Linear, Grouping, Linear/Grouping, Grinnier/Looping: LSAT Logic Games De-Mystified

Sometimes my LSAT students get a little worried when they realize I don’t believe in classifying logic games.

You see, most test-prep guys pad their LSAT materials by teaching you different question types within a particular section.  So they don’t just teach you about the Logical Analysis section as a whole.  First, they teach you how to classify each logic game you encounter.  This can be a lot more complicated than it sounds—check out this “helpful” chart of the 7 major types (not counting sub-types) from the PowerScore web site:

http://www.powerscore.com/lsat/help/game_types.htm

But that’s not all. Different test-prep companies have different classification systems.  Note Kaplan’s “6 logic game types” near the bottom of this page:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ean=9781419591167&z=y

The fact that different companies use different classification systems that their students eventually come to swear by only proves one thing:

The classification systems are arbitrary.

(But hey, they look complicated and they take an unnecessarily long time to learn, so they’re perfect for the test-prep industry approach to marketing.)

Not only are these classification systems arbitrary, but they can take up significant amounts of time if you mess them up.  God save you if you start treating a “circular linearity” problem as a “linear circularity” problem, or whatever, because the approach to each problem is based on your analysis of the problem’s type.  This is one of the dangers in relying on a third-party classification system.  Instead, you should rely on the LSAT’s own rules and patterns.