Law School Discussion

spoiler alert!  I'm taking 50 either tomorrow or Saturday.

Sorry sir! Good luck

Quote from: und3r3stimat3d on June 07, 2007, 10:54:37 PM

Quote from: BearlyLegal on June 07, 2007, 10:51:20 PM

Quote from: und3r3stimat3d on June 07, 2007, 10:49:41 PM

Quote from: BearlyLegal on June 07, 2007, 10:41:22 PM

Was this test's RC like the hardest RC in history, or is it just me?

Hmm... I got the first 2 passages perfect, the third one made 2 dumb mistakes and the fourth one 1 mistake (not dumb, still not sure why it's right). That's about average to a little harder than average for me I'd say. I think I'm the only one in the universe who finds the new RC to be easier than the old RC.

I don't know... maybe it wajs me, I took this tonight, did well on the first two, then skipped to 4, and got bogged down in one or 2 questions that I then invariably got wrong anyway, and completely ran out of time to do any questions on 3.
Nooby mistake on my part, but still. Ouch!

Yeah that fourth one was kind of dense. I actually kind of enjoyed it, though. I was thinking about Jurassic Park the whole time, the part when Jeff Goldblum talks about chaos theory using a drop of water and Ellie's hand (or whatever the paleantologist's name was).

I usually set myself a time limit on passages. After 10 minutes, I move on no matter what. Not to say that it will definitely work for you, but if you're spending too much time on a passage, you're probably going to get the answers wrong anyway since it's not coming to you immediately.

This is true. I lost track of time on it. I was also using a badly photocopied version of the test, so the stimulus was on the opposite side of the page from the questions, and skimming it took forever; but that's just an excuse. Realistically, I just had serious trouble figuring out if that weird water effect they talked about was a metaphor for a scientific phenomenon or if it was in itself a scientific phenomenon. Yeargh! Damn you Jeff Goldblum!

Haha. I think the quality of copy itself can swing my score a ton. Whenever I use that really bad quality (prep test 50 style) i get a comparatively low score. Sometimes, the quality of the type is fine, but the letters are too small. I do better with this, but not up to my potential.

Quote from: und3r3stimat3d on June 07, 2007, 10:49:41 PM

Quote from: BearlyLegal on June 07, 2007, 10:41:22 PM

Was this test's RC like the hardest RC in history, or is it just me?

Hmm... I got the first 2 passages perfect, the third one made 2 dumb mistakes and the fourth one 1 mistake (not dumb, still not sure why it's right). That's about average to a little harder than average for me I'd say. I think I'm the only one in the universe who finds the new RC to be easier than the old RC.

I don't know... maybe it was me, I took this tonight, did well on the first two, then skipped to 4, and got bogged down in one or 2 questions that I then invariably got wrong anyway, and completely ran out of time to do any questions on 3.
Nooby mistake on my part, but still. Ouch!

Yeah that fourth one was kind of dense. I actually kind of enjoyed it, though. I was thinking about Jurassic Park the whole time, the part when Jeff Goldblum talks about chaos theory using a drop of water and Ellie's hand (or whatever the paleantologist's name was).

I usually set myself a time limit on passages. After 10 minutes, I move on no matter what. Not to say that it will definitely work for you, but if you're spending too much time on a passage, you're probably going to get the answers wrong anyway since it's not coming to you immediately.

Choice A was my second choice when doing this prep test. The reason I didn't chose is it is because C, the right answer, was a much better answer. C, "In the studies that included subjects with insomnia, only subjects without insomnia were significantly affected by doses of melatonin" comes close to proving the argument that melatonin is not proven to be helpful in treating sleep disorders.

Choice A might strengthen the argument, but it doesn't have to. "A weaker correlation between taking melatonin and the inducement of sleep was found in studies that included people with insomnia than in the studies that did not." Take an extreme example: 2 studies each look at 50 people. Study A has 1 person with insomina, study B has 0. If the person in study A with insomnia has no reaction to the drug and everybody else is affected exactly the same way, then the correlation in the study with the insomniac will be weaker than the correlation without the insomniac, thus proving the argument. However, this is not necessarily the case. What if in the study with 1 insomniac, there is an overall weaker correlation between the effectiveness of the drug because those 49 noninsomniacs aren't getting much benefit, but the 1 insomniac is hugely affected by it? Thus, the correlation between sleep will be higher in study B (the one without the insomniac) but we have just DISPROVED that insomniacs are unaffected by the drug. Therefore, answer choice A is not always true.

Sometimes, looking at extreme examples like this can be counterproductive. For this reason, I think it's best just to see that while (A) seems to work well at first, choice (C) is just a more fundamentally sound choice, and thus it's right. However, if you need to go through the question choices in the way described above, and it works for you, God Bless.