In the first paragraph, the author refers to a highly reputed critic's persistence in believing van Meegeren's forger...

Julie-V on August 2, 2019

Diagramming Parallel Reasoning

Hi LSAT Max, Since these lengthy questions tend to take up some time as they're being answered, I was wondering if you had any effective strategies on how to minimize the time it takes to diagram the stimulus and answer choices. For example, I used to label the premises and conclusion instead of diagramming the whole thing out to save time and space. So if "all dogs are good" was a premise in the stimulus, I would label the sufficient (dogs) as A either above or next to it and do the same with the necessary (good) but with B and diagram it out as "A->B". Any statements after I would do the same process but with C, D, etc. I did this method because I thought seeing the diagrams simplified that way would be easier to work with than making initials for the more descriptive conditions (like how #1 in the practice has the sufficient condition "new play that runs for more than three months" in the stimulus). Then as I would go on and diagram the answer choices, I would still use letter symbols like A, B, and C to better identify if the arguments parallel. I'm not sure if this would be more helpful than harmful as I'm reviewing parallel reasoning questions, so I'd love to get your input and see whether diagramming can be made easier in general. Many thanks in advance for the help!

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Ravi on August 2, 2019

@Julie-V, as long as you're aware of what your variables are representing (A corresponds to "dogs" and B corresponds to "good," etc.), then this system would be fine. It's a good idea to try to reduce the amount you're writing for your diagrams. Also, you may find that for some of the parallel reasoning questions, you don't actually need to diagram.

Does this make sense? Let us know if you have any other questions!

Julie-V on August 3, 2019

It makes perfect sense Ravi, thank you for the input!

Ravi on August 4, 2019

@Julie-V, you're welcome! Let us know if you have any other questions!