Analytical Reasoning

      For this week, I have attended to the analytical reasoning part of the LSAT in preparation for law school. This section of the test has usually 24 problems, and you have to solve them in 35 minutes sharp. For the past year, I have had difficulty in solving this part of the test. It felt like a stunning and indefatigable IQ test always full of surprises no matter how much you put in to overcome the section. I remember the days and nights I invested to go through the problems of the so-called 'The GAMES' also referred to as the analytical reasoning which seemed at least to me not analytic at all. Out of the four forms that they appear in, I was especially weak in "IN AND OUT" part. 
      To explain, 'In and Out' problems tested your speed and agility in picking up raw information and making it into tangible set of data from which you could readily come up with a solution. Describing what the problem was really like, I will briefly go over my study notes for this week. For example, the problem I had trouble with this week was : 
 There are four crayons that Mary bought for his little brother, Pete. The crayons are as follows: A, B, C, D, E, F. The rules are as follows:

 If A is chosen, B cannot be chosen.

 If B is chosen, C is chosen 

 If C is chosen, E cannot be chosen. 

 If F is not chosen, A is chosen 

      Well, as seen from above, they give you these conditions to which you could refer when dealing with a given prompt, or a problem. The problem that I got was, "What is the maximum number of crayons that could be chosen?" I always found out that I somewhat sped up along the way, making foolish mistakes. 
      Thus, when I tried to solve this section of the LSAT, I took a deep breath and concentrated on what I could do to maximize the score that I could possibly get for this section. Then, I persuaded myself the most effectual way to get a high score on the analytical reasoning section was to take account of the conditions carefully at first-hand. Other information in the prompt was deemed not that important to me. Mary could be interchangeably shifted to Tom or even Obama. In other words, other information other than the explicit condition was not necessarily that critical. In fact, I could just scan or skim any way that I pleased. As for this problem, it was a pain in the ass. 
      Every time that I found the expressions 'minimum' or 'maximum', I was in an imminent panic mode, sometimes blurring my memory to the point that I could not even take control of myself. It was true in the real test-taking situation. ( high-stake exams could give you cardiac arrest; disputably) The bottom line, how did I solve this problem? I just did simple math, or arithmetic. Out of the six crayons, I just started circling "A". Accordingly, since A is chosen, I crossed out B automatically. Then, I thought for a moment. If C was chosen, E cannot be chosen. On the other hand, if E was chosen, then C could not be chosen(due to contraposition). I did not need to cross out F because then I would not get the maximum crayons. So confusing and irritating, but what is the conclusion. If you chose A, B does not get chosen, and if you chose either C or E, one of those two(C and E) must be crossed out. Finally, you have to choose D and F to get the maximum number of crayons. Therefore, the aftermath of it all would be: The chosen crayons would be A, C or E, D, and F, making the maximum number of chosen crayons to be FOUR. Boy, that was hard! Maybe easy, I don't know, but what I know for sure is that it is really a BRAIN-TEASER and if you only have 35 minutes to solve 24 problems, it is never easy. Life goes on.