[Music] hi this is Matt at outside lab and today's lesson is on weaking questions in the logical reasoning section now we can questions are a fairly common question type 9% of all logical reasoning questions are weaken questions and any improvement you make here will also pay off when you're dealing with strengthen and paradox questions as well so the skills in this lesson are really important not just for this question type but for a few question types that all have very similar lines of reasoning in this lesson we're gonna look at four things how to spot a weaken question what the process is for approaching one and during the course of that process there are a couple of steps that needs a little bit further explanation so when we go to evaluate arguments we're gonna need reasoning structures that's how does the argument built and then we're gonna trap answer patterns when we're going to eliminate wrong answer choices and so we'll make sure to cover both of those things specifically the way you identify that you're on a weakened question is in the language of the question stem itself the question stem is what sets the question type so we're looking for language that suggests that we're being asked to weaken the argument and in this case which one of the following if true most seriously weakens the argument above well the language that says most weakens is the clue that we're looking at a weakened question and that word most is a really common word and it becomes important because what we're looking for is the answer that's going to have the strongest impact the one that actually weakens the argument the most answer choices that are too weak can often get themselves into trouble and we're gonna see that as we look at some of the trap answer patterns in this example which one of the following if true casts the most doubt on the argument above well casting doubt represents calling it into question or weakening it so that would tell us that we're looking at a weakened question here in this example which one of the following if true most seriously undermines the argument above and it's the words most undermines that tells us that we're looking at a weaken question in this one so we really want to be looking in the question stem for a language that says undermines weakens casts doubt on those are common language cues that tell us that we're looking at a weaken question now the process that you want to use when approaching a weaken question is going to be the same process as you use whenever you're working on any question in the assumption family so whether that be a sufficient assumption question or a necessary assumption question flaw question strengthen question all of these question types rely on the same process because they're measuring the same thing they're measuring our ability to evaluate arguments from slightly different perspectives the first step that you want to take when working on one of these questions is to find the conclusion of the argument it will always be there it's really important to find that conclusion because that's what we're judging then you need to find the evidence for why it's true and the evidence will always be such that they don't quite prove the conclusion and when we go to evaluate arguments what we're looking for is the space between the evidence and the conclusion which that means is that we're gonna concede the evidence we grant that the evidence is true but what we'll ask is whether or not the conclusion that has to be true even if the evidence is right so we're gonna concede the evidence challenged the conclusion and that is essentially evaluating the argument if we can come up with a reason why the conclusion doesn't have to be true even though the evidence is then we can judge the argument as being bad and use that understanding to identify the gap in the reasoning use that gap to anticipate what the answer could sound like and then work through the answer choice is either gonna try to pair up that anticipation with an answer choice or use trap answer patterns to get rid of wrong answer choices so the reasoning tricks that we need to pay most attention to on weaken questions is comparison comparisons typically work either by comparing two different things at a point in time let's say the population of city a versus the population of City B or it'll work by comparing a thing at two different points in time so let's say the population of City a 10 years ago versus the population of City a today if we can identify these comparisons within the reasoning structure within the argument itself it'll give us a better chance at finding what the gap in the argument looks like then we can use that gap to anticipate what an answer would sound like and go through the choices so in this example we're gonna go ahead and see how a comparison can play out go ahead give this question a try see if you can find an answer that you like it when you're ready to continue go ahead and play again and we'll work it through together all right welcome back so in this question we have an argument and we're trying to figure out what's the conclusion so remember step one is fine that conclusion we're gonna look for language indicators words along the way that helped us identify conclusions one of the language cues that we want to learn is the word but it's a pivot pivots don't help us identify conclusions but they do help us identify the argument it's being presented separating the author's point in this case the travel industry consultant versus an opposing point so whatever the other airlines might be doing that word but tells us that we're moving away from an opposing argument and towards the author's argument and it was in the author's argument is where we're expecting to find the conclusion as we keep going a little bit further we see this word because now because it gives us evidence so the evidence is that those travelers purchase 80% of all airline tickets who are those travelers right they're referring back to this previous group who are the previous group well the leisure travel is right before the word because so we know that the last closet is a premise and if we keep looking we might even see this word should they should they should instead focus on the comfort of leisure travel right that's a recommendation and when you see the word should it's a pretty good bet that that's gonna be the conclusion not guaranteed because you might have more than one claim with the word should but if none of the other claims have the word should it's really common that that is the conclusion it's a recommendation so the conclusion of the argument is that they should instead focus on the comfort of leisure travelers well who are they well today is referring back to the previous clause where we're talking about Airlines so notice that semicolon in the middle of that sentence that tells us that there's a relationship between the two statements so what comes before this am i : and will come after it they're related to each other but if we think about the meaning of each statement it's not like that one supports the other in fact it's more of a we're doing too much of this and not enough of that or the airlines are over concerned about the comfort of passengers flying on business and should be focusing more on the comfort of leisure travelers so the whole thing represents the conclusion and so why are they saying that airlines to be focused more on leisure travelers well when leisure travelers book 80% of all airline tickets right so if you think about a map on an airplane you know that the first few rows are safe for business class the back of the plane is safer for the main cabin right and there's a lot more seats in the back area than in the front area right so 80% of tickets are being sold in the main cabin only 20% of tickets are being sold in business class so what's the stuff before the word but doing in this case well several airlines are increasing elbow room and leg room and business class because surveys show that business travellers value additional space more than say better meals and hopefully as we read through that that word because catches your attention it gives us an organizational relationship between the the two ideas in the first sentence so that what comes after the word because is the evidence for why what came before it is true we actually haven't an opposing argument here with an opposing premise and an opposing conclusion so now that we have the argument dissected need to figure out what's what's wrong with them you need to evaluate it every single argument in the Assumption family is going to be invalid means the conclusion will not follow from the evidence and if we can figure out why then we'll have the the key to finding the right answer so why might it be the case that this advice that the travel industry consultant is giving may not be the best is it possible for some way or another that actually it is a good idea to be focused on the business travelers so let's take this example here where we've got 10 tickets being sold in business class and 40 tickets being sold in the main cabin that's 80% of all tickets being sold to leisure travelers but does that really mean that we should be focused on them if we think about it from the perspective of an airline right this isn't a recommendation for what the airline should be doing so we probably want to think about it from their perspective airlines are designed to make money does focusing on the leisure travelers make financial sense maybe there's a lot more of them but maybe not and if we can come up with a way in which it doesn't make financial sense or sense for some other reason that's all we need to undermine this argument since the main goal of most companies is to make money right we might consider that helping the most number of people may not be the airline's objective their goal right they may have another goal in mind if the goal was to help as many people as possible then maybe we would want the airlines to be focused on better serving the leisure travelers but if the airline's goal isn't to help the most number of people up as possible and maybe instead is to maximize profits then we may be making a different decision it kind of depends right now we have no way of knowing where more revenue or more profit is coming from is is there more profit coming from the business class travelers or is it more profit coming from the main cabin travelers we don't actually know and if the tickets for business class are very very very expensive let's say $5,000 whereas them tickets for the leisure travelers are more like a hundred dollars then we could imagine a scenario in which the revenue coming in off the business class kept part of the cabin actually brings in more money than the revenue coming in off of the main cabin okay this might be a little extreme but it's definitely within the world of possible and if this were true then maybe we would want to be focused on providing the best possible service for those business class travelers it might be a lot easier to provide world-famous service for ten people than it is to provide world-class service for forty so now that we understand that there might be a financial incentive to be focused on the business class travelers we should be other under- argument simply by saying something along the lines of yeah if the revenue coming in off for the business part of the cabin is greater than the revenue coming off the main part of the cabin then the recommendation that airlines should be focused on leisure travelers may not be a good one now let's go to the answer choices and take a look ants twist aces at business travelers often make travel decisions based on whether they feel given airline values to business so this does seem to suggest that the business travelers might be pissed if the if the quality of the service goes down right they're looking to make sure that they're well taken care of and if we're not taking care of them or the airlines are not maybe they'll go somewhere else this could call him to question the conclusion but the problem with it is is it's not quite strong enough there's a couple of places of weakness here first off if you look at the beginning of the answer just as a business travelers often make travel decisions so how often is often a few times a couple of times the minimum associated with often isn't very high it's like a some statement so just because some business travelers make such decisions doesn't mean that this is going to be enough of them for us to be really focused on them and then you know secondarily just because they're gonna make decisions based on whether they feel that a given airline value is their business they may still feel that way even if the airline is focused on giving better experiences for leisure travelers right they may already meet that minimum threshold that business travelers need and any additional effort should actually maybe go into the leisure travelers so there's a weakness here in answer choice a that we can use to get rid of it answered as B says that some airlines have indicated that they will undertake alterations in the seating space throughout the entire passenger area of their planes in the near future so there's a couple of things going on with this answer choice but the first thing is that it's talking about these alterations being made throughout the entire passenger area the conclusion was to pay less attention to the business class people and more more attention to the leisure travelers maybe that's what's happening in this answer choice or maybe not like it could be the case that if they're making alterations that they're going to reduce the quality of care for the leisure travelers and increase the quality of care for the business travelers but it could be the other way around and without knowing that we can't really use this argue this answer choice to undermine the conclusion because they could be making changes in a way that is exactly in line with the conclusion so we're gonna call this one two-week let's get rid of venture twist B answer choice C says that sleeping in comfort during long flights is not the primary concern of leisure travelers well it's not the primary concern of leisure travelers but it may still be a very important consideration furthermore sleeping in comfort is not necessarily the same as the comfort of leisure travelers in general and it may be the case that Tracy is simply talking about just one aspect of comfort whereas the argument is talking about focusing on the comfort of leisure travelers in general but the bigger point is that this we're not talking about a primary concern or even if it's not the primary concern it may still be a very major concern and so this would not weaken the argument answer choice D says that a far greater proportion of an airline's revenues is derived from business travelers than from leisure travelers this kind of gives us a reason to think that the business travelers are maybe really important maybe we shouldn't be focused on the leisure travelers since a far greater proportion of revenues is coming from the business travelers suggests that maybe we should be actually focused on the business travelers this this this seems to provide a reason to undermine the argument notice that this next race is comparing business travelers with leisure travelers and giving us a way to judge the relative significance of something for both this is the only answer choice that compares business travelers with leisure travelers and notice that the nature of the answer trace itself is a comparison just like the argument is focused on comparing where the airline's should be focused answer choice D is comparing the relative significance of each of these two travel groups in proportion to the airline's revenues so this looks like a good contender let's hold on to D answer choice D says that most leisure travelers buy airline tickets only when fares are dis candid so the beginning of the set choice is not terrible it's actually stronger than some of the other answer choices most leisure travelers not all but definitely most they buy airline tickets only when fares are discounted and the question that pops into my mind is why why are they buying tickets only when fares are discounted if they're buying fares at discounted prices because they don't care about comfort they just want to get from point A to point B and the most important thing is to them is price then that would undermine the argument directive to focus on providing more comfort for these leisure travelers but if it turns out that the reason why leisure travelers aren't willing to spend money on on flights is because the seats themselves are very very uncomfortable that actually maybe indicates that there's a possibility we can increase where the airlines could increase the comfort of the of those seats and maybe that would actually be really good for their bottom line they could charge more money the leisure travelers would now pay more money because they finally have a decent seat because it could go either way anti-choice easily too weak to impact argument and so that leaves us with that stress D as the right answer so let's look at another example then this one is going to involve causation causation is a very important reasoning structure when it comes to weaken questions and strengthen questions and paradox questions so causation is gonna be really important that you understand causation is a very strong type of relationship a causes B causation is really hard to prove right you can get pretty close to statistical significance and correlate to events as being so closely connected that it's likely that one of them caused the other but it's gonna be really hard to prove causation on the LSAT and so you want to look out for conclusions that deal with causal relationships because when they start asserting a causal conclusion that's a really good opportunity to attack the argument and when you go to weaken an argument that involves a cause of conclusion we're gonna resort to some pretty tried-and-true tactics the idea of providing an alternative cause all right so that if maybe it's something else that is causing the thing to occur or provide an example of the presumed cause without the presumed effect so if we can find an example of the causal relationship what's the presumed cause and what's the presumed effect and then find those terms in another situation where we have the cause occurring but the effect is not occurring looking that weakens the idea that this thing causes that thing to occur and if we can find an example of having effect without the cause that would do the same so we're either gonna be trying to attack the correlation between the two events or we looking to provide an alternative cause in the right answer so here's another example give this one a try on your own hit pause and when you're ready to work this one three together hit play again and we'll do it together alright welcome back so in this one we're looking for the conclusion again remember the first step in our process when we're working on weaken questions is to find the conclusion of the argument but as we look through this argument one of the first structures that we see is this idea of first second and third so we know that these last three sentences the the nature of the way in which they begin suggests that these are not supporting each other so what that means the last three sentences are premises so the conclusions got to be somewhere above that if we look at the sentence right before we see this word however and that however is very much like a pivot it's harder to spot this one because it doesn't begin the sentence it's kind of crammed in the middle but however is the pivot it tells us that we're moving in a way from an opposing point towards the author's point we've got two sentences here that the claim that comes before the word however then the claim that comes after well because we know that however is pivoting towards the author's view we know that the second sentence here is the conclusion of the argument and that the first sentence before that is the opposing point in some countries certain produce is routinely irradiated with gamma rays in order to extend shelf life that's what others are doing this one says that there are good reasons to avoid arranging food it's bad we stay away from it so if we look at the conclusion there are good reasons to avoid irradiated foods does that follow from the evidence that the irradiated foods are exposed to radioactive substances that produce the gamma rays the radiation can reduce the vitamin content of fresh foods leaving behind a harmful chemical residues and finally that irradiation spawns unique radio lytic products that cause serious health problems including cancer in this case there is causation in the evidence so it's not like they're mistaking a correlation for cause-and-effect relationship if we look at that third point irradiation spawns unique radio lytic products that cause serious health problems right there's a causal relationship in that premise if we look at the first one they are exposed to the radioactive substances that produce the gamma rays right so the radioactive substances produce gamma rays and these folks are being exposed to them there is definitely a causal nature in their second irradiation can reduce the vitamin content of fresh foods leaving behind a harmful chemical residues can reduce suggests the causal relationship that it has the power to impact it so the evidence already involves some nature of causation and the conclusion is basically saying yeah that stuff is all real bad right there are good reasons to avoid irradiated food irradiated foods will do those things to you to weaken this argument if we could find something else that was causing the bad things to happen if we could find irradiated foods that weren't bad for you or if we could find the foods that were bad for you but that weren't Iranian maybe that would work as well so we want to be thinking about alternative cause cause without effect and effect without cause what's strange in this question is that four of the answer choices are gonna weaken the argument we see more accept questions in strengthen and weaken in paradox particularly in paradox questions because there's a wide range of ways in which you could impact argument because they're asking for most weakens or most supports all right because they're asking for most weakens the argument there's lots of ways you could weaken an argument that's gonna create more opportunities make it a little bit harder to predict what the right answer is gonna say leading to more accept questions within this particular question type so the question stem so that each of the following is true weakens the consumer advocates argument except that means that four of these answer traces are gonna weaken the consumer advocates argument the one that doesn't is our answer answer choice a says that unique radiologic products have seldom been found in any aerated food so we have these radiologic products and they're seldom found in any radiates irradiated food so we've got the the cause present the irradiated food right but we don't have the effect which is these radio lytic products cause without effect let's get rid of a trace a this is actually gonna weaken the argument answer is B says that cancer and other serious health problems have many causes that are unrelated to radioactive substance and gamma rays well cancer has many causes that unrelated to radioactive substances at first glance this looks like this might be weakening the argument like maybe bringing a possible alternative causes but but when you bring up an alternative cause it should be a replacement to the one that was being suggested it shouldn't be an additional one and so be Wow it is bringing up other things that cause cancer it's not saying that they might be the real cause and it's not a radiation answer choice B is suggesting that there are things unrelated to radioactive substances that cause cancer so this does bring up alternative cause but it doesn't it's not strong enough to rule out the fact that irradiated food also causes cancer right these are other things that are causing cancer but saying that other things cause cancer doesn't actually go so far as saying that this doesn't so this one feels a little weak let's a hold on that trippy answer choice C says a study showed that irradiation leaves the vitamin content virtually all fruits and vegetables unchanged so a really important characteristic give this answer choice is the degree by being strong enough to be discussing all fruits and vegetables that's more than what you need to be describing fresh fruits right so the the scope of answer I see is big enough it undermines the second point in the argument and so let's go ahead and get rid of any trace C intrest D says at the amount of harmful chemicals found in radiant foods is less than the amount that occurs naturally in most kinds of food so T's actually undermining the argument as well it's saying that these harmful chemicals really well there's not that many of them right so even if they're there it's less than what we're typically exposed to making it less likely that we should be avoiding irradiation because the negative things that it's spinning off aren't very significant there's not much of them this weakens the argument it's going to get rid of D e says that a study showed that the cancer rate is no higher among people who eat irradiated food then among those who do not so if if irradiated food was really causing problems we would expect it to be higher for those people but it's not and this is like cause without effect let's go ahead and get rid of an choice e weakens the argument and that leaves us with a choice B is the right answer on weaking questions it's actually a really common characteristic that the right answer is new information something that wasn't involved in the argument right because we're looking to have that impact so you want to give a little bit more consideration to answer traces that you think might be out of scope don't you need a little less hasty to get rid of them and think about whether or not they might be relevant in some way that you didn't consider initially and then when it comes to logic we want to look out French kisses that are doing the opposite of what we want so if we're being asked to weaken the argument look out for X traces that I can strengthen the argument that's gonna be more tempting because they're relevant that's gonna use the right kinds of words but it'll be wrong because it's moving the wrong argument in the wrong direction irrelevant relationships are ones in which the and stress builds the comparison when we're dealing with conditional logic or causation when we're dealing with conditional logic whenever you see a switch in the reasoning structure in the answer choice that's a good sign that you might be dealing with in a relevant relationship or if the answer is just building a relationship between two randomly grabbed terms from within the argument like they're there so they're it's not gonna be out of scope it'll be a little harder to get rid of it but that particular relationship might not have any impact on the argument term shifts are when the when one of the terms has been tweaked in such a way that it's no longer quite good enough maybe it's too weak now so before we were talking about all fruits and vegetables now we're talking about fresh fruits and vegetables so is there an overlap I look out for them to potentially a shift the the term and make it such that they're either talking about something too small in the answer choice or maybe too big in the stimulus and then when it comes to degree you want to be on the lookout fractures that are simply too weak right stronger is gonna be preferred to weaker went on when you're on tweaking questions look out for areas of weakness within the choice because those are be which you can make quicker eliminations don't start by eliminating X traces that are wrong because of degree I would definitely start by trying to get rid of anything as out of scope first and kind of working my way from left to right using scope first then logic and then degree I find that if you just eliminate based off a degree on that first pass it really should be more of a tiebreaker then it then an absolute rule so in summary for this lesson you spot a we can with language in the question stem that gives you something like weakens undermines calls into question casts doubt and then be on the lookout for those accept questions because we're here to see a lot of them the reasoning structures in terms of the frequency and conditional logic almost entirely disappears when you're working on weaken questions and primarily you're dealing with comparison and causation the trap answers you want to be on the lookout for how to scope those that do the opposite or strengthening the argument those aren't having enough impact so they're too weak to impact argument and then irrelevant relationships in terms if T so that's it for today's lesson on weekend questions I invite you to check out these other lessons or visit us today that LSAT lab com you