Hi Everyone!!. Really think I am starting to get these sufficient assumption questions and thought I would share my thought process for others!!.
Okay here is my thought process " I first start off by reading the question stem. I know that this is a sufficient assumption question so there is going to a gap in the reasoning. I then read the stimulus and find the conclusion and find the evidence for this conclusion. The author is going to come up with a conclusion that is not 100% supported by the facts. I will give the practical example here. Conclusion "This shows that Checkers's motive in refusing to accept the coupons was simply to hurt Marty's Pizza." Now what is the evidence for this
1. Accepting them would have cost Checkers nothing,
2. and would have satisfied those of its potential customers who had purchased the coupon books.
Now when I read this I can immidediatly spot the gap and the gap is with the statement in the conclusion "This shows that checkers motive in refusing was simply to hurt Martys pizza"' Now what I said was that does not show that his motive was to simply hurt Martys there could have been so many other reasons why checkers did not want to accept it maybe he didn't have the staff to make the pizza or something like that. With that in mind I now prephrase.
Prephrase: What helped me was when someone said "the test writers really don't have much room with the answer choice. When I say that they don't have much room I mean that they have to 100% prove the conclusion with the correct answer choice the argument now because 100% logically valid and leaves no wiggle room. so prephrasing becomes easy. So in my prephrase I take the position of Martys Pizza's attorney. Now I have to convince you based solely on the facts given that checkers did this solely to hurt Martys pizza. My rephrase looked like this "any company that can accept a coupon that would not have cost them anything and that would have satisfied those of its potential customers who had purchased the coupon books does so for the sole purpose to hurt that other company"
Then I go looking for the answer and answer "A" "Any company that refuses to accept coupons issued by a competitor when doing so would satisfy some of the company's potential customers is motivated solely by the desire to hurt that competitor." The key words here are Any which means that checkers would fall into that category. The other key word here is Soley which means that there is no other option possible besides just trying to hurt the competitor.
With all that being said B was so tempting "Any company that wishes to hurt a competitor by refusing to accept coupons issued by that competitor will refuse to accept them even when accepting them would cost nothing and would satisfy its potential customers." but after looking at it I was able to see that the relationship was backwards and was the oldest mistake in the book confusing sufficient for necessary.
Final thing that helped me was zooming out to a Birds Eye view and not immideiatly trying to diagram etc. just understand what the conclusion says and what are the facts. and what they want me to do with the question stem.
I don't know if that makes sense you all but it definitely helped me !!! Anyone feel free to correct me or ask for clarification!!
I got this wrong because I thought the right answer would address all the conditional elements in the stimulus. I'm also struggling to determine when to use Lawgic vs trying to solve the problem by reading the passage and picking the one that makes the most sense.
@SaulMcGill Same here! I eliminated (A) during the actual take and BR because I thought it ignored other premises (ones that seemed, arbitrarily, more important to me, e.g. accepting the coupons didn't cost Checker's anything).
I suppose the premises in this stimulus are independently sufficient, so it's not necessarily that all premises are triggered; so long as at least one premise is triggered, the conclusion follows logically.
Hi, I also struggled with this question a lot, and it sent me on a quest to do research and crack the code for this type of question. I also practiced a fair number of 4-star and 5-star questions, and this method seems to work most of the time.
If you’re struggling with this type of question and you’re learning it for the first time, then get into the habit of doing it untimed and, MOST IMPORTANTLY, writing your prephrase. Your prephrase should be in the IF…THEN format, where the IF contains the premises and the THEN contains the author’s conclusion.
I’ll include the exact prephrase I wrote in my notes for this question that helped me get it right without second-guessing any other choices—I hope it helps you:
IF you refuse to accept coupons from a competitor when doing so would cost you nothing and satisfy your potential customers, THEN your motive in doing so is simply to hurt your competitor.
Now, simply look for the answer choice that follows the arrow from P → C and adheres to the same logic, without adding anything foreign or using weird quantifiers. In this instance, A does all of that perfectly. If you compare A to the prephrase, it is almost identical.
With most other questions, the correct answer will usually be very similar and will follow the same logical structure as your prephrase. That’s why getting into the habit of doing this will eventually make it more of an automatic mental process.
@rosasnatalia540338 You want strong language in a sufficient assumption question. The word “solely” is strong enough to 100% guarantee the conclusion. If it had said “sometimes” or used weaker language, it wouldn’t necessarily guarantee the conclusion because Checkers might not be one of those cases.
Correct answers to Sufficient assumption questions will typically carry strong/powerful language! Don't let that deter you from selecting the answer choice. Similar to the approach with RRE and Weaken, Strengthen, and Evaluate. The question stem says "if assumed," so you're safe to assume whatever the answer choice tells you. The task then comes down to applying the facts in the stimulus to the "rule" in the answer choice, and checking if the conclusion would logically follow (i.e., the conclusion must be true if the answer choice was added to the stimulus).
Omg I'm finally understanding "sufficient" when looking at answers! I noticed A vs B that one was flipping which was the sufficient and which was the necessity. yay.
I think this is also the question that made it click for me. I have almost exclusively missed questions due to this. It's a good wake up call to brush up there.
Posting to share my small win.. 4 months ago I got this wrong. Chose E, I do not even know why. 3 months ago I got it wrong and chose B. Today after going through 60% of the curriculum I knew immediately answer A was the correct answer. It is actually the perfect answer.
"Solely" really screwed me up. In retrospect though, the solely is really needed for this to be a proper SA question. Since the rule ensures that the stimulus must end up being true, the solely needs to be there so that the stimulus can conclude beyond reasonable doubt that Checkers was trying to hurt Marty's.
i eliminated A bc of "solely" since i thought that that might be too strong; my train of thought was focused on how we would even know if this was the sole motivation? does the emphasis on the primary motivation not really matter here since the stim says that ultimately checkers acted this way bc their goal was to hurt and we don't really care about other motives? i might be overthinking this but if someone could clarify that would be so great!
The stronger the better for SA questions. You want to guarantee the conclusion, which means making the argument valid. Every argument that you will be given will be questionable in terms of strength, but by adding the answer choice assumption to the argument you will create a bulletproof conclusion that cannot be refuted.
hi! i've been doing lots of practice since this question lol and i think i understand it better. for SA, you want something strong that proves our conclusion. the goal is to trigger something to give us the conclusion we want. the "solely" thing is annoying, since in other questions we may want to stay away from language like that, but it works for SA. if we hold answer choice A to be true, then yes we trigger the conditions for the conclusion in the stimulus to be met! it makes sense for us the have the conclusion that we have in the stimulus.
in ellen cassidy's Loophole, she talks about powerful vs provable questions. strengthen, weaken, and SA are question types were powerful answers are good since they help us reach (or not reach, if it's weaken) a type of conclusion. i hope this is helpful!!!!!!!
the reason why i didnt choose A is because of the word "solely" i thought it was too strong. can strong language be used in a properly inferred question?
I also didn't choose this answer for this question for the same reason. But then I realized that I was forgetting the rules of this question type. With this question type, we can basically assume that the answer choice is true. So this helps confirm the conclusion. We do not need to remove the answer choice because the language is too strong because we are not poking holes in the answer choice itself. We don't need to say, for example, that A cannot be true since it is not supported by the stimulus. This question type wants the answer to support the stimulus, not the stimulus support the answer. So the strong, absolute language in answer A is a good thing. It confirms the conclusion stated in the stimulus completely.
I think in this case, the word "solely" helps the argument. We're trying to connect not accepting the coupons, to the restaurant doing it to hurt the competition. "Solely" in this case can read like "only." So the ONLY reason a restaurant won't take a coupon is to hurt the competition. By saying solely, it removes the possibility that they didn't accept the coupon for a different reason. So if the only reason they won't take a coupon is to hurt the competition, and they did not take the coupon, the must have wanted to hurt the competition.
@AnthonyElHelou The conclusion of the professor's argument is about the motive of Checker's. The motive of a company appears in the necessary condition of Answer choice A and in the sufficient condition of Answer choice B. It's the oldest trick in the book!
@AnthonyElHelou I had this exact toss up with A and B but the explanation and above comment helped. Flipped necessary and sufficient, order is not correct in B.
@AnthonyElHelou I would try writing out the logic of the argument in the same way that the instructor does for PSA questions and for the newspaper column question (it comes right before this one) and doing the same for each of the answer choices! That has helped me get these questions right way more often.
162 comments
some of these just seem like we're literally just rephrasing the premise and conclusion and it weirds me out how simple it seems
You just felt yourself becoming more powerful, which is a great feeling.
You're getting it.
I run the pizza game in this town
💅 Chuck getting his law degree
DEAD
Hi Everyone!!. Really think I am starting to get these sufficient assumption questions and thought I would share my thought process for others!!.
Okay here is my thought process " I first start off by reading the question stem. I know that this is a sufficient assumption question so there is going to a gap in the reasoning. I then read the stimulus and find the conclusion and find the evidence for this conclusion. The author is going to come up with a conclusion that is not 100% supported by the facts. I will give the practical example here. Conclusion "This shows that Checkers's motive in refusing to accept the coupons was simply to hurt Marty's Pizza." Now what is the evidence for this
1. Accepting them would have cost Checkers nothing,
2. and would have satisfied those of its potential customers who had purchased the coupon books.
Now when I read this I can immidediatly spot the gap and the gap is with the statement in the conclusion "This shows that checkers motive in refusing was simply to hurt Martys pizza"' Now what I said was that does not show that his motive was to simply hurt Martys there could have been so many other reasons why checkers did not want to accept it maybe he didn't have the staff to make the pizza or something like that. With that in mind I now prephrase.
Prephrase: What helped me was when someone said "the test writers really don't have much room with the answer choice. When I say that they don't have much room I mean that they have to 100% prove the conclusion with the correct answer choice the argument now because 100% logically valid and leaves no wiggle room. so prephrasing becomes easy. So in my prephrase I take the position of Martys Pizza's attorney. Now I have to convince you based solely on the facts given that checkers did this solely to hurt Martys pizza. My rephrase looked like this "any company that can accept a coupon that would not have cost them anything and that would have satisfied those of its potential customers who had purchased the coupon books does so for the sole purpose to hurt that other company"
Then I go looking for the answer and answer "A" "Any company that refuses to accept coupons issued by a competitor when doing so would satisfy some of the company's potential customers is motivated solely by the desire to hurt that competitor." The key words here are Any which means that checkers would fall into that category. The other key word here is Soley which means that there is no other option possible besides just trying to hurt the competitor.
With all that being said B was so tempting "Any company that wishes to hurt a competitor by refusing to accept coupons issued by that competitor will refuse to accept them even when accepting them would cost nothing and would satisfy its potential customers." but after looking at it I was able to see that the relationship was backwards and was the oldest mistake in the book confusing sufficient for necessary.
Final thing that helped me was zooming out to a Birds Eye view and not immideiatly trying to diagram etc. just understand what the conclusion says and what are the facts. and what they want me to do with the question stem.
I don't know if that makes sense you all but it definitely helped me !!! Anyone feel free to correct me or ask for clarification!!
I got this wrong because I thought the right answer would address all the conditional elements in the stimulus. I'm also struggling to determine when to use Lawgic vs trying to solve the problem by reading the passage and picking the one that makes the most sense.
@SaulMcGill Same here! I eliminated (A) during the actual take and BR because I thought it ignored other premises (ones that seemed, arbitrarily, more important to me, e.g. accepting the coupons didn't cost Checker's anything).
I suppose the premises in this stimulus are independently sufficient, so it's not necessarily that all premises are triggered; so long as at least one premise is triggered, the conclusion follows logically.
Also, love your username ... s'all good man.
Hi, I also struggled with this question a lot, and it sent me on a quest to do research and crack the code for this type of question. I also practiced a fair number of 4-star and 5-star questions, and this method seems to work most of the time.
If you’re struggling with this type of question and you’re learning it for the first time, then get into the habit of doing it untimed and, MOST IMPORTANTLY, writing your prephrase. Your prephrase should be in the IF…THEN format, where the IF contains the premises and the THEN contains the author’s conclusion.
I’ll include the exact prephrase I wrote in my notes for this question that helped me get it right without second-guessing any other choices—I hope it helps you:
IF you refuse to accept coupons from a competitor when doing so would cost you nothing and satisfy your potential customers, THEN your motive in doing so is simply to hurt your competitor.
Now, simply look for the answer choice that follows the arrow from P → C and adheres to the same logic, without adding anything foreign or using weird quantifiers. In this instance, A does all of that perfectly. If you compare A to the prephrase, it is almost identical.
With most other questions, the correct answer will usually be very similar and will follow the same logical structure as your prephrase. That’s why getting into the habit of doing this will eventually make it more of an automatic mental process.
@OmarAlmi goated tactic
@OmarAlmi this is the same method that was taught in a lesson for PSA question types!
The word "solely" threw me off from choosing A and I chose D instead 😩
we are one traumatized group
@rosasnatalia540338 You want strong language in a sufficient assumption question. The word “solely” is strong enough to 100% guarantee the conclusion. If it had said “sometimes” or used weaker language, it wouldn’t necessarily guarantee the conclusion because Checkers might not be one of those cases.
I can feel my brain starting to understand these I might just start crying
I thought the word "solely" in A was too much of an assumption...
Correct answers to Sufficient assumption questions will typically carry strong/powerful language! Don't let that deter you from selecting the answer choice. Similar to the approach with RRE and Weaken, Strengthen, and Evaluate. The question stem says "if assumed," so you're safe to assume whatever the answer choice tells you. The task then comes down to applying the facts in the stimulus to the "rule" in the answer choice, and checking if the conclusion would logically follow (i.e., the conclusion must be true if the answer choice was added to the stimulus).
Is it safe to say B mixes up necessity for sufficiency?
YES!!!
I really thought that the word "Solely" in answer A made it wrong. OOOOOOOOF
same
Same
SAME LOL
same
same
Omg I'm finally understanding "sufficient" when looking at answers! I noticed A vs B that one was flipping which was the sufficient and which was the necessity. yay.
I think this is also the question that made it click for me. I have almost exclusively missed questions due to this. It's a good wake up call to brush up there.
Posting to share my small win.. 4 months ago I got this wrong. Chose E, I do not even know why. 3 months ago I got it wrong and chose B. Today after going through 60% of the curriculum I knew immediately answer A was the correct answer. It is actually the perfect answer.
CONGRATS ICON!
"Solely" really screwed me up. In retrospect though, the solely is really needed for this to be a proper SA question. Since the rule ensures that the stimulus must end up being true, the solely needs to be there so that the stimulus can conclude beyond reasonable doubt that Checkers was trying to hurt Marty's.
@MacSelesnick Same here! I was down to A and B but picked B before picking A UGH
The sheer number of words in these can be daunting.
i eliminated A bc of "solely" since i thought that that might be too strong; my train of thought was focused on how we would even know if this was the sole motivation? does the emphasis on the primary motivation not really matter here since the stim says that ultimately checkers acted this way bc their goal was to hurt and we don't really care about other motives? i might be overthinking this but if someone could clarify that would be so great!
this is what keeps happening to me. I am having an issue distinguishing when language like "solely" is applicable and when it's not
I did the exact same thing!!! Im feeling discouraged overall now because of this
The stronger the better for SA questions. You want to guarantee the conclusion, which means making the argument valid. Every argument that you will be given will be questionable in terms of strength, but by adding the answer choice assumption to the argument you will create a bulletproof conclusion that cannot be refuted.
hi! i've been doing lots of practice since this question lol and i think i understand it better. for SA, you want something strong that proves our conclusion. the goal is to trigger something to give us the conclusion we want. the "solely" thing is annoying, since in other questions we may want to stay away from language like that, but it works for SA. if we hold answer choice A to be true, then yes we trigger the conditions for the conclusion in the stimulus to be met! it makes sense for us the have the conclusion that we have in the stimulus.
in ellen cassidy's Loophole, she talks about powerful vs provable questions. strengthen, weaken, and SA are question types were powerful answers are good since they help us reach (or not reach, if it's weaken) a type of conclusion. i hope this is helpful!!!!!!!
Answer choice A scared me with the word choice "solely"
same!!
the reason why i didnt choose A is because of the word "solely" i thought it was too strong. can strong language be used in a properly inferred question?
I also didn't choose this answer for this question for the same reason. But then I realized that I was forgetting the rules of this question type. With this question type, we can basically assume that the answer choice is true. So this helps confirm the conclusion. We do not need to remove the answer choice because the language is too strong because we are not poking holes in the answer choice itself. We don't need to say, for example, that A cannot be true since it is not supported by the stimulus. This question type wants the answer to support the stimulus, not the stimulus support the answer. So the strong, absolute language in answer A is a good thing. It confirms the conclusion stated in the stimulus completely.
I think in this case, the word "solely" helps the argument. We're trying to connect not accepting the coupons, to the restaurant doing it to hurt the competition. "Solely" in this case can read like "only." So the ONLY reason a restaurant won't take a coupon is to hurt the competition. By saying solely, it removes the possibility that they didn't accept the coupon for a different reason. So if the only reason they won't take a coupon is to hurt the competition, and they did not take the coupon, the must have wanted to hurt the competition.
These are the curve breakers folks lol
some of these answers are written like Mad Libs
what's been helping me with these questions and thinkiing about each sentence very separately and premises are named
Reading these answer options made me want to shoot myself
Still can't see any difference between A and B, like I'm so confused,
@AnthonyElHelou The conclusion of the professor's argument is about the motive of Checker's. The motive of a company appears in the necessary condition of Answer choice A and in the sufficient condition of Answer choice B. It's the oldest trick in the book!
@AnthonyElHelou I had this exact toss up with A and B but the explanation and above comment helped. Flipped necessary and sufficient, order is not correct in B.
@AnthonyElHelou I would try writing out the logic of the argument in the same way that the instructor does for PSA questions and for the newspaper column question (it comes right before this one) and doing the same for each of the answer choices! That has helped me get these questions right way more often.
I got really tripped up by the word "solely" in answer A
Had A and then changed it to B I was confused on how the order of the sentence affected the suff/necessity relationship
I choose B because A seemed too good to be true