Why "Assumption Required?"

Some people are very curious about our name, Assumption Required. The name comes from the wording of a very common question type on the LSAT. This question type is particularly interesting for two reasons.

First, while students tend to understand the general idea of an "assumption" pretty easily, most students have a great deal of trouble understanding what it means to be an assumption that is "required" for the argument to be true. Once students develop a strong understanding of the "required" part of the question, several very tempting wrong answer choices become obvious and scores go up. 

The other reason that I find this question type interesting is that certain major test preparation companies do NOT teach the difference between this question type another related question type, the "assumption sufficient" question. In a discussion that I had with a representative of one major company, I asked why the company did not teach students about this critical difference. He responded by saying that they just didn't quite trust their students with the concept. In other words, they would rather have their students miss questions than to teach them this difficult concept.

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