- Fri Aug 25, 2017 10:32 pm
#38843
Hey lathlee, sorry to take so long to get back to you on this thread. While there is conditional reasoning all around us, every day, in ordinary conversations and the books and articles we read, I would caution you against seeking to always put these claims into diagrams like you would on the LSAT. The LSAT is a very carefully crafted test, and the use of language in it is very particular, designed as it is to test our use of logical reasoning.
While we might be able to take some of those statements from outside the LSAT and convert them into conditional diagrams, we would run a great risk of causing more confusion than clarity, because these statements frequently do not resemble the kinds of claims found on the test, which have been carefully crafted and vetted by skilled logicians. It's great that you are expanding your practice to try to always be thinking about logic all around you, so that you are building your LSAT muscles even when you are not looking at your study materials. However, when it comes to dissecting actual conditional reasoning, it would be best to limit yourself to the text of official, licensed questions and the drills you'll find in your study materials that are based in large part on the same sorts of statements found in those official questions. That way, you won't waste time and effort on diagramming statement that are unlike those you really need to be working on, and you won't cause yourself unwanted confusion in the process.
We often get questions from students about unofficial, simulated LSAT questions written by some other test prep companies that are meant to supplement the official questions. Those questions are often, frankly, lousy, in that they are not well written to the standards that LSAC demands of their materials. We consistently (politely) refuse to answer those questions, because we think students should stay far, far away from them due to their lack of rigor and their general uselessness. While your questions are not based on those unofficial, simulated LSAT materials, the idea remains the same - it would probably be best if we left them out of our analysis in this forum.
There are plenty of official questions out there that are worth studying, so limit yourself to those for the bulk of your studies and for this forum. However, DO keep on looking for conditional reasoning, causal arguments, formal logic, arguments by analogy, flaws in the reasoning, and more in everything that you read and hear around you! Building that habit of analyzing logic, all the time, will do you well on this test and as a law student and, ultimately, as a lawyer.
Thanks for your patience. Keep up the good work!
Adam M. Tyson
PowerScore LSAT, GRE, ACT and SAT Instructor
Follow me on Twitter at
https://twitter.com/LSATadam