Students struggle a lot with logic games when first starting to study for the LSAT. As if learning to play a musical instrument, you've got to build habits. Eventually those habits become instincts and you become better at the skill. Logic games are likely the most learnable section on the exam.
One habit is to always note when a variable appears more than once in a set of rule statements. When this happens, you should never look at this as simply multiple rules within the set. Instead, you should try to figure out how those multiple rules further limit that variable.
As an example, imagine you are told that 6 people are standing in a line, numbered 1-6 with 1 at the front and 6 in the back.
A is not in spot 1 or 2
C is standing ahead of B.
D is either in the front or the back of the line.
A is standing behind B.
You might first notice that D is limited to 2 spots:
D _ _ _ _ _
or
_ _ _ _ _ D
But it's A that I want to focus on here since A is repeated. You shouldn't look at these rules and think of the two rules with A as separate rules; together they are going to combine to limit A quite a lot.
For example, in the board with D in slot 1, A can't be in 2. But we also know that A is behind B and that B is behind C. So, not only is A not in 2, but A can't be in 3 either (since A must be behind both B and C.)
Turns out from these rules, with D in 1, there are only three possibilities for A:
D _ _ A _ _
D _ _ _ A _
D _ _ _ _ A
And if D is in the back of the line, A has those same limitations. A can never be in 1 or 2. And, again, both B and C are ahead of A.
_ _ A _ _ D
_ _ _ A _ D
_ _ _ _ A D
So, look for those repeat variables! Often times they'll combine to limit the repeating variable in a way that may not be obvious if not combining those rules.
No comments:
Post a Comment