Great question ECMH05 - the relationship between necessary and sufficient assumptions can be a difficult one to wrap your brain around! Let's break this question down from the top. Since we're dealing with a Necessary Assumption question, we know we've got to start with the core. Study: people from ...

As this is a conditional question, our first order of business is to draw a new diagram with the condition, and follow the inference chain. The question demands an accurate possible list, so our 4 incorrect answers will be rule violators . Because N is in 5, N is now banned from 4 and 6 (no two cons...

I'll outline Question 1 here, and you can check the other threads for answers to Questions 2-5! Links here: Q2 , Q3 , Q4 , Q5 This is a classic orientation question, which means our plan of attack is to use each rule to knock out rule violators . Our initial diagram with notated rules is here: http&...

Complete and accurate list questions can be a real challenge! This question type is essentially a 'could be true' question - which group could be true (without any additions) for Zone 3. Since one answer could be true, 4 answers must be false. So we want to be focused on finding the four rule violat...

Thank you for clarifying your question! First, let's clear up a significant point from the examples above: in the example where I introduced roses, I did not say that roses were the same thing as "B". It's an entirely separate category, one that partially overlaps A and B. Check out the di...

Very interesting question katherinelx! On inference questions such as this, it's critical to identify what our task is, and zero in on it. We are not being asked simply for something the author would agree with, nor for an idea that matches the main point of the argument. Rather, we are asked to mat...

Our task here is to determine the purpose of a particular sentence - in this case, the final sentence. This requires us to be mindful of the structure of the passage, and understand what the particular sentence means in relation that structure. The final sentence discusses "adjustments". S...

Excellent work eliminating (D). You are absolutely correct that your task is to find something specifically mentioned in the passage, and (D) falls far short of that. Let's take a step back and focus on the process. This is an identification question, so the correct answer will be directly supportab...

Great question Franzi! You've done a lot of great work ferreting out a number of the inferences we can and cannot make. The stimulus is going to be a laundry list of facts, any one of which might support an inference - predicting them all would be exhausting! Rather, we want to diagram the stimulus,...

Our task is to identify the author's primary concern. We're going to be deploying our synthesis skills in full force! In order to do so, let's take a moment to consider the passage map: Paragraph 1: outlines the problem musicologists have had in accessing music of the London Pianoforte school (LPS) ...

Complete and accurate list questions can be tricky, if we're not very clear about what kind of list we are looking for. In this question, our task is to identify the complete and accurate list of all the medicines that can be ranked fifth. In other words, we're looking for a list of EVERY medicine t...

I'm so glad you asked this question soyeonjeon! It brings up a wonderful strategic point about parsing answer choices. But before we get to that, let's break down this question from the top. This is a slightly less common form of an inference question. Our task is to determine which pair of proposal...

Fantastic explanation hyewonkim89! The key to this question lies in understanding that the contrapositive of the biconditional is another biconditional. G(s) <--> H(r) NO G(s) <--> NO H(r) For conditional questions, as always, we want to draw a new diagram to play out the conditional giv...

Good question leejihyungrace! Analyze the argument questions often use abstract or more generic language to describe arguments, and untangling how each relates to the argument is critical. Let's breakdown the stimulus first. squirrels work hard to get sap sap = sugar + water ======> not after the...

ECMH05, I'm so glad that you're thinking about the complex relationship between necessary and sufficient assumptions! It can be a difficult thing to wrap your head around, and it's a critical concept to be comfortable with. First, let's break down that relationship. You seem to be categorizing suffi...

Great question nbayar1212! No, you cannot take the contrapositive of 'most' statements, but let's spend a moment delving into why that is. Mary Adkins recently posted a great blog post outlining the meaning of various quantity terms on the LSAT. http://www.manhattanlsat.com/blog/2013/08/15/those-pes...

An excellent observation! First, I'm so glad you found Mary's blog post - she really lays out the LSAT quantity terms neatly there! And I'd also like to commend you for picking up on the disconnect here. That kind of critical eye for inconsistencies is precisely what you need to foster in order to m...

This question has slightly unusual wording, but in essence it is still a conditional question. When approaching a conditional question, we have to be careful not to over infer, or enact conditionals not given by the question. "Once Rachel has been assigned" is the entirety of the condition...

Very interesting question! The short answer is that these statements are fundamentally the same. If Joe is at higher risk of being hit by an asteroid than Mary, then Joe is more likely to be hit by an asteroid than Mary. However, in order for them to be truly the same, you do have to make absolutely...

Your instincts are correct that for inference questions, such as this one, we want to go back to the passage and ensure that our answer choice is directly supported by the text. This question asks us to infer an appropriate example of a regulatory response. Regulatory responses are discussed in line...