By referring to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as "purely programmatic" (line 49) in nature, the author mo...

Mehran on November 13, 2017

Hi there, thanks for your post. No, such a sweeping over-generalization is unwarranted. Some such questions will be correctly answered with a choice that includes a quantifier; others will not. It will depend on the specific question.

Samantha-Alexis on April 27, 2019

I am still confused on example question 9 from the strengthen question video. Why it is not answer choice E, instead of D. When negating E, if no one converted, how does that not make the authors argument fall apart?

Victoria on April 28, 2019

Hi @Samantha-Alexis

There are two issues with answer choice E that makes D the stronger answer choice. Firstly, the opposite of "every recipient" would be "not every recipient." It is helpful to refer back to the lesson on quantifiers as you will need to memorize these for the LSAT.
The second issue is that answer choice E is talking about the environmental program advocated by the Earth Association as opposed to the broader environmentalist cause mentioned in the argument's conclusion.

In comparison, if answer choice D is negated, this means that some of those who received To Save the Earth were already committed to the environmentalist cause. The conclusion of this argument is that the Earth Association can claim credit for at least 2,000 conversions in the past month. However, if some of the recipients were already converted to the environmentalist cause, then the Earth Association cannot claim credit for at least 2,000 conversions. In this case, the maximum number of conversions they can claim is 1,999. Therefore, D is the stronger answer choices as, when negated, it negatively impacts the author's ability to logically draw their conclusion.

Hope this helps! Let us know if you have any further questions.

zingzang123 on June 25, 2020

Hi, I hope all is well. Although I can solve strengthening with necessary premises and strengthening with sufficient premises problems quite naturally, it still bothers me that I do not understand the difference between these two types of problems. Could someone please help me clarify this subject? Many thanks!

shunhe on July 3, 2020

Hi @zingzang123,

Thanks for the question! So the way to tell between strengthen with sufficient and strengthen with necessary is to look at what they’re asking you for. For strengthen with necessary premises, the question will be asking some variant of “what IS the argument assuming,” “what does the author presuppose,” etc. Whereas with strengthen with sufficient premise, the format is “out of the answer choices, which one do we have to assume to make the conclusion logically follow?” So not what IS assumed, but what NEEDS to be assumed. That’s the difference between the two. Strengthen with necessary premise you can use the negation technique to find the answer; you can’t do that with strengthen with sufficient premise. Those are some of the main differences between the two.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.

Dave415 on February 27, 2021

What was the "alternate cause" that was ruled out on question 1? I'm a little confused.

Victoria on April 25, 2021

Hi @Dave415,

Happy to help!

The passage concludes that the advertisements must have had an effect on the number of people in the locality who smoke cigarettes because the number of smokers in the locality declined by 3% in the year following the initiation of the advertising campaign.

This is a bit of a stretch. How do we know for sure that the two are related? There are a number of alternate reasons why people in the locality may have quit smoking. For example, we know that the advertisements were funded by increasing the tax paid on cigarettes. Maybe this additional cost became prohibitive for some people, causing them to quit smoking.

Answer choice (D) eliminates this alternate cause because the reduction in price negates the increase in tax. Therefore, the price of cigarettes would remain the same, eliminating the possibility that the increased cost became prohibitive. This strengthens the conclusion that the advertisements caused the reduction in the number of smokers in the locality, making (D) our correct answer.

Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any further questions.

Hyung on March 1, 2023

how to distinguish it's necessary, sufficient, and general strengthen question? Any keywords to indicate the types?

Emil-Kunkin on March 7, 2023

I would shy away from overly relying on keywords as the test makers could frame the idea in several ways, although there are some common indicators. Necessary assumption questions will ask us what the author must believe or what the author must assume. Some commons ways are to ask what the author must assume, what is required, or is necessary.

Sufficient assumption questions ask us what would make the argument correct. Some common terms for this are justify the argument, allows the argument to be properly drawn, validates, or makes the argument follow logically.

Strengthens are just anything that asks us to strengthen or support an argument.