Point at Issue Question #4 Page 617

[Dave Killoran]

Hi John,

Thanks for the reply, and just to reassure you, I'm always listening! I may not necessarily be able to reply immediately, but if a student ever writes anything addressed to me, I will reply to them (and hopefully sooner rather than later). I do think we've gone a bit overboard in discussing this (which applies to both of us ), and so my very strong feeling is that we should table this for a while. Stepping back for a bit can only help, but per your request before doing so I will gladly address the final points you made.

Insofar as the "most" in the question stem is concerned, the case here is the latter of the two, where there is a single answer. If you review my initial comments, you can see I broke that down extensively, and specifically discussed the placement of the "most" and what it modified. It's a very tricky point, and I certainly understand that it might not be immediately clear, but the starting point is to focus on the "most" and how it works. If I were to state the issue in different terms, I'd say that the hedge that LSAC created in this question stem was how certain you can be about their disagreement, not the degrees to which multiple disagreements compete.

In our discussion of what part of Lea's argument that Susan was replying to and whether there is uncertainty over Susan's views on contemporary art as big business, I feel like I've provided a pretty straightforward analysis of why I think that Susan is replying to the second part of what Lea said. I do not believe it's uncertain, and I don't believe that LSAC thinks it's uncertain (which goes hand-in-hand with our question stem discussion). I'll certainly consider different ways to present that argument while we take some time away from this problem, but for now I'll continue to let my initial comments on the issue stand as my statement here. If it helps, though, I did refer this discussion to several of my colleagues just to make sure I wasn't somehow off-base, and the feedback I received was consistent with the views I've outlined. That's certainly not definitive, and I'm not one to let simple numbers dictate truth, but these are LSAT experts with deep experience in the test and the ways in which LSAC presents ideas. That just reaffirmed my comfort with the statements here and in the book.

Ok, although I'm sure we both want to keep going back in on this, why don't we both take a few weeks off from this. I think we're mostly repeating ourselves now, and the most productive approach is to move on to some other topics for a bit. We can always pick this back up later if needed but I think a break would help.

Thanks very much, and equally important, thanks again for the lively debate!

[johnawysham]

Dave,

Thank you very much for your thoughts, time and cordial responses. Best wishes. John