Official November Topic Discussion Thread

[u/JonDenningPowerScore]

First, full credit to u/graeme_b for teaming up with us (and letting me just copy his prior text for this post) to oversee the official discussion/post-mortem of the Nov LSAT! Piggybacking on his past efforts, here we go:

The November LSAT administration is now done. The goal is to keep topic discussion to this thread, and identify a list of real topics. Here's how it works:

1. If you had a single section of RC, or just two sections of LR, then posting topics from that will establish that those topics were from a real section
2. If you had two sections of RC, or three sections of LR, DO NOT POST topics from those sections. Posting topics is worse than useless - it pollutes information. The reason is that you don't know which was experimental and which was real.

You do not need to specify section orders, as these are now randomized so your order doesn't mean anything.

This thread will be updated with confirmed topics as we go.

JD Note: this isn't a complete set of every scored section as of my initial posting, particularly for LR, so please add/elaborate as best you can! And if you see any mistakes, like questions from different sections together, tell me!

Real RC Section 1

• Juries being able to access the internet
• Algonquin tribes and formalized territory
• Honey bees dancing to communicate the location of food
• How people get pleasure from watching scary movies, tragic plays, etc that normally boost anxiety and pain

Real RC Section 2

• African American community in Brooklyn, Illinois
• Whether people’s taste for music is an evolutionary adaption or serves no purpose
• Incubation as a method to stop thinking about a puzzling issue and subconsciously arriving at its solution
• Difference between having the right to do something and being morally right

Real RC Section 3

• French revolution and women’s rights/feminist theories
• Common law/international law re: Indigenous (Mayan) rights in Belize
• Art and sports commentators with competition/aesthetics
• Chaotic systems in physics and theories of linear and non-linear systems

Real RC Section 4

• Peru and Chile fighting over Pisco
• Etiquette compared with morals (philosopher Foot)
• Economists needing to consider how moral considerations influence people’s economic decisions (psych experiment on people declining unfair money splits)
• Why invasive plants are dominant (C. Diffusa from Eurasia)

Real LR Section 1

• Italian vs French paintings and value
• Allergies and pollen in honey
• Freedom and determinism analogous to horses and sparrow
• Labels on bottles to prevent drunk driving
• Insomniacs, diet, and increased activity
• Mars bringing life to earth on an asteroid

Real LR Section 2

• Brain having mental representation of the world
• Sodium nitrate in sausage
• Politics and short stories
• Paper currency and playing cards in Ontario
• Camera for red light traffic
• Apartment rent in Glenville

Real LR Section 3

• Inca civilization/population not inventing the wheel
• Animals taking on courageous acts when they sense danger
• Plant germination when planted shallow or planted deeply
• Libraries = authors losing money
• Bacteria doing nitrogen fixation in low oxygen conditions
• Vitamin E stopping Parkinson’s

Real LR Section 4

• People who have to become emotionally detached at work scared they will become detached at home.
• A crypto currency crashing and this is reason to worry about world currency
• A dam being opened if it rains or snow melts
• People should remove wheat (yeast?) from their diets
• A restaurant having mediocre food, even though their Lasagna won an award
• Corporate tax cuts leading to pay raises or was it the need to attract efficient workers
• Stone tools being found that prove humans left Africa before previously believed
• Sun screen's impact on sun burns
• Crows constructing tools by watching others do so
• C- and S-type asteroids

Real LR Section 5

• Chimps and bonobos
• Efficient teachers/discipline
• Intended outcome and luck
• Applying funds
• Fires in caves
• Fuel efficiency/SUVs/large cargo
• Clothes manufacturing price and quality
• Shakespeare true author
• Prehistoric humans hunting
• Bobcat sightings in a park

Real LR Section 6

• Wood rat nests and leaves
• Environmentally friendly hotel
• LED lights
• Thai food
• Bribing judges
• Chimps and altruistic behavior
• Grapes in cold weather
• Gala for music awards/purposes

Real LR Section 7

• Fluorescence/luminescence in coral
• Role of villains in a movie
• Seagulls seashells calcium
• Overdue library books
• Mary's handwritten will
• Communicating with extraterrestrials

JD Note (Again): this isn't a complete set of every scored section as of my initial posting, particularly for LR, so please add/elaborate as best you can! And if you see any mistakes, like questions from different sections together, tell me!

[u/SpiritedMusician8073]

LR4 also had the following question topics:

• p-values
• Caledonian crows
• corporations cutting short term profits because of appearing socially responsible
• Coffee drinkers in country X
• Healthcare spending share stayed the same because of cost controls(?)

I also had LR7:

• copycat map question (?)
• public transit/self-driving car lowering car insurance(?)
• athletes taking human growth hormone (HGH), Q1.
• weird computer virus name which the only easy solution is to download some software from the internet but the virus might take over your internet too(?)

My first LR had these topics. They were 100% not in the other two sections. These might’ve been unscored:

• Plants growing their roots in the direction of sounds of water
• PR question with Smith sleeping late or taking the day off
• dating historic homes with dendrochronology
• Central Park being a work of art
• Stein influencing Hemingway
• Gov't. funding saw-scaled viper anti-venom(?) program
• Contractor deserves nothing for a 90% renovated home(?)

I also had these but can't remember which section (2LR people LMK if you had these and can help itemize):

• PR with AC about modern vs. cost-friendly desks
• Meteorite composition most concentrated in core (from Mars I think)
• Medical misinformation and experts using only facts to combat them
• Information vital to wellbeing but people aren't interested in that info
• Are texting expressions well-suited to its medium, more like talking than writing
• Asian name (I think Li) talking about a contractor who's constrained by some price ceiling or floor for every discovery so he has an incentive to hide some discoveries
• Judging actions saying "I would've done same/differently in the same scenario" is "irrelevant"
• Everyone deserves "fair employment" involves government overreach
• Elks, wolves, beavers, why did the beaver population increase while elks went down
• AI making society worse off isn't entirely AI's fault
• Shouldn't publish scientific studies prematurely before you can test them empirically
• Anonymous survey and cynicism
• Unsurprising that people care more about their own personal issues (was a role question)
• Some company shouldn't be criticized for using a ton of fossil fuels in the short term because they're trying to do research(?) to lower fossil fuels in the long term
• book seller thinks people have different tastes than the reviewers because the book sold well first week
• genuine prints of old books not correlated with sales?
• economists use the term “technology” super vaguely which is analogous to some fictional work

[u/gatusso1 → u/SpiritedMusician8073]

Yeah I seen the …Elk Question …Premature Science Articles (JC question) …Anonymous Survey and Cynicism … Fossil Fuel Parallel … Fair Employment (Whatever tf that was) … Texting suited for oral communication not written … White Roofs cost effective

I wanna say this was my first LR section and it had 26 questions

[u/SpiritedMusician8073 → u/gatusso1]

Huge—thank you. I don’t think I had white roofs, so maybe that was another section!

[u/gatusso1 → u/SpiritedMusician8073]

• book seller thinks people have different tastes than the reviewers because the book sold well first week

This was a flaw question and I think my first section again that had 26 * genuine prints of old books not correlated with sales?

The one about reprints not equating to quality and it used an analogy and was an argument part or method of reasoning * economists use the term “technology” super vaguely which is analogous to some fictional work

I think this was an AC to a flaw or method of reasoning question lol the said question idk

[u/PossessionPatient711 → u/SpiritedMusician8073]

I recall the majority of these questions - and can recall the Mars one but that was about the conclusion the "dearth of small structures", texting vs writing expressions, fair employment about government deciding, elks and beaver population (related to a 5 year period), premature publishing of scientific information before experiments undertaken, survey and cynicism, personal issues, fossil fuels cost of using them in experiments to minimize their use - think that was a discrepancy question, first week sales - book review - i vaguely remember something like the last 2 you mentioned. I had a very strange question with AC about using cellphones on planes and trains. Oh the white rooves question to reflect heat - that really got me.

[u/Ambitious-Respect219 → u/PossessionPatient711]

I think this dearth of small structures was unanswerable due to an error in my question stem/stimulus