The Analytical Reasoning section of the LSAT tests you with puzzles or games. These puzzles represent real life situations in which you are not given all facts. Your job is to make certain deductions based on the facts you do have.
This is the first in a series of lesson articles that discuss the basics of the LSAT Analytical Reasoning section. The series includes the following articles:
LSAT Analytical Reasoning
Like the rest of the LSAT, the thinking you use in the Analytical Reasoning section is similar to thinking you will use in your law school career. You must pay careful attention to details. You must be able to understand complicated or formal statements, and then be able to combine them to make further deductions.
Many students are initially intimidated by the Analytical Reasoning section. The tasks the LSAT asks you to do in this section seem unfamiliar compared to Logical Reasoning or Reading Comprehension. After all, you’ve been reading almost your entire life, but you’ve probably spent much less time working out logic puzzles. Don’t be intimidated. Because of its concrete rules, the Analytical Reasoning section is the most straightforward section of the test. With a little practice, these puzzles might even be fun. In fact, after completing this entire TestSherpa course, many TestSherpa students consider this to be their favorite section of the test.
Basic Anatomy of an LSAT Analytical Reasoning Game
The Analytical Reasoning section has some similarities to the Reading Comprehension section. You get one section of the test (unless your Experimental section happens to be Analytical Reasoning) that contains four sets of questions. Each group of four to eight questions relates to a specific puzzle, just as each group of questions in Reading Comprehension relates to a specific reading passage.
Each game or group of questions in the LSAT Analytical Reasoning section has an introduction, a set of rules and then individual questions that relate to that setup.
The following is a typical puzzle found in Analytical Reasoning:
Clarence is organizing his file drawers. He wants to put all of his notes from five economics classes–A, B, C, D, and E–in the chronological order in which he took the classes.
B was the last class he took.
He took class A either immediately before, or immediately after class E.
He did not take class A immediately before or immediately after class C.
He took class C before class E.
Each puzzle starts with an introduction like the one above. This is the basic real life situation addressed in the puzzle. The introduction gives you the basic information you need to consider the problem at hand:
Next come a group of indented rules that govern the game. There are typically between two and seven rules depending on the type and complexity of the puzzle. Some rules are fairly concrete and tell you exactly what to do. For example, “B was the last class he took,” gives you the specific position of the B folder — it comes last. Other rules are less specific or even ambiguous. For example, “He did not take class A immediately before or immediately after class C,” does not tell us specifically where to put file folder A. We will only know where to put folder A if we can deduce something about folder C. These types of rules require you to combine rules and make deductions, which is the object of this section.
Your ability to paraphrase, understand, and manipulate the rules is the key to getting a high score on the Analytical Reasoning section. The questions in this section will test your ability to make deductions based on these rules.
LSAT Analytical Reasoning Questions
Each of the four puzzles in this section contain five to eight questions. Each group of questions includes easy, medium, and difficult questions. Like the other sections of the LSAT, you only get one point per question. So skip around and tackle the easy questions first.
Many questions come with a hypothetical rule. This is a new rule that applies only to the question at hand. For example:
1. If class A was the fourth class that Clarence took, then which one of the following statements must be true?
The new rule, that class A is fourth in the series, only applies to this question. You must analyze the situation based on this new rule to answer the question. But once you’re done with the question, forget all about the new rule. These types of questions are typically phrased with an “if.” You can think of it as an if-then conditional where the test provides the “if” or antecedent, and you provide the “then” or consequent.
Some of the questions do not contain hypothetical rules. You can make deductions and find the answers to these questions based on the initial rules in the puzzle setup. These are usually easy questions. A skilled TestSherpa student would have already made these deductions before even reading the questions.
Some questions may contain complex hypotheticals. That is, there are more rules than just one new rule to “plug in” to the system. For example:
If Clarence took class C first, and class E third, which class did he take fourth?
Question wording is essential in the LSAT Analytical Reasoning section. The Analytical Reasoning section contains specifically worded questions. You must understand exactly what the questions are looking for to succeed. With practice, you will become extremely familiar with each of the question types. Here are some examples:
Which one of the following must be true?
The word “must” means that there are no other possibilities. Given the stated rules and any hypotheticals, one of the answer choices has to follow. This tells you something about the answers: one of the answers has to be true, the other four may or may not be true.
Which on of the following could be true?
The word “could” means that the right answer might be true, but doesn’t have to be true. It is possible, but not necessary. The right answer could be true, which means that the wrong answers must be false.
All of the following statements could be true EXCEPT?
This is the same as asking “which one of the following statements is false?” The right answer cannot be true under any circumstances, so it must be false.
Which one of the following is a complete and accurate list of the places Clarence could put folder A?
This question asks you to list all of the possible places for folder A given the stated rules and hypotheticals. The right answer must contain every single possible place A could show up. If an answer choice contains an order you know is impossible for A, or is missing an order you know could be true, eliminate it.
That concludes our LSAT Analytical Reasoning introduction. The next article in this series will discuss LSAT Logic Games Types.