weirdness go away. Suddenly, things will make sense. Let's see it in action. Pause the video and work through this one on your own. And enabling insight mode now. And we're back. Let's start with the stem. Which one of the following, if true, contributes to a resolution of the discrepancy above? Okay, we're going to be reading about some discrepancy, that's the weirdness, and we need an answer choice to resolve it. Let's read the passage. Even up until the day before the election, Carl Smith led Donahue in the polls by a significant margin. Nevertheless, when the ballots were all counted, Donahue emerged victorious. Okay, so again, no argument, just a description of a situation, and it should be easy enough to see why the result is unexpected. Carl Smith was leading in the polls, by a lot, but then Carl Smith lost. This calls out for an explanation. Let's look to our answer choices and see if we get one. Today, most polls are administered by institutions whose board members have strong political interests. Okay, so I guess this is suggesting that there might be some problem with the polling. Maybe that helps. Not great, but let's hold on to it for now. B. Donahue never used personal attacks against his opponent while campaigning while Carl Smith ran many negative ads. Okay, well that's good for Donahue. Maybe people appreciated that. But shouldn't that show up in the polls then? This gives us a reason why maybe Donahue won, but what about the polls? We can probably knock this one out, because it just doesn't address the core of our weirdness. C. Some politicians have in the past emerged victorious even though they always trailed in the polls. Okay, well, this talks about the polls at least. It talks about other people in the past, though. How can that explain the situation? Those past situations would need explanation as well. I guess we can hold onto it for now though. D. Most polls are administered via phone calls to people's homes during work hours, and many more working people supported Donahue than did Carl Smith. Right... okay. So you call people at home, but that means that you miss Donahue supporters because they're at work, so you don't count them in the poll... Yeah, this should probably do it. But... let's be thorough and check out the last one. E. Carl Smith ran for the same position in the past and lost then as well. Yeah, but that's a different time, and this doesn't tell us anything about the polling issue. We can knock this one out. Okay, so D looks pretty good. That's the one to beat. C wasn't good, and now that I have one that I like a lot, I'm just going to knock it out. But then A. That had something going for it. Let's take a closer look. Most polls are administered by institutions whose board members have strong political interests. Alright, so does this explain what's going on? It just says that the board members have strong political interests. So I guess the suggestion is that the polls are biased? I mean, I'm adding that, but it's not crazy. Still, political interests of what sort? Do the board members tend to favor one kind of candidate? or one party over another. This just says that they have strong political interests. And Carl Smith was leading in the polls, plural. So maybe the political interests of different board members for different polls might even balance each other out. How did Carl Smith get ahead in the polls, plural? This one doesn't explain it, not nearly as well as D. D is our answer. Let's try another sample question. Okay, pause your video and work through this one on your own. And insight mode enabled now. And we're back. As usual, we start with the stem. Which one of the following, if true, would most help to explain why the mosquito population prior to spraying has increased each year? Okay, so this is what I meant by the specifics. The stem is telling us that there's something unexpected about the mosquito population, but we'll still have to do a little work to figure out what that is. Let's stay sharp as we read the passage. Five years ago, our neighborhood began spraying pesticides into the air annually in order to control the mosquito population. While this effectively reduced the number of mosquitoes each year after spraying, the mosquito population prior to the annual application of pesticides has increased from one year to the next. necessitating the use of greater amounts of pesticides each time. Hmm. Okay, that wasn't totally clear to me at first. What's going on here? They begin spraying five years ago, they do it annually, and it works. It effectively reduces the number of mosquitoes after spraying. Great. But the mosquito population prior to the annual application of pesticides has increased from one year to the next. Okay, so they're talking about the starting point each year, before you spray. How many mosquitoes are there? And they're saying that it has gone up every year, necessitating the use of greater amounts of pesticides. Okay, I see it now. So why are there more and more mosquitoes to get rid of each year if you do a good job of getting rid of them with the pesticides? Yes, that's strange, and it needs explanation. Let's check out our answer choices. A. The type of pesticides sprayed in the neighborhood varied from year to year. Okay, so maybe it worked better sometimes and worse other times? No, it says in a general way that the sprays are effective, so I don't see how this one's going to clear things up. I guess I'll just pass on it for now. The species of mosquito most present in the neighborhood can develop immunity to pesticides in as little as one generation. Immunity Okay, so that seems relevant, but wait a minute. The problem seems to be that the populations come back stronger, not that they live through the pesticides. So what does immunity have to do with anything? I guess I'll leave this one in for now as well, but I don't think so. C. The region in which the neighborhood is located has experienced unusually strong wind in the past five years. Hmm. So this is supposed to be saying something maybe about... Now... where the sprayed pesticides end up, but the wind has been strong for all of the five years. And why are we seeing an upward trend in population? This doesn't address that at all. I'm knocking this one out. Moving on to D. The pesticides sprayed never completely eliminate the mosquito population. Sure. I mean, I figured they weren't perfect. So maybe this explains why they come back at all. But the weirdness we're dealing with isn't about that. We're trying to figure out why they come back more and more each year. This one doesn't help. It's out. And finally, E. The pesticides sprayed have progressively reduced the population of local salamanders who feed primarily on mosquito larvae. Ah, okay. Progressively reduced. That pairs nicely with the annual increase that we saw. If the pesticides are slowly killing off a predator of mosquitoes, there will be fewer salamanders each year to eat up mosquito larvae before the spraying. So you get more mosquitoes that you have to spray for. Yeah, this one makes sense. Okay, so E is looking good. The weirdness no longer feels weird. And what's left to deal with here? A. Yeah, I never liked this one too much. So you've changed pesticides year after year. Why has the initial population of mosquitoes been going up? This simply doesn't address that. It's out. And that leaves just B, the immunity one. We can knock this one out too. My reasoning before was fine. We need to explain why the initial populations are larger each year. Immunity refers to surviving the pesticides. Now, sure, if more mosquitoes were surviving the spraying, maybe they can contribute to higher populations for next year, but the passage says that the spraying effectively reduces them. I mean, to be fair, it doesn't say how much it reduces them, but it does say effectively. So this one is probably the challenger. It almost explains things if you help it out a little, but E is so much stronger and so much more clarifying. And yes, it is in fact our correct answer. And now here's your homework for unexpected result. Take a screenshot, take a note, check out the website later, and good luck. Next up we have our final LR question type, apply the principle. Once we get through that. We'll wrap up our discussion of logical reasoning with some advanced tips and suggestions for your future work. This is a question type that clearly makes sense on a pre-law exam. Apply the principle questions ask you to match general principles up with specific situations. And that's exactly what lawyers do. Laws encode general principles, and they need to be applied to real-world situations. So this is what we'll be doing in this question type. The only question type that you should make sure not to confuse with apply the principle is strengtheners, and only certain ones of those at that. As I mentioned in lesson 4, some strengtheners have principles in the answer choices. You're asked what effect that principle would have on the argument if you could grant that it is valid. So yes. That involves applying the principle, and there's a little overlap in the question types there. But otherwise, they're quite different. Again, Strengthener has an argument, while Apply the Principle does not. And, in Apply the Principle, all you're doing is the application. You're not considering what effect the principle has on anything. Just match it up with the specific situation appropriately. Apply the Principle shows up around 5-6% of the time, so it's not particularly common. Still, like the other two question types that we focused on today, it requires a somewhat special way of thinking, so your dedicated practice will be helpful. And here are some sample stems that indicate Apply the Principle. Which one of the following most closely conforms to the principle above? Which one of the following best illustrates the proposition above? The situation described above most closely conforms to which one of the following propositions? Which one of the following most closely conforms to the principle illustrated by the passage above? Okay, so a couple of things to note here. First, notice that sometimes the principle is in the passage and the situation is in the answer choices, but other times this is switched. It can go both ways. What you're doing is fundamentally the same. Second, that last one is a little trickier. It indicates a version of this question type that is pretty rare but still happens from time to time. Sometimes, the principle is not directly stated. but you can sort of read it off of the situation in the passage. Then you have to pick an answer choice that seems to have a similar principle operating within it. So, for example, suppose your passage said something like, Little Timmy shouldn't be grounded for breaking the neighbor's window because he didn't mean for his ball to break the glass. You can read a general principle off of that. It's something like, people shouldn't be punished for the bad consequences they did not intend. And then you might have a correct answer choice that also has that same principle operative within it. Maybe something like, Bob shouldn't be banned from the gym. After all, he didn't mean to drop the weight on Tom's foot. See how they are both applications of the same principle? That's what questions indicated by that last stem will ask you to do. Apply the principle is a fairly straightforward question type, so the strategy is going to be fairly straightforward as well. The principle has general language and the situation has specific language. You need to make sure that everything matches up. Just a moment ago, I gave you this principle. People shouldn't be punished for the bad consequences they did not intend. Notice that there are a few different parts there, and we'll have to see each of them in our situations in order to apply that principle. So, we'll need to be dealing with people being punished. That's Timmy being grounded or Bob being banned from the gym. But we also need there to be some bad consequences. That's the broken window, or the weight being dropped on Tom's foot. And finally, the person being punished needs to not intend those consequences. That's Timmy not meaning to break the glass, or Bob not meaning to drop the weight. So just think about the principles as having multiple elements, and then make sure that all of these elements match up with something from the situation. This gets easier with practice. And it's good to practice it now, because like I said before, this is what law is all about. Laws are complex and have multiple elements. You have to make sure that they properly apply to the situation at hand. Let's try some examples. Here you go. Pause your video and give this one a try. And insight mode enabled now. And we're back. Let's read the stem. Which one of the following judgments most closely conforms to the principles above? Pretty typical apply-the-principles stem. We can see that there will be multiple principles, and that they're going to be in the passage, while the situation is going to be in the answer choices. Let's read the passage. An action is praiseworthy when it has positive consequences, and the actor intended to produce those consequences. An action is blameworthy when the actor intends to produce harmful consequences whether or not those consequences come to pass. Alright, so I see two principles there. One tells us when an action is praiseworthy, and the other tells us when an action is blameworthy. Now, good for you if you notice the conditional logic here. Conditional logic actually shows up in apply the principle questions fairly often. Let's create a few if-then machines to make this one easier to deal with. First, an action is praiseworthy when it has positive consequences and the actor intended to produce those consequences. A little tricky, you have to remember that when often functions the same way as if, so this one can be written as an action is praiseworthy if it has positive consequences and the actor intended to produce those consequences. And then we would want to reorganize that into the if-then format. If an action has positive consequences, and the actor intended to produce those consequences, then the action is praiseworthy. Okay, this is definitely a little trickier than most of the if-thens we've built so far, but now is our chance to grow. Remember the logical operators that we worked with in parallel structure? We have to learn to see those when they matter, and they matter here. Two things are going to be on the input side of our if-then, and one will be on the output side. Here's how I'd break it down. If an action has positive consequences and the actor intended the consequences, then the action is praiseworthy. Or, in short, let's say PC, to avoid confusion with praiseworthy, plus I, then P. For fun, I'll make the contrapositive, but I don't think I've ever seen an apply-the-principle question that made you use a principle's contrapositive. We can think of this as extra credit, and good practice anyway. The contrapositive would be, if not P, then not PC or not I, meaning that if an action is not praiseworthy, It is because either the action did not produce good consequences, or the actor did not intend the consequences, or both. Alright, on to the next one. An action is blameworthy when the actor intends to produce harmful consequences, whether or not those consequences come to pass. We can actually just ignore that last part, since it says whether or not, that's just every time, so we don't need to capture it. And once we change the when to an if, we pretty much just have... An action is blameworthy if the actor intends to produce harmful consequences. Rearranged, if an actor intends to produce harmful consequences, then their action is blameworthy. Okay, I don't want to use I again because we have that above. So let's say IH for Intends Harm. If IH, then B. Contrapositive, if not B, then not IH. If an action is not blameworthy, then the actor must not have intended to harm. Okay, armed with all of this, let's see if we can use these if-then machines on some specific situations. A. Jared should be blamed for damaging his neighbor's flowers, even though he stepped on them by accident. So we have a B for blame, but only one of our if-thens leads there. It's this one. And we would need IH, or intending harm, for that. But Jared stepped on the flowers by accident, no intention to harm. This is not a good application of that principle. This answer choice is out. B. Mikey should be blamed for trying to steal Tracy's valuables, even though he could not find the safe and fled before the police arrived at the house. Alright, again, we want a B for blame. Looks like he wasn't successful, but he was trying. And that counts as intending harm, so this one seems to work. If you intend harm, you're blameworthy. Mikey intended harm, so Mikey is blameworthy. It checks out. How about C? Carl should not be praised for helping Melvin study for the exam, since Melvin ended up failing. We can knock this one out straight away, actually. None of our if-then machines leads to not being praised. We have one that starts there, but in this answer choice, The not being praised is the judgment or the output. So we don't have anything that tells us how to get there. This one is out. D. Coach Bill should be praised for reaching out to Stephen's parents regarding his repeated absences from practice. Most coaches would have simply cut Stephen's playing time. Okay, so this is the first set of if-thens, if any, and I guess this one here in particular. To get praiseworthiness, we need positive consequences that were intended. Those are the two inputs, but I don't see any positive consequences here at all, let alone mention of whether or not they were intended. This one is out too. And finally, E. Martin should be blamed for spilling wine on the carpet. It will be impossible to remove the stain, and the carpet is one of a kind. Okay, so again, it's this if-then machine. We need intended harm to get that. But that's not what this answer choice says. It doesn't tell us whether Martin intended to spill the wine. And that's the only input we have. So this one is gone too. Okay, B is the only one remaining. And it looked good. So just one pass through the answer choices this time. This happens occasionally. Here it happened because we did good work making some very powerful if-then machines. Let's do one more. Okay. Last LR sample question of the course. Let's finish strong. Pause your video and try this one out on your own. And insight mode enabled... now. And we're back. One more time. Let's start with the stem. The results of the experiment described above most closely conform to which one of the following propositions? Okay. So here we can see that the situation is in the passage while the principle will be in the answer choices. We're doing pretty much the same thing though. Let's read the passage. In an experiment, one group of drivers was told that their cars had state-of-the-art accident prevention features, while a second was told that their cars lacked such features. Even though all cars used in the study had exactly the same features, drivers in the second group got into more accidents than drivers in the first group. Alright, well, no conditional logic this time. I wonder how many of you are happy about that, and how many are sad. Hopefully, over time, you will come to love conditional logic. Anyway, what's going on here? We get a description of an experiment. One group is told that their cars have state-of-the-art accident prevention features. Okay. And the other is told that their cars don't have that. Okay. It's not that they aren't told anything. Be careful. They're actually told that their cars lack accident prevention features. And then what? All the cars actually have the same features. Yet the drivers who were told that theirs didn't have them got into more accidents. Hmm, that's a bit puzzling. This could easily have been the passage for an unexpected result question, but it's not. Instead, we need to match the results to a principle. Let's see how that plays out. A. People perform less well at a task when they believe that the consequences of their actions will be mitigated. Okay, so who does this apply to? The people who performed less well were the second group. But did they believe that the consequences of their actions will be mitigated? No. That's what the first group would think. That there are features that can correct their mistakes for them. So this answer choice mixes things up. We can knock it out. B. People who use substandard equipment tend to encounter more problems than do those who use superior equipment. Okay? Who are the people using the substandard equipment? All the cars have the same features. Thinking that you have substandard equipment is not the same thing as actually having it. So this one really doesn't apply either. We can knock it out. C. People who are nervous about negative outcomes tend to be less effective in avoiding those outcomes. Okay, still playing our matching game. Who are the people who are nervous? I guess it's the second group again? If you're told that your car lacks safety features, that's a good reason to be nervous. And what does this say about them? They tend to be less effective in avoiding those outcomes. The negative outcomes. Accidents, I guess. Yeah, this one seems okay. We'll come back and double check it in a moment. D. People who are confident in their abilities tend to perform better than those who doubt their abilities. Hmm. Okay, so maybe this is talking about the first group, and they did do better. Because I already like an answer choice, C, I'll stick with this a little longer and just try to get rid of it. People who are confident in their abilities. Is that really the first group? They're told that they have certain features in their cars. What does that have to do with their abilities? Nothing, right? Yeah, let's knock this one out. And finally, E. People who believe that negative outcomes are more likely will generally take precautionary steps to avoid those outcomes. Okay, so let's match things up. The first part seems to be talking about the second group. They might believe that accidents are more likely since their cars don't have the accident prevention features. So this checks out so far. Then what do we say about them? They will generally take precautionary steps to avoid these outcomes. Okay... this takes a little extra thought. The second group got into more accidents, so this doesn't seem to fit correctly. If they took precautionary steps, why did they get into more accidents? The answer choice doesn't tell us that, and I'm not going to go telling some story about it. So yeah, this one doesn't fit. E is out. Okay, that's just C then. Let's double check it by carefully matching each part. People who are nervous about negative outcomes. We have to read that as the second group. The passage doesn't say they're nervous, but we'd have to make that connection for this one to work. And I think it's pretty reasonable. Next, people who are nervous about negative outcomes tend to be less effective in avoiding these outcomes. Right, so people who are nervous about accidents tend to be less effective in avoiding accidents. And so we get our result, more accidents in the second group. It checks out. C is our answer. And here is your last batch of homework problems. I'll give you a moment to take note of them if you'd like. And we're moving on... now. Okay, and there you have it. Ten distinct LR question types. I hope you found this process of going through them to be useful. I'm sure that it was more fun at some times than it was at others, but good job sticking with it. If you find somewhere down the line that certain question types are plaguing you, feel free to come back and re-watch the sections on them. You'll be surprised at how much more you can get from the videos and what different things you'll notice once you've got some more experience. In the rest of this lesson, I want to give you some guidance for making progress in LR. In this and the last two lessons, you got introduced to the question types and the strategies. This is a crucial first step, but what should you do now? Well, here again we have to distinguish between those of you who are on the self-guided study track and those of you who are using the Insight training platform. In both cases, I suggest you finish the rest of the course before doing more LR. You've only got three videos left. So it won't be long before you can circle back to that section anyway. Spacing things out this way is really good for learning also. There's a concept in the psychology of learning called the spacing effect, and a related form of studying called spaced repetition, that we can use to our advantage here. This is actually one of the more important pillars of the Insight training platform. The recommendation generating algorithm there not only takes into account your current strengths and weaknesses, but also spaces things out for you to optimize your learning progress. Anyway, whichever group you're in, finish the course. And then, if you're self-guided, come back and re-watch the segments for each question type, one at a time, and do the easy and medium homework questions. After you've done that, the next milestone is to make sure you can identify a question type by its stem. One way to do that is to go through full LR sections and note the question type for each question. You can do this without even doing the questions, in order to practice this directly in an efficient way that doesn't take forever. You will, of course, need to find a way of checking your answers, but that should be possible by searching online. Next, begin to actually work on full LR sections untimed. Identify the question type, utilize the strategies, and try to get as high a score as possible on the sections. Once you're achieving LR results that Together with your RC results, exceed the target score you're looking for UNTIMED, you can begin taking sections with time pressure. Try to get your score timed up to what it was UNTIMED. Throughout, make sure you don't shortchange the review process. I've talked a lot about the importance of practice. Feedback in a review is an important part of making the practice count. It also prevents you from practicing bad habits and solidifying them such that they'll be harder to undo later. I recommend three main ways of reviewing, where you can mix and match according to your preferences and your current needs. These are 1. Simple review 2. Second chance review 3. Blind review Simple review is, well, simple. Just go back and check your work. Find out which ones you got wrong and what the right answers are. Try to understand what happened and how you can improve for next time. Second chance review is probably my favorite. This is where you know that you got the answer wrong, but you don't know what the right answer is. Go back to the questions you missed and try again. This is a much more intellectually engaging experience than simple review, so I like that it keeps you active and learning. Blind review is something that has become more popular since I took the tests back in 2013. I hadn't heard of it at the time and to be honest, I actually think that Personally, I probably wouldn't have used it. But that really is more of a personal matter. I've come to have some respect for the method, and I can see why some test takers might want to use it at least sometimes. There are many sets of directions for how to do this online if you just search LSAT blind review. So I won't go into crazy detail here. The basic idea is that you mark certain questions for review while you are taking a timed section. Then, once time expires, you go back to those without knowing whether they are right or wrong. That's the blind part. Here, you take as much time as you want, and you get a chance to change your answer or stick with it. Then, when you check the results, you can make different conclusions about what the problem was if you get the answer wrong. For example, if you stuck with your answer, even with all the time in the world, and you got it wrong, then you really don't understand something about the question. However, If you switched from a wrong answer to the right one, when you had all the time in the world, your initial problem may have been time pressure, because you were able to figure it out given more time. Blind review is interesting. I think anyone who is serious about doing their best on the LSAT should at least give it a try. You can then make the determination about if and when it's right for you. Okay, now circling back. If you're on the Insight training platform, you can really just go with the program. I designed it so that you wouldn't have to think about much else besides the LSAT content itself. Make your way through the Stage 1 curriculum. You'll unlock next steps when you reach the appropriate level of proficiency. After stage one, the platform will begin recommending you untimed sections, and it will start analyzing your performance on them. It will then recommend that you work on different things in accordance with how you're doing and what the best opportunities for improvement are at any given moment. Eventually, you'll reach your target score untimed. The platform will then begin recommending you timed work, and it will keep analyzing your performance. Just keep doing what it says until you hit your target score timed, and then... Take the test for real! As for review, all three review modes are built right into the website, so you can just select which one you want to do. Okay, so there's a bit of a roadmap for you going forward. Now I just want to finish up with some advanced tips so that you can take your LR game to the next level. If this is your first time watching this video, or you're still at the earlier stages of preparation, just sort of let this wash over you. These are things that you should be working on down the line, once the fundamentals are solid. My first advanced tip for LR is to be aware of the typical difficulty curve in an LR section. Earlier questions tend to be easier than later ones in the section. This is helpful to know in the beginning, because your accuracy with earlier questions will improve more quickly than your accuracy with later ones, and you still have to recognize that as progress. So, again, there is a general trend toward more difficult material. but here is a more specific mapping of how that usually plays out. The first 10 questions or so tend to be the easiest. Then you have a bit of a jump for roughly 11 through 15, though here there is more variability. You will start to have more medium level questions than easy ones, but you may also get the occasional hard question. Then there's usually a significant jump at or around 16, and this holds pretty much for the rest of the section. For the most part, you're going to run into hard questions up here, with the occasional medium level one thrown in. Easy questions are rare and barely ever show up in this range. My second tip is to look for patterns of reasoning across question types. This takes time and experience, but it's very powerful to the extent that you can achieve it. After a while, you can start to see that many arguments in LR passages are similar to other ones, regardless of question type. The content will be different, but the underlying structure will be the same. It's kind of like they're the same person in different clothing or something. Once you can recognize the patterns of reasoning, you can be ready to deal with them effectively across multiple question types. So, for example, when I go through LR questions, I often have the experience of noticing certain characteristic problems in the reasoning. I recognize some weakness or some mistake that the LSAT uses over and over again. There are then a few ways of dealing with that mistake, depending on question type. A flaw question might describe it, for example, but a strengthener might fix it, and a weakener might exploit it. When you become a true LSAT master, at the highest level of skill, what can actually start to happen is that pretty much all of the questions become front-end questions, in the sense that you can predict, at least roughly, or at least in its general shape, what the answer will be. Now, I hesitate to even mention this here. I don't care how smart you are, this isn't something you'll be able to do effectively early on, and you'll hamper your progress if you try to. But you can start looking out for patterns in the reasoning you see in passages, especially those with arguments. My third tip is to keep working on your ability to use varying levels of time and attention for different answer choices. This is a way of getting better at the first pass versus second pass thing I've been trying to model in the past three videos. Honestly, it's hard to do that here, because I already know the answers to the questions, so I'm just trying to simulate things for you and give you a sense of what it might be like in your own case. But as I hope you were able to see, working with the answer choices is a dynamic process, where some answer choices get a lot more time and attention than others. Getting better at navigating that process is a big part of getting better at LR, especially when timing becomes more of a consideration. One important part of this... is narrowing the answer choices down to two, where one is correct and one is the challenger. In the final stages of my preparation, these were the only questions I was getting wrong. I would narrow it down to two and pick the wrong one, usually because of time pressure. But if you can quickly narrow things down to two, you can spend more time and effort picking the two contenders apart. Sometimes, I would be checking every single word in each answer choice to see where the difference maker was. But you won't have the time, or the caloric energy for that matter, to do that with every answer choice on the test. So you have to get better at varying things up and moving through the answers intelligently. My final tip for today is to invest some time in the theory behind conditional logic. We have touched on it a few times in this course so far, mostly in lesson two. I tried to keep my discussions practical, focused on tools you can use on the test and skills you can improve through practice. But I took a full course on logic when I was an undergrad, and I think that this helped me, along with my philosophical training. to do well on the LSAT. Granted, the logic course was mostly practice-based, but we did learn a fair bit of theory as well. At some point in your LSAT preparation, at least for some people, it might be smart to spend a little time learning this theory. The topic you are looking for is called propositional logic. We touched on it mostly when we were learning about the if-then machine as a tool, but I also gestured at it during our discussion of the parallel structure question type. Remember the logical operators and combining the claims? That was propositional logic. I didn't want to overwhelm you then, but search online for this topic and learn a bit more about it. There are some decent videos on it right here on YouTube. I think you may find that it'll help you to structure your thinking in ways that are quite helpful for the LSAT in general, but especially for the LR section. Okay, before we move on and leave LR behind us, I just want to give you a summary. of all of the question types and their basic strategies. So here it is, all in one eyeful. I'll post the same information online at insightlset.com slash homework. You can use this as a little guide in the beginning of your practice. Eventually, it will become second nature. All right, and that's going to do it for logical reasoning, at least for the time being. I'll discuss this section a little bit more in our final lesson, lesson eight, when I talk about timing and test-taking strategies. But for now... We're moving on to the other main section of the test, reading comprehension. We'll discuss RC for all of Lessons 6 and 7. In Lesson 6, we'll focus on effectively reading RC passages, and in Lesson 7, we'll focus on answering RC questions. When you're ready, meet me in Lesson 6. I'll see you there.

These are inference, unexpected result, and apply the principle. As you'll see, these question types are technically back-end questions, because we do the bulk of the hard work after reading the answer choices. But their most defining quality is that they don't have arguments.

The passages are just sets of statements or little situations. No conclusions and no support. Before we get to question types though, let's review yet again our general step-by-step approach for tackling LR questions. I introduced this in lesson 3 where I discuss it in more depth. But it's important to internalize this process, so going over it again and again is helpful in the beginning.

So here it is. Again, we start by reading the stem so that we can identify the question type and read with purpose, that is, with a sense of our task in mind. Next, we make a mental note of the question type.

Actually say it to yourself in your head. Structural analysis, necessary assumption, flaw, etc. This will keep you focused on the task at hand while you read. Which is what you do next. Read the passage, and while you're doing that, or right after, find the conclusion if applicable.

That is, if the question type has an argument. The questions from today's lesson won't have arguments, so we'll skip this step. We'll also skip the next one, which is to do a more thorough argument analysis if applicable. We'll also skip the next one, which is to execute your main strategy if you're dealing with a front-end question.

We will have some things to do before moving on to the answer choices with today's question types. but these are all primarily back-end in nature. Next, you give the answer choices a quick first pass. With your task in mind, do some seem better than others?

Can you knock some out straight away? Once you get a sense of the answer choices as a whole, go back and read them more carefully, informed by what you saw in your first pass. Now is when you can execute your main strategy if you're dealing with a back-end question. The strategies we discuss today will mostly be executed at this step.

You then use those strategies to do the last step, which is to choose your answer. Keep this list in mind. I've been trying to model it so far with our sample questions, and I will continue to do that today. Alright, let's move on to our question types.

As before, I'll follow a standard format when discussing each one. I'll begin by giving an overview of the type. I'll then mention some other question types that you shouldn't confuse it with. I'll give you the frequency with which the question type appears on the test, and I'll also give you some sample stems so that you can recognize the type when you see it.

Then we'll move on to strategies, and we'll practice these strategies on some sample questions together. Finally, I'll conclude with giving you some homework questions that you can do on your own as practice. After we get through these final three question types, I'll finish this lesson off with a discussion of how to improve at LR going forward. I'll give some advanced tips, and I'll also talk about how to structure your preparation over time in order to encourage progress. But we'll get there when we get there.

For now, let's move on to our first question type without an argument, inference. Inference questions can be challenging for people. Their passages don't have arguments. Instead, they have a series of statements that are related to one another. The question stem then asks you to draw something out of those statements.

In other words, you need to pick an answer choice that is supported, inferred, or suggested by the statements above, assuming those statements are true. There are two types of inference questions, must be true and most strongly supported. They are fundamentally quite similar. The difference is in how strong the connection between the passage and the answer choice needs to be.

With must be true, the connection is quite strong. The correct answer choice absolutely must be true if the statements in the passage are true. For example, consider the statement that every country has citizens.

If this is true, then it must also be true that Canada has citizens, because Canada is a country. There's no wiggle room there. On the other hand, most strongly supported inference questions aren't as demanding.

The correct answer choice doesn't have to be true, but the passage makes it more likely to be. For example, if I tell you that Maria studies every day after school for at least four hours, this strongly supports the idea that Maria wants to do well in school. Strictly speaking, this second claim doesn't have to be true, given the first.

Maybe Maria just loves studying and doesn't really care about the results. Maybe her parents are forcing her to study while she wants to drop out. But without knowing these things, it certainly looks like Maria wants to do well. That's reasonably supported by the previous statement. I sometimes think of must-be-true and most strongly supported as the strong and weak versions of inference, respectively.

They both ask you to do pretty much the same thing, find an answer choice that is supported by the passage, but in one case, that support has to be maximally strong, while in the other, it can have more wiggle room. One question type that you should not confuse with inference is structural analysis. In particular, the version that asks you to find the conclusion.

When it comes to inference questions, your answer choice does not need to be the conclusion to an argument. Occasionally, you will see one like this. The passage will usually end with a blank, and you'll have to fill in the blank with the answer choice, which will be the conclusion that the statements are leading up to. So inference questions like this sort of almost have arguments, but they're not complete.

And anyway, most inference questions are not like this. More commonly, you're just picking something that is supported by at least one of the statements in the passage. Interestingly, it is pretty common for the inference to be drawn from just one bit of the passage.

This is a trick the LSAT likes to play on you. They string together a bunch of complicated claims, but then the answer choice is implied by just one part, potentially even a minor looking part. In any case, this is all quite different than structural analysis questions that ask you to find the conclusion.

In those, the conclusion is already there in the passage and you just have to locate it. The next type that you should not confuse with inference is strengthener. I mentioned this when we focused directly on strengthener's last lesson.

Some strengthener stems ask you to pick an answer choice that most strongly supports the conclusion of the passage in the argument. The support there is moving from the answer choice up to the passage. In the most strongly supported version of inference, The stem asks you to pick an answer choice supported by the passage, so the direction of support is from passage to answer choice.

Finally, don't confuse inference with necessary assumption, as I mentioned in lesson 4. Yes, the correct answer choice in necessary assumption questions has to be true, but that's because if it is false, the argument will not work. Remember, necessary assumption questions have arguments, while inferences generally don't. In must-be-true inference questions, There's something in the passage that implies the answer choice.

This will be either one claim alone, like every country has citizens, or it will be some combination of claims. So, while there's a similarity between certain inference questions and necessary assumption questions, that the answer choice must be true, this occurs in different contexts. And as a result, as I hope you will see over time, the two questions feel very different to work on.

You think differently and your strategies are different. different, so running them together will only lead to confusion and frustrated progress. Inference questions are very common. They occur about 14% of the time. You're definitely going to want to invest some time getting better at these, especially because they require you to think differently than most other question types.

In some ways, working on any question type that has an argument helps you get better at the other ones with arguments. You just keep getting better at working with arguments in all different ways. But because inference isn't like that, and because it's not really like unexpected result or apply the principle either, you need to give it special attention. Here are some sample stems that indicate inference questions. Which one of the following statements is most strongly supported by the information above?

If all of the statements above are true, which one of the following must also be true? Which one of the following can be inferred from the passage above? Notice how they all gesture at support coming from the passage to the answer choice. This is the defining quality of inference questions.

When it comes to dealing with inference questions, we'll have one general, let's say, light strategy. and two more specific heavy-duty strategies, one for each of the two versions of inference questions. I suggest starting with the light one and seeing how you do. Pull out the tougher stuff only if you need to. The light strategy is to make very specific connections between the answer choice you are considering and a very specific part of the passage.

For your first pass, it is fine to narrow things down in a very rough way. Okay, yeah, this answer choice seems to be in the spirit of the passage. Or, no, this actually goes against the spirit of the passage. But then, get more precise. Which part of the passage exactly supports the answer choice?

Then, if you're still left with more than one contender, you can use the heavy-duty strategies. There's one for each of the two versions of inference. For the weaker, most strongly supported version, just use the skeptic's perspective.

Point your gaze at the answer choice and say, why should I believe that? Is there something in the passage that provides a reasonable answer to that question? If so, your answer is probably correct.

For the stronger, must-be-true version, use negation like we did in the final stage of Old Reliable back when we were doing Necessary Assumption questions. Just negate the answer choice. Now, this time, when you're considering the negated version, you're not wondering if it destroys the argument.

Instead, you're looking for some contradiction. Because the answer choice has to be true, making it false will result in a contradiction with something in the passage. Let's try all this out on some examples. As I mentioned in the previous lessons, it's really better that you try out each sample question on your own first. You'll get a lot more out of the lessons that way.

So pause the video now and work through this one alone. I'll give you a moment to do that. And then, as before, I'm going to enable insight mode, which here is a simulation of a cool feature we have on the insight training platform. Usually it will highlight any signal words and the conclusion, but there are no arguments in this lesson so you won't see that. You will, however, see hints for each answer choice.

Let's bring those in now. I like to provide these. because they serve as a nice middle ground between seeing the question on its own and getting a full answer explanation.

Before giving it all away, I want to nudge you in the direction of how I'd like you to be thinking about answer choices when considering them. So that's the purpose of the little hints. I recommend pausing the video again after I enable insight mode and giving things a second thought.

I'll give you a moment for that too. And we're back. Now...

I will walk you through this one, starting with the stem. If the statements above are all true, which one of the following must also be true? Okay, an inference question of the stronger variety. Our answer choice will have to be true if we grant that everything else in the passage is true as well.

Okay, on to the passage then. Philosophy has no immediate application to life outside of academia. Studying philosophy is personally fulfilling, but majoring in the discipline...

will not help a student secure employment after college. Nevertheless, many students choose each year to pursue a major in philosophy. Okay, I hope you can see that there's no argument here. Nobody is trying to persuade you of anything. There are just some related statements being made about some topic.

When reading inference passages, just make sure you've understood everything. There's no conclusion to find and no argument analysis to do. Just make sure you're clear about what's going on. And then... we move on to the answer choices.

Just a first pass initially. A. A major that cannot help a student secure employment after college is not worth pursuing. Okay, I don't remember anything about what is worth pursuing, but there were some potentially negative things said about philosophy.

I'll just leave this one alone for now. It doesn't look great though. B.

At least some students are not motivated by the idea of making a lot of money. Hmm, okay. I guess because students still major in philosophy even though it doesn't help them get work, I could see something like that. I'll leave it alone for now.

C. It is because philosophy has no immediate application to life outside of academia that majoring in it will not help a student secure employment after college. This brings in a causal claim, which is something substantial that doesn't have to be true here. The passage doesn't state anything about causes.

I think we can safely knock this one out. D. More students would major in philosophy if it would help them secure employment after college. This one is problematic too. It's a prediction about what would happen if things were different.

Something like that definitely doesn't need to be true. I'll knock this one out as well. And finally, E.

At least one activity that has no immediate application to life outside of academia is nevertheless personally fulfilling. Hmm. At least one activity.

That would be studying philosophy, I guess. India? It has no immediate application to life outside of academia.

The passage says that. And yeah, it is personally fulfilling. That's all in the passage. This one looks very promising.

Let's go back to the others that we passed on, though. A. This is a general claim about any major that cannot help a student secure employment.

So it's already going beyond the bounds of the major we're talking about, philosophy. And then it brings in this other idea about being worth pursuing. Worth pursuing according to whom? For what purpose? No, this answer is all over the place and goes way beyond what we have in the passage.

It's out. And now B. This one is a little closer to the mark. If E is right, then this is going to be the challenger.

But okay, let's take a closer look. At least some students are not motivated by the idea of making a lot of money. Again, I guess this is because they decide to major in philosophy despite it not helping them secure employment. That seems to suggest that they don't care that much about making money. But does that have to be true?

Remember how high that bar is. Is it even possible for them to still major in philosophy while being motivated to make a lot of money? Yeah, for sure.

This passage doesn't tell us what's going on in these students' heads. So this answer choice that talks about their motivations doesn't have to be true. We can knock it out.

And that just leaves E. Let's double check it using the more heavy duty strategy. Remember, for a must-be-true inference, we can negate the answer choice and look for a contradiction. This is one of those trickier negations because of the quantitative language, at least one.

If you recall from last time, in lesson 4, when we negate some, we get none. So the negation of this answer choice is something like, there are no activities that have no immediate application to life outside of academia. that are nevertheless personally fulfilling.

Okay, a bit of a mouthful, but hopefully you can see that this will in fact produce a contradiction with the passage. The passage states that studying philosophy has no immediate application outside of academia. It also states that it is personally fulfilling. So that means there definitely is at least one activity that has both of those properties. Yet our negated answer choice directly denies that, creating a contradiction.

That's what we want from an answer choice of this type. So we can safely and confidently select E, which is in fact our correct answer. On to another example.

Okay, pause the video and try this one out on your own first. And enabling insight mode now. And we're back!

Let's start with the stem. Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the information above? Alright, now we've got the weaker version of an inference question. The answer choice won't have to be true. It'll just need to be supported.

Let's read the passage. Recently, our state government passed legislation requiring retail stores to offer hand sanitizer to customers upon entry. Prior to this legislation, most retail stores did not provide hand sanitizer.

Studies show that hand sanitizer significantly reduces the spread of illness-causing germs in high-traffic areas, even when only a few people use it. Alright, nothing too crazy here. Some statements about hand sanitizer and this new law.

There's a study in there. It all seems relatively straightforward. Let's check out the answer choices with a quick first pass.

Hey, most retail stores would not choose to offer hand sanitizer to customers unless required to by government regulation. Um, I'm not sure. They didn't offer sanitizer before the legislation. Maybe they wouldn't without it. I'm just going to leave it alone for now and move on.

B. The new legislation will lead to a reduction in the spread of illness-causing germs in retail stores. Hmm. Because there will be hand sanitizer in the stores, I guess?

Maybe that study can come in here. Not sure yet. But let's definitely leave this one in.

C. Using hand sanitizer is the best way to reduce the spread of illness-causing germs in high-traffic areas. The best way, huh?

That's a very strong claim and a comparative one. I don't think we have support for it in the passage. I think we're going to have to knock this one out. D.

There are no illness-causing germs that are impervious to the effects of hand sanitizer. None at all, huh? This one is actually a lot like C, a super strong claim.

When big sweeping claims like this are made, they are really hard to support and generally easy to defeat. You would just need one counterexample here. Just one illness-causing germ that is impervious to the effects of hand sanitizer. So this answer choice is not good.

I'm knocking it out. And finally E. Most people do not carry their own hand sanitizer for personal use. Okay, I'm actually not sure what to make of this one at first. It seems a bit out of the blue, but yeah, I just don't know.

I'll come back to it. Alright, knocking two out on such a quick first pass is pretty good. Let's go back and take a closer look at A, B, and E.

We'll start with A. Most retail stores would not choose to offer hand sanitizer to customers unless required to by government regulation. We saw something like this in the last example, where there was a prediction about what would happen in some circumstances that don't actually hold here. Usually it's hard to support something like that. Of course, this isn't a must-be-true, So there is more wiggle room though.

I guess the best we could say for this answer choice is that the stores didn't offer the hand sanitizer before the legislation. Maybe they wouldn't without that pressure. We're stretching a little here.

And then we need to recognize the quantitative claim, most. That's more than 50%. Do we really have good reason to say that more than 50% would not offer sanitizer without regulation? That's tough. I mean...

What if they were asked to do so by their customers? Or the government just suggested it instead of requiring it? Hand sanitizer is pretty cheap after all.

Maybe some would do it. Okay, after working with this one for a little, I think it's a stretch. I don't really think we have much support.

I won't go as far as to knock it out, but I'm hoping that we find something better. Let's try B. The new legislation will lead to a reduction in the spread of illness-causing germs in retail stores.

This seemed sort of promising in the first pass, but I also recognized in the first pass that I would have to think a bit more about it in order to figure out the connection. Let me do that now. How is this supposed to work?

Let me try the skeptic's perspective. The new legislation will lead to a reduction in the spread of illness-causing germs in retail stores. Why should I believe that? Well, let's see. Because the legislation requires stores to offer hand sanitizer?

And the study shows that hand sanitizer significantly reduces the spread of germs, even when only a few people use it. Right, so now all the stores have the hand sanitizer. And sure, not everybody will use it, but some probably will.

And the study suggests that just a few would be enough. Yeah, this all adds up. It does seem like the passage supports the answer choice pretty well after all.

I definitely like it better than A, so we'll knock A out at this point. And then what was going on with E again? Most people do not carry their own hand sanitizer for personal use.

Yeah, I still don't really know what to do with this. I don't see any support for this, certainly nothing like what we have for B. And, you know, sometimes that's just how it is with these weaker inference questions.

It can be hard to give a super clear explanation for why an answer is wrong when it's just not supported. It's not like there's something positively bad about the answer. It doesn't contradict anything.

I just don't see any support for it, especially in comparison to B. So this one is gone, and I'm going with B, which is in fact the correct answer. And now here's a list of homework questions for you for inference questions.

As I mentioned in the previous two lessons, these lists are really only for people following the self-guided study track for this course. For those of you who are doing the more comprehensive program on the Insight training platform, you should just skip these and do the exercises on the website. You'll get questions of the difficulty appropriate for your skill level. And as you get better, the program will adapt and give you harder material.

It will also tell you what to focus on when. Anyway, for the rest of you, take a screenshot, write it down, or just go access the list at insightlsat.com slash homework. All right. Just two more LRQuestionTypes until you've seen them all. Inference questions, I admit, can be a bit of a pain.

But next up, we have a question type that I actually think is pretty fun. Unexpected result. Passages in this question type present you with some strange outcome or situation, some unexpected result. And you need to pick an answer choice that resolves that strangeness. Your task is to make sense of something that is surprising or odd.

The only question type that you might confuse unexpected result with is really Strengthener. And even then, I don't think that that's likely, especially given how experienced you've become at this point. First of all, unexpected result questions don't have arguments in their passages, while strengtheners do. And second, explaining a weird situation is just pretty different from strengthening an argument.

With unexpected result, you don't make anything more likely to be true. You're not in the persuasion game. You're in the clarification game.

That's quite a different thing. Unexpected result questions show up about 7% of the time, so medium to low frequency. As for stems, there are a few different ways of asking the question.

Here are some samples. Which one of the following, if true, most helps to resolve the apparent discrepancy described above? Which one of the following, if true, most helps to explain blank?

Which one of the following, if true, contributes most to an explanation of blank? Which one of the following, if true, most helps to resolve the apparent paradox described above? The blanks are there because questions of this type fairly often make direct reference to the unexpected result that needs explanation.

So you'll often see that blank filled in with a specific description. The basic strategy for dealing with these questions is going to be to first, make sure you understand the weirdness, and second, ask yourself of each answer choice Do you clear things up? People can often be too quick with the passage here.

The stem often points out the unexpected result, and this can encourage you to be lazy. You have to sit with it for a moment. Why exactly is that result unexpected? What would you expect in such a situation? Take a moment and consider these questions carefully for yourself before just moving on to the answer choices.

Sometimes the situations are quite complex. Take your time to understand the weirdness. Then, you'll be better prepared to assess answer choices. And the way to do that, again, is to ask them, Alright, I know what's weird about this. Do you clear things up for me?

The correct answer will make the weirdness go away. Suddenly, things will make sense. Let's see it in action. Pause the video and work through this one on your own. And enabling insight mode now.

And we're back. Let's start with the stem. Which one of the following, if true, contributes to a resolution of the discrepancy above?

Okay, we're going to be reading about some discrepancy, that's the weirdness, and we need an answer choice to resolve it. Let's read the passage. Even up until the day before the election, Carl Smith led Donahue in the polls by a significant margin. Nevertheless, when the ballots were all counted, Donahue emerged victorious.

Okay, so again, no argument, just a description of a situation, and it should be easy enough to see why the result is unexpected. Carl Smith was leading in the polls, by a lot, but then Carl Smith lost. This calls out for an explanation. Let's look to our answer choices and see if we get one.

Today, most polls are administered by institutions whose board members have strong political interests. Okay, so I guess this is suggesting that there might be some problem with the polling. Maybe that helps. Not great, but let's hold on to it for now.

B. Donahue never used personal attacks against his opponent while campaigning while Carl Smith ran many negative ads. Okay, well that's good for Donahue. Maybe people appreciated that. But shouldn't that show up in the polls then?

This gives us a reason why maybe Donahue won, but what about the polls? We can probably knock this one out, because it just doesn't address the core of our weirdness. C.

Some politicians have in the past emerged victorious even though they always trailed in the polls. Okay, well, this talks about the polls at least. It talks about other people in the past, though.

How can that explain the situation? Those past situations would need explanation as well. I guess we can hold onto it for now though. D.

Most polls are administered via phone calls to people's homes during work hours, and many more working people supported Donahue than did Carl Smith. Right... okay. So you call people at home, but that means that you miss Donahue supporters because they're at work, so you don't count them in the poll... Yeah, this should probably do it.

But... let's be thorough and check out the last one. E.

Carl Smith ran for the same position in the past and lost then as well. Yeah, but that's a different time, and this doesn't tell us anything about the polling issue. We can knock this one out.

Okay, so D looks pretty good. That's the one to beat. C wasn't good, and now that I have one that I like a lot, I'm just going to knock it out.

But then A. That had something going for it. Let's take a closer look. Most polls are administered by institutions whose board members have strong political interests. Alright, so does this explain what's going on?

It just says that the board members have strong political interests. So I guess the suggestion is that the polls are biased? I mean, I'm adding that, but it's not crazy.

Still, political interests of what sort? Do the board members tend to favor one kind of candidate? or one party over another. This just says that they have strong political interests.

And Carl Smith was leading in the polls, plural. So maybe the political interests of different board members for different polls might even balance each other out. How did Carl Smith get ahead in the polls, plural? This one doesn't explain it, not nearly as well as D.

D is our answer. Let's try another sample question. Okay, pause your video and work through this one on your own. And insight mode enabled now. And we're back.

As usual, we start with the stem. Which one of the following, if true, would most help to explain why the mosquito population prior to spraying has increased each year? Okay, so this is what I meant by the specifics. The stem is telling us that there's something unexpected about the mosquito population, but we'll still have to do a little work to figure out what that is.

Let's stay sharp as we read the passage. Five years ago, our neighborhood began spraying pesticides into the air annually in order to control the mosquito population. While this effectively reduced the number of mosquitoes each year after spraying, the mosquito population prior to the annual application of pesticides has increased from one year to the next.

necessitating the use of greater amounts of pesticides each time. Hmm. Okay, that wasn't totally clear to me at first. What's going on here? They begin spraying five years ago, they do it annually, and it works.

It effectively reduces the number of mosquitoes after spraying. Great. But the mosquito population prior to the annual application of pesticides has increased from one year to the next. Okay, so they're talking about the starting point each year, before you spray. How many mosquitoes are there?

And they're saying that it has gone up every year, necessitating the use of greater amounts of pesticides. Okay, I see it now. So why are there more and more mosquitoes to get rid of each year if you do a good job of getting rid of them with the pesticides?

Yes, that's strange, and it needs explanation. Let's check out our answer choices. A.

The type of pesticides sprayed in the neighborhood varied from year to year. Okay, so maybe it worked better sometimes and worse other times? No, it says in a general way that the sprays are effective, so I don't see how this one's going to clear things up.

I guess I'll just pass on it for now. The species of mosquito most present in the neighborhood can develop immunity to pesticides in as little as one generation. Immunity Okay, so that seems relevant, but wait a minute. The problem seems to be that the populations come back stronger, not that they live through the pesticides. So what does immunity have to do with anything?

I guess I'll leave this one in for now as well, but I don't think so. C. The region in which the neighborhood is located has experienced unusually strong wind in the past five years. Hmm.

So this is supposed to be saying something maybe about... Now... where the sprayed pesticides end up, but the wind has been strong for all of the five years.

And why are we seeing an upward trend in population? This doesn't address that at all. I'm knocking this one out. Moving on to D. The pesticides sprayed never completely eliminate the mosquito population.

Sure. I mean, I figured they weren't perfect. So maybe this explains why they come back at all.

But the weirdness we're dealing with isn't about that. We're trying to figure out why they come back more and more each year. This one doesn't help.

It's out. And finally, E. The pesticides sprayed have progressively reduced the population of local salamanders who feed primarily on mosquito larvae.

Ah, okay. Progressively reduced. That pairs nicely with the annual increase that we saw.

If the pesticides are slowly killing off a predator of mosquitoes, there will be fewer salamanders each year to eat up mosquito larvae before the spraying. So you get more mosquitoes that you have to spray for. Yeah, this one makes sense. Okay, so E is looking good. The weirdness no longer feels weird.

And what's left to deal with here? A. Yeah, I never liked this one too much.

So you've changed pesticides year after year. Why has the initial population of mosquitoes been going up? This simply doesn't address that.

It's out. And that leaves just B, the immunity one. We can knock this one out too. My reasoning before was fine. We need to explain why the initial populations are larger each year.

Immunity refers to surviving the pesticides. Now, sure, if more mosquitoes were surviving the spraying, maybe they can contribute to higher populations for next year, but the passage says that the spraying effectively reduces them. I mean, to be fair, it doesn't say how much it reduces them, but it does say effectively.

So this one is probably the challenger. It almost explains things if you help it out a little, but E is so much stronger and so much more clarifying. And yes, it is in fact our correct answer. And now here's your homework for unexpected result. Take a screenshot, take a note, check out the website later, and good luck.

Next up we have our final LR question type, apply the principle. Once we get through that. We'll wrap up our discussion of logical reasoning with some advanced tips and suggestions for your future work. This is a question type that clearly makes sense on a pre-law exam.

Apply the principle questions ask you to match general principles up with specific situations. And that's exactly what lawyers do. Laws encode general principles, and they need to be applied to real-world situations. So this is what we'll be doing in this question type.

The only question type that you should make sure not to confuse with apply the principle is strengtheners, and only certain ones of those at that. As I mentioned in lesson 4, some strengtheners have principles in the answer choices. You're asked what effect that principle would have on the argument if you could grant that it is valid.

So yes. That involves applying the principle, and there's a little overlap in the question types there. But otherwise, they're quite different.

Again, Strengthener has an argument, while Apply the Principle does not. And, in Apply the Principle, all you're doing is the application. You're not considering what effect the principle has on anything.

Just match it up with the specific situation appropriately. Apply the Principle shows up around 5-6% of the time, so it's not particularly common. Still, like the other two question types that we focused on today, it requires a somewhat special way of thinking, so your dedicated practice will be helpful. And here are some sample stems that indicate Apply the Principle.

Which one of the following most closely conforms to the principle above? Which one of the following best illustrates the proposition above? The situation described above most closely conforms to which one of the following propositions? Which one of the following most closely conforms to the principle illustrated by the passage above?

Okay, so a couple of things to note here. First, notice that sometimes the principle is in the passage and the situation is in the answer choices, but other times this is switched. It can go both ways.

What you're doing is fundamentally the same. Second, that last one is a little trickier. It indicates a version of this question type that is pretty rare but still happens from time to time. Sometimes, the principle is not directly stated. but you can sort of read it off of the situation in the passage.

Then you have to pick an answer choice that seems to have a similar principle operating within it. So, for example, suppose your passage said something like, Little Timmy shouldn't be grounded for breaking the neighbor's window because he didn't mean for his ball to break the glass. You can read a general principle off of that. It's something like, people shouldn't be punished for the bad consequences they did not intend.

And then you might have a correct answer choice that also has that same principle operative within it. Maybe something like, Bob shouldn't be banned from the gym. After all, he didn't mean to drop the weight on Tom's foot. See how they are both applications of the same principle? That's what questions indicated by that last stem will ask you to do.

Apply the principle is a fairly straightforward question type, so the strategy is going to be fairly straightforward as well. The principle has general language and the situation has specific language. You need to make sure that everything matches up. Just a moment ago, I gave you this principle. People shouldn't be punished for the bad consequences they did not intend.

Notice that there are a few different parts there, and we'll have to see each of them in our situations in order to apply that principle. So, we'll need to be dealing with people being punished. That's Timmy being grounded or Bob being banned from the gym.

But we also need there to be some bad consequences. That's the broken window, or the weight being dropped on Tom's foot. And finally, the person being punished needs to not intend those consequences. That's Timmy not meaning to break the glass, or Bob not meaning to drop the weight.

So just think about the principles as having multiple elements, and then make sure that all of these elements match up with something from the situation. This gets easier with practice. And it's good to practice it now, because like I said before, this is what law is all about. Laws are complex and have multiple elements.

You have to make sure that they properly apply to the situation at hand. Let's try some examples. Here you go.

Pause your video and give this one a try. And insight mode enabled now. And we're back. Let's read the stem. Which one of the following judgments most closely conforms to the principles above?

Pretty typical apply-the-principles stem. We can see that there will be multiple principles, and that they're going to be in the passage, while the situation is going to be in the answer choices. Let's read the passage.

An action is praiseworthy when it has positive consequences, and the actor intended to produce those consequences. An action is blameworthy when the actor intends to produce harmful consequences whether or not those consequences come to pass. Alright, so I see two principles there.

One tells us when an action is praiseworthy, and the other tells us when an action is blameworthy. Now, good for you if you notice the conditional logic here. Conditional logic actually shows up in apply the principle questions fairly often. Let's create a few if-then machines to make this one easier to deal with.

First, an action is praiseworthy when it has positive consequences and the actor intended to produce those consequences. A little tricky, you have to remember that when often functions the same way as if, so this one can be written as an action is praiseworthy if it has positive consequences and the actor intended to produce those consequences. And then we would want to reorganize that into the if-then format.

If an action has positive consequences, and the actor intended to produce those consequences, then the action is praiseworthy. Okay, this is definitely a little trickier than most of the if-thens we've built so far, but now is our chance to grow. Remember the logical operators that we worked with in parallel structure? We have to learn to see those when they matter, and they matter here.

Two things are going to be on the input side of our if-then, and one will be on the output side. Here's how I'd break it down. If an action has positive consequences and the actor intended the consequences, then the action is praiseworthy. Or, in short, let's say PC, to avoid confusion with praiseworthy, plus I, then P. For fun, I'll make the contrapositive, but I don't think I've ever seen an apply-the-principle question that made you use a principle's contrapositive.

We can think of this as extra credit, and good practice anyway. The contrapositive would be, if not P, then not PC or not I, meaning that if an action is not praiseworthy, It is because either the action did not produce good consequences, or the actor did not intend the consequences, or both. Alright, on to the next one. An action is blameworthy when the actor intends to produce harmful consequences, whether or not those consequences come to pass.

We can actually just ignore that last part, since it says whether or not, that's just every time, so we don't need to capture it. And once we change the when to an if, we pretty much just have... An action is blameworthy if the actor intends to produce harmful consequences. Rearranged, if an actor intends to produce harmful consequences, then their action is blameworthy.

Okay, I don't want to use I again because we have that above. So let's say IH for Intends Harm. If IH, then B. Contrapositive, if not B, then not IH. If an action is not blameworthy, then the actor must not have intended to harm.

Okay, armed with all of this, let's see if we can use these if-then machines on some specific situations. A. Jared should be blamed for damaging his neighbor's flowers, even though he stepped on them by accident.

So we have a B for blame, but only one of our if-thens leads there. It's this one. And we would need IH, or intending harm, for that. But Jared stepped on the flowers by accident, no intention to harm. This is not a good application of that principle.

This answer choice is out. B. Mikey should be blamed for trying to steal Tracy's valuables, even though he could not find the safe and fled before the police arrived at the house. Alright, again, we want a B for blame.

Looks like he wasn't successful, but he was trying. And that counts as intending harm, so this one seems to work. If you intend harm, you're blameworthy. Mikey intended harm, so Mikey is blameworthy.

It checks out. How about C? Carl should not be praised for helping Melvin study for the exam, since Melvin ended up failing. We can knock this one out straight away, actually. None of our if-then machines leads to not being praised.

We have one that starts there, but in this answer choice, The not being praised is the judgment or the output. So we don't have anything that tells us how to get there. This one is out. D.

Coach Bill should be praised for reaching out to Stephen's parents regarding his repeated absences from practice. Most coaches would have simply cut Stephen's playing time. Okay, so this is the first set of if-thens, if any, and I guess this one here in particular.

To get praiseworthiness, we need positive consequences that were intended. Those are the two inputs, but I don't see any positive consequences here at all, let alone mention of whether or not they were intended. This one is out too. And finally, E. Martin should be blamed for spilling wine on the carpet.

It will be impossible to remove the stain, and the carpet is one of a kind. Okay, so again, it's this if-then machine. We need intended harm to get that. But that's not what this answer choice says. It doesn't tell us whether Martin intended to spill the wine.

And that's the only input we have. So this one is gone too. Okay, B is the only one remaining. And it looked good.

So just one pass through the answer choices this time. This happens occasionally. Here it happened because we did good work making some very powerful if-then machines. Let's do one more.

Okay. Last LR sample question of the course. Let's finish strong.

Pause your video and try this one out on your own. And insight mode enabled... now. And we're back.

One more time. Let's start with the stem. The results of the experiment described above most closely conform to which one of the following propositions?

Okay. So here we can see that the situation is in the passage while the principle will be in the answer choices. We're doing pretty much the same thing though. Let's read the passage. In an experiment, one group of drivers was told that their cars had state-of-the-art accident prevention features, while a second was told that their cars lacked such features.

Even though all cars used in the study had exactly the same features, drivers in the second group got into more accidents than drivers in the first group. Alright, well, no conditional logic this time. I wonder how many of you are happy about that, and how many are sad.

Hopefully, over time, you will come to love conditional logic. Anyway, what's going on here? We get a description of an experiment. One group is told that their cars have state-of-the-art accident prevention features. Okay.

And the other is told that their cars don't have that. Okay. It's not that they aren't told anything. Be careful.

They're actually told that their cars lack accident prevention features. And then what? All the cars actually have the same features.

Yet the drivers who were told that theirs didn't have them got into more accidents. Hmm, that's a bit puzzling. This could easily have been the passage for an unexpected result question, but it's not.

Instead, we need to match the results to a principle. Let's see how that plays out. A. People perform less well at a task when they believe that the consequences of their actions will be mitigated. Okay, so who does this apply to?

The people who performed less well were the second group. But did they believe that the consequences of their actions will be mitigated? No.

That's what the first group would think. That there are features that can correct their mistakes for them. So this answer choice mixes things up. We can knock it out. B.

People who use substandard equipment tend to encounter more problems than do those who use superior equipment. Okay? Who are the people using the substandard equipment? All the cars have the same features.

Thinking that you have substandard equipment is not the same thing as actually having it. So this one really doesn't apply either. We can knock it out.

C. People who are nervous about negative outcomes tend to be less effective in avoiding those outcomes. Okay, still playing our matching game.

Who are the people who are nervous? I guess it's the second group again? If you're told that your car lacks safety features, that's a good reason to be nervous. And what does this say about them?

They tend to be less effective in avoiding those outcomes. The negative outcomes. Accidents, I guess. Yeah, this one seems okay. We'll come back and double check it in a moment.

D. People who are confident in their abilities tend to perform better than those who doubt their abilities. Hmm. Okay, so maybe this is talking about the first group, and they did do better. Because I already like an answer choice, C, I'll stick with this a little longer and just try to get rid of it.

People who are confident in their abilities. Is that really the first group? They're told that they have certain features in their cars.

What does that have to do with their abilities? Nothing, right? Yeah, let's knock this one out.

And finally, E. People who believe that negative outcomes are more likely will generally take precautionary steps to avoid those outcomes. Okay, so let's match things up.

The first part seems to be talking about the second group. They might believe that accidents are more likely since their cars don't have the accident prevention features. So this checks out so far.

Then what do we say about them? They will generally take precautionary steps to avoid these outcomes. Okay...

this takes a little extra thought. The second group got into more accidents, so this doesn't seem to fit correctly. If they took precautionary steps, why did they get into more accidents? The answer choice doesn't tell us that, and I'm not going to go telling some story about it. So yeah, this one doesn't fit.

E is out. Okay, that's just C then. Let's double check it by carefully matching each part. People who are nervous about negative outcomes.

We have to read that as the second group. The passage doesn't say they're nervous, but we'd have to make that connection for this one to work. And I think it's pretty reasonable.

Next, people who are nervous about negative outcomes tend to be less effective in avoiding these outcomes. Right, so people who are nervous about accidents tend to be less effective in avoiding accidents. And so we get our result, more accidents in the second group.

It checks out. C is our answer. And here is your last batch of homework problems.

I'll give you a moment to take note of them if you'd like. And we're moving on... now. Okay, and there you have it.

Ten distinct LR question types. I hope you found this process of going through them to be useful. I'm sure that it was more fun at some times than it was at others, but good job sticking with it.

If you find somewhere down the line that certain question types are plaguing you, feel free to come back and re-watch the sections on them. You'll be surprised at how much more you can get from the videos and what different things you'll notice once you've got some more experience. In the rest of this lesson, I want to give you some guidance for making progress in LR. In this and the last two lessons, you got introduced to the question types and the strategies. This is a crucial first step, but what should you do now?

Well, here again we have to distinguish between those of you who are on the self-guided study track and those of you who are using the Insight training platform. In both cases, I suggest you finish the rest of the course before doing more LR. You've only got three videos left.

So it won't be long before you can circle back to that section anyway. Spacing things out this way is really good for learning also. There's a concept in the psychology of learning called the spacing effect, and a related form of studying called spaced repetition, that we can use to our advantage here.

This is actually one of the more important pillars of the Insight training platform. The recommendation generating algorithm there not only takes into account your current strengths and weaknesses, but also spaces things out for you to optimize your learning progress. Anyway, whichever group you're in, finish the course.

And then, if you're self-guided, come back and re-watch the segments for each question type, one at a time, and do the easy and medium homework questions. After you've done that, the next milestone is to make sure you can identify a question type by its stem. One way to do that is to go through full LR sections and note the question type for each question.

You can do this without even doing the questions, in order to practice this directly in an efficient way that doesn't take forever. You will, of course, need to find a way of checking your answers, but that should be possible by searching online. Next, begin to actually work on full LR sections untimed. Identify the question type, utilize the strategies, and try to get as high a score as possible on the sections. Once you're achieving LR results that Together with your RC results, exceed the target score you're looking for UNTIMED, you can begin taking sections with time pressure.

Try to get your score timed up to what it was UNTIMED. Throughout, make sure you don't shortchange the review process. I've talked a lot about the importance of practice. Feedback in a review is an important part of making the practice count.

It also prevents you from practicing bad habits and solidifying them such that they'll be harder to undo later. I recommend three main ways of reviewing, where you can mix and match according to your preferences and your current needs. These are 1. Simple review 2. Second chance review 3. Blind review Simple review is, well, simple. Just go back and check your work. Find out which ones you got wrong and what the right answers are.

Try to understand what happened and how you can improve for next time. Second chance review is probably my favorite. This is where you know that you got the answer wrong, but you don't know what the right answer is.

Go back to the questions you missed and try again. This is a much more intellectually engaging experience than simple review, so I like that it keeps you active and learning. Blind review is something that has become more popular since I took the tests back in 2013. I hadn't heard of it at the time and to be honest, I actually think that Personally, I probably wouldn't have used it. But that really is more of a personal matter.

I've come to have some respect for the method, and I can see why some test takers might want to use it at least sometimes. There are many sets of directions for how to do this online if you just search LSAT blind review. So I won't go into crazy detail here.

The basic idea is that you mark certain questions for review while you are taking a timed section. Then, once time expires, you go back to those without knowing whether they are right or wrong. That's the blind part. Here, you take as much time as you want, and you get a chance to change your answer or stick with it. Then, when you check the results, you can make different conclusions about what the problem was if you get the answer wrong.

For example, if you stuck with your answer, even with all the time in the world, and you got it wrong, then you really don't understand something about the question. However, If you switched from a wrong answer to the right one, when you had all the time in the world, your initial problem may have been time pressure, because you were able to figure it out given more time. Blind review is interesting. I think anyone who is serious about doing their best on the LSAT should at least give it a try.

You can then make the determination about if and when it's right for you. Okay, now circling back. If you're on the Insight training platform, you can really just go with the program.

I designed it so that you wouldn't have to think about much else besides the LSAT content itself. Make your way through the Stage 1 curriculum. You'll unlock next steps when you reach the appropriate level of proficiency.

After stage one, the platform will begin recommending you untimed sections, and it will start analyzing your performance on them. It will then recommend that you work on different things in accordance with how you're doing and what the best opportunities for improvement are at any given moment. Eventually, you'll reach your target score untimed. The platform will then begin recommending you timed work, and it will keep analyzing your performance. Just keep doing what it says until you hit your target score timed, and then...

Take the test for real! As for review, all three review modes are built right into the website, so you can just select which one you want to do. Okay, so there's a bit of a roadmap for you going forward. Now I just want to finish up with some advanced tips so that you can take your LR game to the next level. If this is your first time watching this video, or you're still at the earlier stages of preparation, just sort of let this wash over you.

These are things that you should be working on down the line, once the fundamentals are solid. My first advanced tip for LR is to be aware of the typical difficulty curve in an LR section. Earlier questions tend to be easier than later ones in the section. This is helpful to know in the beginning, because your accuracy with earlier questions will improve more quickly than your accuracy with later ones, and you still have to recognize that as progress.

So, again, there is a general trend toward more difficult material. but here is a more specific mapping of how that usually plays out. The first 10 questions or so tend to be the easiest. Then you have a bit of a jump for roughly 11 through 15, though here there is more variability.

You will start to have more medium level questions than easy ones, but you may also get the occasional hard question. Then there's usually a significant jump at or around 16, and this holds pretty much for the rest of the section. For the most part, you're going to run into hard questions up here, with the occasional medium level one thrown in. Easy questions are rare and barely ever show up in this range.

My second tip is to look for patterns of reasoning across question types. This takes time and experience, but it's very powerful to the extent that you can achieve it. After a while, you can start to see that many arguments in LR passages are similar to other ones, regardless of question type.

The content will be different, but the underlying structure will be the same. It's kind of like they're the same person in different clothing or something. Once you can recognize the patterns of reasoning, you can be ready to deal with them effectively across multiple question types.

So, for example, when I go through LR questions, I often have the experience of noticing certain characteristic problems in the reasoning. I recognize some weakness or some mistake that the LSAT uses over and over again. There are then a few ways of dealing with that mistake, depending on question type. A flaw question might describe it, for example, but a strengthener might fix it, and a weakener might exploit it.

When you become a true LSAT master, at the highest level of skill, what can actually start to happen is that pretty much all of the questions become front-end questions, in the sense that you can predict, at least roughly, or at least in its general shape, what the answer will be. Now, I hesitate to even mention this here. I don't care how smart you are, this isn't something you'll be able to do effectively early on, and you'll hamper your progress if you try to. But you can start looking out for patterns in the reasoning you see in passages, especially those with arguments.

My third tip is to keep working on your ability to use varying levels of time and attention for different answer choices. This is a way of getting better at the first pass versus second pass thing I've been trying to model in the past three videos. Honestly, it's hard to do that here, because I already know the answers to the questions, so I'm just trying to simulate things for you and give you a sense of what it might be like in your own case.

But as I hope you were able to see, working with the answer choices is a dynamic process, where some answer choices get a lot more time and attention than others. Getting better at navigating that process is a big part of getting better at LR, especially when timing becomes more of a consideration. One important part of this... is narrowing the answer choices down to two, where one is correct and one is the challenger.

In the final stages of my preparation, these were the only questions I was getting wrong. I would narrow it down to two and pick the wrong one, usually because of time pressure. But if you can quickly narrow things down to two, you can spend more time and effort picking the two contenders apart. Sometimes, I would be checking every single word in each answer choice to see where the difference maker was.

But you won't have the time, or the caloric energy for that matter, to do that with every answer choice on the test. So you have to get better at varying things up and moving through the answers intelligently. My final tip for today is to invest some time in the theory behind conditional logic. We have touched on it a few times in this course so far, mostly in lesson two.

I tried to keep my discussions practical, focused on tools you can use on the test and skills you can improve through practice. But I took a full course on logic when I was an undergrad, and I think that this helped me, along with my philosophical training. to do well on the LSAT. Granted, the logic course was mostly practice-based, but we did learn a fair bit of theory as well.

At some point in your LSAT preparation, at least for some people, it might be smart to spend a little time learning this theory. The topic you are looking for is called propositional logic. We touched on it mostly when we were learning about the if-then machine as a tool, but I also gestured at it during our discussion of the parallel structure question type. Remember the logical operators and combining the claims?

That was propositional logic. I didn't want to overwhelm you then, but search online for this topic and learn a bit more about it. There are some decent videos on it right here on YouTube.

I think you may find that it'll help you to structure your thinking in ways that are quite helpful for the LSAT in general, but especially for the LR section. Okay, before we move on and leave LR behind us, I just want to give you a summary. of all of the question types and their basic strategies. So here it is, all in one eyeful. I'll post the same information online at insightlset.com slash homework.

You can use this as a little guide in the beginning of your practice. Eventually, it will become second nature. All right, and that's going to do it for logical reasoning, at least for the time being.

I'll discuss this section a little bit more in our final lesson, lesson eight, when I talk about timing and test-taking strategies. But for now... We're moving on to the other main section of the test, reading comprehension.

We'll discuss RC for all of Lessons 6 and 7. In Lesson 6, we'll focus on effectively reading RC passages, and in Lesson 7, we'll focus on answering RC questions. When you're ready, meet me in Lesson 6. I'll see you there.

Transcript for:Mastering Logical Reasoning for LSAT

Transcript for:
Mastering Logical Reasoning for LSAT