LSAT Lab: Sufficient Assumption Questions

[Music] hi this is matt at LSAT lab and today&#39;s lesson is on sufficient assumption questions in the logical reasoning section in this lesson we look at how to spot a sufficient assumption question we&#39;ll look at an example question that contains conditional reasoning an example question that contains comparative reasoning and we&#39;ll review the trap answer patterns that you need to know about for this question type it&#39;s not a very common question type only 6% of logical reasoning questions are sufficient assumption questions but it&#39;s one of the harder question types out there since it relies so heavily on conditional logic so how do you spot a sufficient assumption question well you&#39;re looking for language in the question stem that tells you that the answer choice is going to guarantee that the conclusion in the argument follows so we&#39;re looking for words that indicate sufficiency and we&#39;re looking for words that indicate an assumption so in this case we&#39;re looking for something that if assumed enables the conclusion above to be properly drawn and that word enables tells us that it&#39;s a sufficient assumption question now let&#39;s try this question stem says the conclusion above is properly drawn if which one of the following is assumed that word if it&#39;s hard to spot but it tells us that we&#39;re looking at a sufficient assumption question let&#39;s try this one from which one of the following does the conclusion logically follow well we don&#39;t get a typical language cues but we are looking for an answer choice that from it the conclusion in the argument will follow logically so it will guarantee that the conclusion is logical if we add the right answer so we&#39;re looking for an answer choice that&#39;s going to guarantee the conclusion that&#39;s our task and it&#39;s really hard to do that it&#39;s really hard to prove a conclusion and so that&#39;s going to limit the structures that we can use when we&#39;re working on sufficient assumption questions so the process that we want to use the process we want to take whenever we&#39;re working on any of the questions in the Assumption family is the same we need to find the conclusion find the evidence for why it&#39;s true evaluate the reasoning meaning find the gap in the argument figure out what&#39;s wrong with it and use that understanding of what&#39;s wrong with the argument to anticipate what an answer could sound like then we look through the choices trying to match that anticipation using trap answer patterns to make eliminations along the way so it&#39;s a pretty broad process but well let&#39;s put it into practice as we look at a couple of questions here today so the reasoning structure that we really need to pay attention to when we&#39;re working on sufficient assumption questions is conditional logic 90% of sufficient assumption question are driven by these if-then relationships the reason why they tend to use conditional logic is because we are trying to guarantee the conclusion follows and because conditional logic is so mathematical it does lend itself very nicely to these provable equations if a then B if B then C therefore if a and C and if we&#39;re not comfortable using conditional logic we mean we need to get comfortable with it because it&#39;s gonna be a really common part of the logical reasoning section and a massive part of sufficient assumption questions so if you think of the conclusion as a journey from point A your starting point to point D where you finished then the evidence that they&#39;ve given us along the way are the segments of that journey that have already been established and the assumption is the link between them that allows that journey to be completed so what we&#39;re looking for is the gap in the journey that we can then anticipate how to connect those terms in the right answer so here&#39;s an example question go ahead and pause try this question on your own and when you&#39;ve had a chance to give it a try hit play again come back and we&#39;ll work it through together all right welcome back so the first step is always to find the conclusion and we can be assisted in that in using language cues that help us find conclusions and premises in this case there&#39;s a word thus in the last sentence that helps us identify that the conclusion is that Murray cannot be accepted for the position of executive administrator now there&#39;s a word since that follows that that tells us hey we&#39;re coming back to more evidence so don&#39;t go beyond that and the part that&#39;s after the word Murray and Accounting with both the bachelors in a master&#39;s degree that&#39;s a description of Murray but not part of what they&#39;re trying to establish so just the part that says that Murray cannot be accepted for the position of executive administrator is the conclusion of this argument and it&#39;s not a relationship they&#39;re not saying if a then B they&#39;re just saying hey this is a fact you cannot be accepted for position of executive administrator so what&#39;s the evidence for this conclusion well we&#39;re given a few things first and undergraduate degree is necessary for appointment to the Executive Board so the undergraduate degree is a necessary condition and appointment to the Executive Board is the sufficient condition and we know that because of the word necessary necessary is telling us what is required and it&#39;s saying that the undergraduate degree is necessary we also get that no one with a felony conviction can be appointed to the board so if you have a felony conviction then you can&#39;t be appointed to the executive board and the word know helps us organize that relationship it introduces the sufficient condition telling us that a felony conviction is sufficient and that one can not be appointed to the executive board if they have that felony conviction then we&#39;re also given that Murray is an accountant with both bachelor&#39;s and a master&#39;s degree so it&#39;s a piece of information it&#39;s not a relationship but just a piece of information that he&#39;s got an undergraduate degree and furthermore we also have this final piece of information that he has a felony conviction so we&#39;ve got a few premises and a conclusion that they&#39;re trying to reach a couple of the premises are relationships couple of the premises are facts and the conclusion is a fact so now we have to get to the work of trying to figure out what&#39;s the missing piece that will allow this argument to come together well we want to start to think about what are the common terms between the premises and one of the common terms is the idea of an undergraduate degree it&#39;s both the one of the statements of fact and in the first relationship but we can&#39;t really use that as a linking mechanism because undergraduate degree is the necessary condition of that relationship so if we try to use the fact that he&#39;s an undergraduate degree to imply that he could be appointed to the executive board we&#39;d be reversing the relationship in the first premise there&#39;s another common term felony conviction now in this one we have met the sufficient condition of the second relationship he has a felony conviction right so then we can apply this the second premise the relationship there with that new piece of information and we will be able to establish something so if we filter out the unimportant evidence the evidence that doesn&#39;t really allow us to link anything together we just focus on the parts that do right if he has if you have a felony conviction then you can&#39;t be appointed to the executive board and Marie has a felony conviction therefore he can&#39;t be appointed to be executive administrator well what&#39;s the gap here if we take that first relationship and connect it with the fact that he has a felony conviction we can infer that he cannot be appointed to the executive board but that&#39;s not quite so far is telling us that he can&#39;t be appointed to the executive administrator so we need to build that bridge that says if you can&#39;t be appointed to the executive board then you can&#39;t serve as the executive administrator that&#39;s the assumption that we need to go find in the right answer now let&#39;s start with answer choice a we&#39;re going to be looking for this idea between not being appointed to the executive board and not being an executive administrator we&#39;re gonna use that as a template and kind of look for an traces that relate to that idea but while we&#39;re here let&#39;s go ahead and make sure that we consider each of the choices and try to figure out what&#39;s wrong with each of the wrong ones in addition to which one is the right one so answer choice a says that anyone with a master&#39;s degree and without a felony conviction is eligible for appointment to the executive board if we ignore the part about the master&#39;s degree which is not entirely irrelevant but but the thrust of this answer choice is that if you don&#39;t have a felony conviction then you&#39;re eligible for appointment to the executive board this is connecting felony conviction and executive board and the relationship that is building is that if you don&#39;t have a felony conviction then you can be point appointed to the executive board so answer trace a is simply negating the relationship and that first premise let&#39;s go ahead and get rid of adds choice a answer choice B says that only candidates eligible for appointment to the executive board can be accepted to for the position of executive administrator so this hatchet race is definitely connecting the right terms and it builds a bridge that says if you can be accepted as an executive administrator then you must be eligible for the executive board this doesn&#39;t exactly match what we had anticipated but it does have the right terms and if we take the contrapositive of answer choice B if we both reverse and negate that conditional then if you aren&#39;t eligible for the executive board then you can&#39;t sit as an executive administrator this is exactly what we&#39;re looking for it matches our anticipation and inch twist B looks pretty good let&#39;s hold on to it answer choice C says that an undergraduate degree is not necessary for acceptance for the position of executive administrator and Tracy doesn&#39;t build a bridge it tears down one it says something is not necessary for acceptance for the position of executive administrator so it doesn&#39;t seem like this is going to be a strong contender it&#39;s simply ruling out a relationship as opposed to asserting a relationship and ruling out that relationship doesn&#39;t make it any more likely that we&#39;re gonna be able to build the bridge also this answer choice rules out a relationship between an executive administrator and having an undergraduate degree but this does not mean that if you have an undergraduate degree that you cannot be an executive administrator the relationship between these two is being destroyed not created so and Tracy doesn&#39;t give us a link that we would use in order to build a bridge when you get rid of it it&#39;s simply in a relevant relationship answer choice D says that if Murray did not have a felony conviction he would be accepted for the position of executive administrator so this builds a relationship between not having a felony conviction and being appointed to executive administrator now we know that Murray has a felony conviction but we can&#39;t negate this relationship we could reverse and negate it but we can&#39;t read it forwards through negation we can&#39;t say that if he has a felony conviction that he cannot be pointed to the executive administrator that negates the relationship that would work and so this isn&#39;t simply a negation of a relationship that could have worked answer tracy says that the felony charge on which Murray was convicted is relevant to the duties of the position of executive administrator nowhere in the argument does it talk about whether the duties are relevant or irrelevant so this answer choice is simply out of scope and so that leaves us with answer is B is the right answer something we anticipated so now let&#39;s look at another situation you will you will occasionally a face on sufficient assumption questions and that is that some arguments are built around comparative reasoning so 13% of sufficient assumption questions use comparative reasoning as opposed to conditional reasoning so what this looks like is we tend to look at the size of groups or the amount of something and we think about it changing over time all right so here&#39;s an example of how a comparison might work if we know that this year 15% of stock trades involve fraud and that ten years ago only 5% of stock trades involve fraud does that mean that more stock trades involve fraud today than did before well it depends it depends on how many stock trades occurred this year and how many stock trades occurred 10 years ago depending upon how we change the size of the group it will have a positive or negative impact in determining whether or not there are more or less or the same numbers talk trades that involve fraud this year compared to 10 years ago so if we put some numbers on this let&#39;s suppose there were a hundred stock trades that occurred this year if fifteen percent of them involve fraud that means that fifteen of them involve fraud if 10 years ago there were 100 if 10 years ago there were also 100 stock trades that occurred and we know that five percent of them involve fraud then we know that five out of that 100 involve fraud and the idea that there were more stock trades that involve fraud this year then were ten years ago would be valid but we could adjust the situation a little bit so that the conclusion would not follow let&#39;s suppose we keep ten years ago at one hundred stock trades and it still had five percent of them that involve fraud so we have five stock trades ten years ago that involve fraud and this year instead of having 100 stock trades let&#39;s bring this down to 20 stock trades if fifteen percent of those 20 involve fraud this year then that would mean three of them involve fraud and so 15 percent can actually turn out to be a smaller amount depending upon the overall size of the pie or overall size of the group and so that&#39;s the kind of change we want to be able to look out for what do we want to do to guarantee that the comparison that&#39;s occurred and within the argument is gonna be valid next let&#39;s change the picture one more time and this year instead of there being 20 stock trades we&#39;ll have 200 stock trades if 200 stock trades occurred this year in 15 percent of them involve fraud well then we had 30 stock trades that involve fraud whereas 10 years ago with 100 stock trades and 5 percent of them involving fraud then we had 5 that had fraud so a bigger percentage of a bigger amount a bigger pie is gonna equal a larger amount overall and so we have to be careful about the overall size of the group so that we can make adjustments to guarantee that the conclusion follows so we&#39;ll be thinking in terms of how can we adjust the comparison that&#39;s occurring such that we guarantee that the conclusion follows so here&#39;s another example go ahead and take a minute to try this question on your own hit pause and when you&#39;re ready to to work it through together hit play again and we&#39;ll take a look alright welcome back so the first step remember is to find the conclusion and the conclusion here we can spot with the words it follows that the very end it says that it follows that M contains twice as many cans as L so these two groups group M and Group L and we&#39;re talking about the number of cans in each and they say that there are twice as many cans in Group M as there are in Group L why is that well we have some evidence right before it says that all the cans in L were recycled into cans in M so every can in the group L gets recycled and then turned into the material that is used to create group M and the amount of material other than aluminum in an aluminum can is negligible so basically there are other materials that we have to consider next we also know that 50% of the aluminum contained in M was recycled from another group L so that half of em came from L if there were five cans in Group L then we know that half of the material in Group M came from Group L and finally we also know that standard aluminum soughing cans do not vary in amount of aluminum that the K contains so there aren&#39;t extra kinds of materials to consider they don&#39;t vary in the amount of aluminum that they contain and half of the material in Group M came from recycled material from Group L does that guarantee that group M is twice as large as Group L if you think about the percentages fifty percent right it does work out numerically right but that depends on nothing else going wrong so if we think about like what would it look like if you&#39;re going to meltdown Group L and use that aluminum as the material for creating McCann&#39;s in Group M well if you put it all into a pot and melted it up and then dump that bowl into another bowl where you&#39;re gonna create group M or the material for Group M as long as all of the material in Group L made it over to group M then yeah there should be twice as many cans in Group M as there are in Group L but if any of that aluminum was lost along the way like like batter in a mixing bowl and got stuck to the sides then we&#39;re not gonna exactly get two times as many cans in Group M we&#39;ll get two times as many cans as we were able to salvage from the aluminum that was recycled at a crib L right so it could be two times but it might be something less if there was any loss of material during the recycling process now that we have a sense for what&#39;s wrong with the argument and what we probably want in the answer choices right what we want is that all of the aluminum in Group L made it over to group M let&#39;s take a look at the answer choices and trace a says that the aluminum in the cans of M cannot be recycled further well this is simply out of scope what happens from here on out does not matter the arguments conclusion is about whether or not the cans in M where twice as many as the cans in L but what happens in the future is not relevant to this argument look out for conclusions that are based in the present and an answer is based in the future or a conclusion based in the past and an answer choice based in the present if the timing is not within the scope of the argument it doesn&#39;t matter answer choice B says that recycled aluminum is a poorer quality than unrecycled aluminum and the idea of poor quality does not matter we care about how many cans there are we don&#39;t care about the quality of the closed cans and so again B is out of scope the answer choice C says that all of the aluminum in an aluminum can is recovered when the can is recycled well this kind of matches what we were thinking making making sure that we capture all of that aluminum from Group L that gets then used in production for group M if any of it is lost we&#39;re not going to get twice as many cans in Group M as there were in L so C looks pretty good let&#39;s hold on to C D says that none of the soft drink cans in Group L had been made from recycled aluminum and whether or not Group L had been made from recycled aluminum doesn&#39;t actually tell us anything right as long as the material is then further recycled into Group M where it came from does not matter maybe if we had more information about whether or not recycled material could be further recycled that might be of use to us but without that other information telling us that none of the cans in L had been made from recycled material does not guarantee that 100% of of it of the material from Group L is gonna make it over to group M and so DS simply add a scope again e aluminum soft drink cans are more easily recycled than our soft drink cans made from other materials how easily it is to recycle these materials does not matter again again we have in this case four integer aces that are out of scope making into a seat a little bit easier to spot and that&#39;s our answer trap answers you want to be on the lookout for when you&#39;re dealing with scope issues the scope or simply just those that are out of scope those trap answers relating to logic are those that support a premise remember on a sufficient assumption question our job is to prove the conclusion we&#39;ve already accepted the evidence as true because we only really evaluate the validity of an argument not the soundness of an argument so whether or not the evidence is true or not true doesn&#39;t matter we just accept it as true and ask does it prove the conclusion so anything that tries to support the evidence isn&#39;t going to make the argument any better since we&#39;ve already accepted it in the first place since so many of these arguments deal with conditional logic many of the trap answers are going to deal with reversals and negation so look out for an traces that build a relationship between the right terms but either represents a reversal or a negation of the logic that we&#39;re looking for and she traces that simply build bridges between two terms within the argument are irrelevant relationships unless those are the right terms to be connected right they&#39;re just grabbing terms from in the stimulus connecting them with only if or unless in order to make it look very tempting because if you don&#39;t have a clear impression of what it is that you&#39;re looking for before you go to the choices and these answer choices that are irrelevant are not out of scope they are they relate to the argument and so they&#39;re gonna be a little bit harder to get rid of all right so look out for its traces that are just random terms then connected in a relationship and then finally when it with a graduate degree you want to look out for any traces that are too weak on sufficient assumption questions the stronger the answer trace is the more likely it is to prove the conclusion so answer bases can&#39;t really get into trouble for being too strong but they do get into trouble often for being too weak meaning that they help but they don&#39;t prove the conclusion so in summary you spot a sufficient assumption question with language cues within the question stem that give you a hint of sufficiency words like enables ensures suffices allows would make or if if you&#39;re looking at an assumption question and you see those kinds of language cues you&#39;re looking at a sufficient assumption question the reasoning structures you want to be on the lookout for are conditional logic in comparison with conditional logic being the dominant reasoning structure on this question type and then the really important rap answer patterns that you want to be paying attention to those are out of scope those that are too weak to prove the conclusion those that either reverse or negate the terms in a relationship and those introduces that simply support the evidence as opposed to bridging the gap between the evidence and the conclusion so that&#39;s it for today&#39;s lesson on sufficient assumption questions I invite you to check out these other videos or come visit us today at LSAT lab comm you you

[Music] hi this is matt at LSAT lab and today&amp;#39;s lesson is on sufficient assumption questions in the logical reasoning section in this lesson we look at how to spot a sufficient assumption question we&amp;#39;ll look at an example question that contains conditional reasoning an example question that contains comparative reasoning and we&amp;#39;ll review the trap answer patterns that you need to know about for this question type it&amp;#39;s not a very common question type only 6% of logical reasoning questions are sufficient assumption questions but it&amp;#39;s one of the harder question types out there since it relies so heavily on conditional logic so how do you spot a sufficient assumption question well you&amp;#39;re looking for language in the question stem that tells you that the answer choice is going to guarantee that the conclusion in the argument follows so we&amp;#39;re looking for words that indicate sufficiency and we&amp;#39;re looking for words that indicate an assumption so in this case we&amp;#39;re looking for something that if assumed enables the conclusion above to be properly drawn and that word enables tells us that it&amp;#39;s a sufficient assumption question now let&amp;#39;s try this question stem says the conclusion above is properly drawn if which one of the following is assumed that word if it&amp;#39;s hard to spot but it tells us that we&amp;#39;re looking at a sufficient assumption question let&amp;#39;s try this one from which one of the following does the conclusion logically follow well we don&amp;#39;t get a typical language cues but we are looking for an answer choice that from it the conclusion in the argument will follow logically so it will guarantee that the conclusion is logical if we add the right answer so we&amp;#39;re looking for an answer choice that&amp;#39;s going to guarantee the conclusion that&amp;#39;s our task and it&amp;#39;s really hard to do that it&amp;#39;s really hard to prove a conclusion and so that&amp;#39;s going to limit the structures that we can use when we&amp;#39;re working on sufficient assumption questions so the process that we want to use the process we want to take whenever we&amp;#39;re working on any of the questions in the Assumption family is the same we need to find the conclusion find the evidence for why it&amp;#39;s true evaluate the reasoning meaning find the gap in the argument figure out what&amp;#39;s wrong with it and use that understanding of what&amp;#39;s wrong with the argument to anticipate what an answer could sound like then we look through the choices trying to match that anticipation using trap answer patterns to make eliminations along the way so it&amp;#39;s a pretty broad process but well let&amp;#39;s put it into practice as we look at a couple of questions here today so the reasoning structure that we really need to pay attention to when we&amp;#39;re working on sufficient assumption questions is conditional logic 90% of sufficient assumption question are driven by these if-then relationships the reason why they tend to use conditional logic is because we are trying to guarantee the conclusion follows and because conditional logic is so mathematical it does lend itself very nicely to these provable equations if a then B if B then C therefore if a and C and if we&amp;#39;re not comfortable using conditional logic we mean we need to get comfortable with it because it&amp;#39;s gonna be a really common part of the logical reasoning section and a massive part of sufficient assumption questions so if you think of the conclusion as a journey from point A your starting point to point D where you finished then the evidence that they&amp;#39;ve given us along the way are the segments of that journey that have already been established and the assumption is the link between them that allows that journey to be completed so what we&amp;#39;re looking for is the gap in the journey that we can then anticipate how to connect those terms in the right answer so here&amp;#39;s an example question go ahead and pause try this question on your own and when you&amp;#39;ve had a chance to give it a try hit play again come back and we&amp;#39;ll work it through together all right welcome back so the first step is always to find the conclusion and we can be assisted in that in using language cues that help us find conclusions and premises in this case there&amp;#39;s a word thus in the last sentence that helps us identify that the conclusion is that Murray cannot be accepted for the position of executive administrator now there&amp;#39;s a word since that follows that that tells us hey we&amp;#39;re coming back to more evidence so don&amp;#39;t go beyond that and the part that&amp;#39;s after the word Murray and Accounting with both the bachelors in a master&amp;#39;s degree that&amp;#39;s a description of Murray but not part of what they&amp;#39;re trying to establish so just the part that says that Murray cannot be accepted for the position of executive administrator is the conclusion of this argument and it&amp;#39;s not a relationship they&amp;#39;re not saying if a then B they&amp;#39;re just saying hey this is a fact you cannot be accepted for position of executive administrator so what&amp;#39;s the evidence for this conclusion well we&amp;#39;re given a few things first and undergraduate degree is necessary for appointment to the Executive Board so the undergraduate degree is a necessary condition and appointment to the Executive Board is the sufficient condition and we know that because of the word necessary necessary is telling us what is required and it&amp;#39;s saying that the undergraduate degree is necessary we also get that no one with a felony conviction can be appointed to the board so if you have a felony conviction then you can&amp;#39;t be appointed to the executive board and the word know helps us organize that relationship it introduces the sufficient condition telling us that a felony conviction is sufficient and that one can not be appointed to the executive board if they have that felony conviction then we&amp;#39;re also given that Murray is an accountant with both bachelor&amp;#39;s and a master&amp;#39;s degree so it&amp;#39;s a piece of information it&amp;#39;s not a relationship but just a piece of information that he&amp;#39;s got an undergraduate degree and furthermore we also have this final piece of information that he has a felony conviction so we&amp;#39;ve got a few premises and a conclusion that they&amp;#39;re trying to reach a couple of the premises are relationships couple of the premises are facts and the conclusion is a fact so now we have to get to the work of trying to figure out what&amp;#39;s the missing piece that will allow this argument to come together well we want to start to think about what are the common terms between the premises and one of the common terms is the idea of an undergraduate degree it&amp;#39;s both the one of the statements of fact and in the first relationship but we can&amp;#39;t really use that as a linking mechanism because undergraduate degree is the necessary condition of that relationship so if we try to use the fact that he&amp;#39;s an undergraduate degree to imply that he could be appointed to the executive board we&amp;#39;d be reversing the relationship in the first premise there&amp;#39;s another common term felony conviction now in this one we have met the sufficient condition of the second relationship he has a felony conviction right so then we can apply this the second premise the relationship there with that new piece of information and we will be able to establish something so if we filter out the unimportant evidence the evidence that doesn&amp;#39;t really allow us to link anything together we just focus on the parts that do right if he has if you have a felony conviction then you can&amp;#39;t be appointed to the executive board and Marie has a felony conviction therefore he can&amp;#39;t be appointed to be executive administrator well what&amp;#39;s the gap here if we take that first relationship and connect it with the fact that he has a felony conviction we can infer that he cannot be appointed to the executive board but that&amp;#39;s not quite so far is telling us that he can&amp;#39;t be appointed to the executive administrator so we need to build that bridge that says if you can&amp;#39;t be appointed to the executive board then you can&amp;#39;t serve as the executive administrator that&amp;#39;s the assumption that we need to go find in the right answer now let&amp;#39;s start with answer choice a we&amp;#39;re going to be looking for this idea between not being appointed to the executive board and not being an executive administrator we&amp;#39;re gonna use that as a template and kind of look for an traces that relate to that idea but while we&amp;#39;re here let&amp;#39;s go ahead and make sure that we consider each of the choices and try to figure out what&amp;#39;s wrong with each of the wrong ones in addition to which one is the right one so answer choice a says that anyone with a master&amp;#39;s degree and without a felony conviction is eligible for appointment to the executive board if we ignore the part about the master&amp;#39;s degree which is not entirely irrelevant but but the thrust of this answer choice is that if you don&amp;#39;t have a felony conviction then you&amp;#39;re eligible for appointment to the executive board this is connecting felony conviction and executive board and the relationship that is building is that if you don&amp;#39;t have a felony conviction then you can be point appointed to the executive board so answer trace a is simply negating the relationship and that first premise let&amp;#39;s go ahead and get rid of adds choice a answer choice B says that only candidates eligible for appointment to the executive board can be accepted to for the position of executive administrator so this hatchet race is definitely connecting the right terms and it builds a bridge that says if you can be accepted as an executive administrator then you must be eligible for the executive board this doesn&amp;#39;t exactly match what we had anticipated but it does have the right terms and if we take the contrapositive of answer choice B if we both reverse and negate that conditional then if you aren&amp;#39;t eligible for the executive board then you can&amp;#39;t sit as an executive administrator this is exactly what we&amp;#39;re looking for it matches our anticipation and inch twist B looks pretty good let&amp;#39;s hold on to it answer choice C says that an undergraduate degree is not necessary for acceptance for the position of executive administrator and Tracy doesn&amp;#39;t build a bridge it tears down one it says something is not necessary for acceptance for the position of executive administrator so it doesn&amp;#39;t seem like this is going to be a strong contender it&amp;#39;s simply ruling out a relationship as opposed to asserting a relationship and ruling out that relationship doesn&amp;#39;t make it any more likely that we&amp;#39;re gonna be able to build the bridge also this answer choice rules out a relationship between an executive administrator and having an undergraduate degree but this does not mean that if you have an undergraduate degree that you cannot be an executive administrator the relationship between these two is being destroyed not created so and Tracy doesn&amp;#39;t give us a link that we would use in order to build a bridge when you get rid of it it&amp;#39;s simply in a relevant relationship answer choice D says that if Murray did not have a felony conviction he would be accepted for the position of executive administrator so this builds a relationship between not having a felony conviction and being appointed to executive administrator now we know that Murray has a felony conviction but we can&amp;#39;t negate this relationship we could reverse and negate it but we can&amp;#39;t read it forwards through negation we can&amp;#39;t say that if he has a felony conviction that he cannot be pointed to the executive administrator that negates the relationship that would work and so this isn&amp;#39;t simply a negation of a relationship that could have worked answer tracy says that the felony charge on which Murray was convicted is relevant to the duties of the position of executive administrator nowhere in the argument does it talk about whether the duties are relevant or irrelevant so this answer choice is simply out of scope and so that leaves us with answer is B is the right answer something we anticipated so now let&amp;#39;s look at another situation you will you will occasionally a face on sufficient assumption questions and that is that some arguments are built around comparative reasoning so 13% of sufficient assumption questions use comparative reasoning as opposed to conditional reasoning so what this looks like is we tend to look at the size of groups or the amount of something and we think about it changing over time all right so here&amp;#39;s an example of how a comparison might work if we know that this year 15% of stock trades involve fraud and that ten years ago only 5% of stock trades involve fraud does that mean that more stock trades involve fraud today than did before well it depends it depends on how many stock trades occurred this year and how many stock trades occurred 10 years ago depending upon how we change the size of the group it will have a positive or negative impact in determining whether or not there are more or less or the same numbers talk trades that involve fraud this year compared to 10 years ago so if we put some numbers on this let&amp;#39;s suppose there were a hundred stock trades that occurred this year if fifteen percent of them involve fraud that means that fifteen of them involve fraud if 10 years ago there were 100 if 10 years ago there were also 100 stock trades that occurred and we know that five percent of them involve fraud then we know that five out of that 100 involve fraud and the idea that there were more stock trades that involve fraud this year then were ten years ago would be valid but we could adjust the situation a little bit so that the conclusion would not follow let&amp;#39;s suppose we keep ten years ago at one hundred stock trades and it still had five percent of them that involve fraud so we have five stock trades ten years ago that involve fraud and this year instead of having 100 stock trades let&amp;#39;s bring this down to 20 stock trades if fifteen percent of those 20 involve fraud this year then that would mean three of them involve fraud and so 15 percent can actually turn out to be a smaller amount depending upon the overall size of the pie or overall size of the group and so that&amp;#39;s the kind of change we want to be able to look out for what do we want to do to guarantee that the comparison that&amp;#39;s occurred and within the argument is gonna be valid next let&amp;#39;s change the picture one more time and this year instead of there being 20 stock trades we&amp;#39;ll have 200 stock trades if 200 stock trades occurred this year in 15 percent of them involve fraud well then we had 30 stock trades that involve fraud whereas 10 years ago with 100 stock trades and 5 percent of them involving fraud then we had 5 that had fraud so a bigger percentage of a bigger amount a bigger pie is gonna equal a larger amount overall and so we have to be careful about the overall size of the group so that we can make adjustments to guarantee that the conclusion follows so we&amp;#39;ll be thinking in terms of how can we adjust the comparison that&amp;#39;s occurring such that we guarantee that the conclusion follows so here&amp;#39;s another example go ahead and take a minute to try this question on your own hit pause and when you&amp;#39;re ready to to work it through together hit play again and we&amp;#39;ll take a look alright welcome back so the first step remember is to find the conclusion and the conclusion here we can spot with the words it follows that the very end it says that it follows that M contains twice as many cans as L so these two groups group M and Group L and we&amp;#39;re talking about the number of cans in each and they say that there are twice as many cans in Group M as there are in Group L why is that well we have some evidence right before it says that all the cans in L were recycled into cans in M so every can in the group L gets recycled and then turned into the material that is used to create group M and the amount of material other than aluminum in an aluminum can is negligible so basically there are other materials that we have to consider next we also know that 50% of the aluminum contained in M was recycled from another group L so that half of em came from L if there were five cans in Group L then we know that half of the material in Group M came from Group L and finally we also know that standard aluminum soughing cans do not vary in amount of aluminum that the K contains so there aren&amp;#39;t extra kinds of materials to consider they don&amp;#39;t vary in the amount of aluminum that they contain and half of the material in Group M came from recycled material from Group L does that guarantee that group M is twice as large as Group L if you think about the percentages fifty percent right it does work out numerically right but that depends on nothing else going wrong so if we think about like what would it look like if you&amp;#39;re going to meltdown Group L and use that aluminum as the material for creating McCann&amp;#39;s in Group M well if you put it all into a pot and melted it up and then dump that bowl into another bowl where you&amp;#39;re gonna create group M or the material for Group M as long as all of the material in Group L made it over to group M then yeah there should be twice as many cans in Group M as there are in Group L but if any of that aluminum was lost along the way like like batter in a mixing bowl and got stuck to the sides then we&amp;#39;re not gonna exactly get two times as many cans in Group M we&amp;#39;ll get two times as many cans as we were able to salvage from the aluminum that was recycled at a crib L right so it could be two times but it might be something less if there was any loss of material during the recycling process now that we have a sense for what&amp;#39;s wrong with the argument and what we probably want in the answer choices right what we want is that all of the aluminum in Group L made it over to group M let&amp;#39;s take a look at the answer choices and trace a says that the aluminum in the cans of M cannot be recycled further well this is simply out of scope what happens from here on out does not matter the arguments conclusion is about whether or not the cans in M where twice as many as the cans in L but what happens in the future is not relevant to this argument look out for conclusions that are based in the present and an answer is based in the future or a conclusion based in the past and an answer choice based in the present if the timing is not within the scope of the argument it doesn&amp;#39;t matter answer choice B says that recycled aluminum is a poorer quality than unrecycled aluminum and the idea of poor quality does not matter we care about how many cans there are we don&amp;#39;t care about the quality of the closed cans and so again B is out of scope the answer choice C says that all of the aluminum in an aluminum can is recovered when the can is recycled well this kind of matches what we were thinking making making sure that we capture all of that aluminum from Group L that gets then used in production for group M if any of it is lost we&amp;#39;re not going to get twice as many cans in Group M as there were in L so C looks pretty good let&amp;#39;s hold on to C D says that none of the soft drink cans in Group L had been made from recycled aluminum and whether or not Group L had been made from recycled aluminum doesn&amp;#39;t actually tell us anything right as long as the material is then further recycled into Group M where it came from does not matter maybe if we had more information about whether or not recycled material could be further recycled that might be of use to us but without that other information telling us that none of the cans in L had been made from recycled material does not guarantee that 100% of of it of the material from Group L is gonna make it over to group M and so DS simply add a scope again e aluminum soft drink cans are more easily recycled than our soft drink cans made from other materials how easily it is to recycle these materials does not matter again again we have in this case four integer aces that are out of scope making into a seat a little bit easier to spot and that&amp;#39;s our answer trap answers you want to be on the lookout for when you&amp;#39;re dealing with scope issues the scope or simply just those that are out of scope those trap answers relating to logic are those that support a premise remember on a sufficient assumption question our job is to prove the conclusion we&amp;#39;ve already accepted the evidence as true because we only really evaluate the validity of an argument not the soundness of an argument so whether or not the evidence is true or not true doesn&amp;#39;t matter we just accept it as true and ask does it prove the conclusion so anything that tries to support the evidence isn&amp;#39;t going to make the argument any better since we&amp;#39;ve already accepted it in the first place since so many of these arguments deal with conditional logic many of the trap answers are going to deal with reversals and negation so look out for an traces that build a relationship between the right terms but either represents a reversal or a negation of the logic that we&amp;#39;re looking for and she traces that simply build bridges between two terms within the argument are irrelevant relationships unless those are the right terms to be connected right they&amp;#39;re just grabbing terms from in the stimulus connecting them with only if or unless in order to make it look very tempting because if you don&amp;#39;t have a clear impression of what it is that you&amp;#39;re looking for before you go to the choices and these answer choices that are irrelevant are not out of scope they are they relate to the argument and so they&amp;#39;re gonna be a little bit harder to get rid of all right so look out for its traces that are just random terms then connected in a relationship and then finally when it with a graduate degree you want to look out for any traces that are too weak on sufficient assumption questions the stronger the answer trace is the more likely it is to prove the conclusion so answer bases can&amp;#39;t really get into trouble for being too strong but they do get into trouble often for being too weak meaning that they help but they don&amp;#39;t prove the conclusion so in summary you spot a sufficient assumption question with language cues within the question stem that give you a hint of sufficiency words like enables ensures suffices allows would make or if if you&amp;#39;re looking at an assumption question and you see those kinds of language cues you&amp;#39;re looking at a sufficient assumption question the reasoning structures you want to be on the lookout for are conditional logic in comparison with conditional logic being the dominant reasoning structure on this question type and then the really important rap answer patterns that you want to be paying attention to those are out of scope those that are too weak to prove the conclusion those that either reverse or negate the terms in a relationship and those introduces that simply support the evidence as opposed to bridging the gap between the evidence and the conclusion so that&amp;#39;s it for today&amp;#39;s lesson on sufficient assumption questions I invite you to check out these other videos or come visit us today at LSAT lab comm you you

Transcript for:LSAT Lab: Sufficient Assumption Questions

Transcript for:
LSAT Lab: Sufficient Assumption Questions