Q22

[pinkdatura]

I find this paragraph is extreme difficulty, especially Q25 Q22. When I first read this passage, I had no idea about fractal nor Koch Curve...it is so intimidating to read how to generate Koch curve and imagine the process.
I hope anyone could help me diagram this passage and tell me exact how much detail I should absorb from this full of terms/detail passage.
Q22 is D out because it doesn't deal with this whole-part similarity relationship? What shall we look for from the 5 choices?

[aileenann]

I can understand why you'd find these intimidating - a lot of people don't like math or science. Try to remember though that these super technical terms are really just placeholders. They are no more conceptually difficult on the LSAT than are political theory and literary criticism.

Second, here's my rundown as far as a diagram. I'd find the following helpful:

Par 1:
Fractals not defined but we know what they look like
Koch curve is a type of fractal
Instructions on how to build a Koch curve

Par 2:
Self similarity
Theory v. computer graphics

Par 3:
ah ha - this looks more like a scale
Are fractals the wave of the future or just fancy computer graphics?
Mathematicians think these are not so useful so far.

Let's now take a look at Q 22. "Self similarity" is defined on lines 21-23, so we should just stick with this. It looks like big and small components, "parents" and "child" as it were, should all look alike. Everything but (D) responds to this. The problem with (D) is that all the children (I am using this to refer to the parts/smaller parts) look like one another, but we don't know if they look like the parent - and so it misses the point, unlike all the other answer choices.

For question 25, I think you should go back and check out par 1 and par 2 in more detail. In particular, we can find textual support for 4/5 of the answer choices. This is basically a find and retrieve mission. Can you take another look at it and tell me how it goes?

Thanks and see you soon!

[AnnaT620]

What question type is this, and what is the takeaway for making sure we get questions like this correct? I can see why D is correct here, having originally picked A (thinking there is not enough repetition between the types), but can see D now that I've re-read. How do you make sure to catch things like this the first time around?

Many thanks
Anna

[Misti Duvall]

I would probably categorize this as an identification question, since it's asking specifically about something stated in the passage. Usually these questions give exact line numbers, but self-similarity is a pretty core concept in this passage and I think fair game for such a specific question.

Whenever I see a concept in a passage that I don't know, but seems important (for ex, it's repeated in different parts of the passage), I highlight where the concept was defined so I can easily go back to it if there's a specific question like this one. If you did that here, a quick check back to the passage for the definition of self-similarity can make eliminating answers A-C and E easier and faster.

Hope this helps!