Self-study
Support Some of the world’s most beautiful cats are Persian cats. ████████ ██ ████ ██ ████████████ ████ ███ ███████ ████ ███ ████████ ███ ███████ ████ ███ ██████████ ███████████
Stimulus Breakdown
The stimulus starts with a "some" statement. Some of the world's most beautiful cats are Persian cats:
beautiful cats ←s→ Persian cats
The next sentence gives us a conditional statement. All Persian cats are pompous:
Persian cat → pompous
The last sentence gives us another conditional statement. Pompous cats are invariably (i.e., all) irritating:
pompous → irritating
Notable Inferences
The stimulus doesn't actually present us with a conclusion of its own, just with premises we can use to draw our own inferences. We have one "some" statement: some of the world's most beautiful cats are Persian cats. We also have two conditional statements: all Persian cats are pompous and all pompous cats are irritating. We can chain all these claims up to yield a few inferences: some of the world's most beautiful cats are pompous; some of the world's most beautiful cats are irritating; and all Persian cats are irritating.
beautiful cats ←s→ Persian cat → pompous → irritating
_____
beautiful cats ←s→ pompous
beautiful cats ←s→ irritating
Persian cat → irritating
For this question, we're looking for four statements that must be true, and one that is not required by the stimulus. We can expect to see four variants of the inferences we've made above.
14.
If the statements above are █████ ████ ██ ███ █████████ ████ ████ ██ ████ ██ ███ █████ ██ ████ ███████
a
Some of the █████████ ████ █████████ ████ ███ ███████████
This translates to:
beautiful cats ←s→ irritating
That's one of the inferences we drew from the stimulus, so this must be true. This isn't the answer choice we're looking for.
b
Some irritating cats ███ █████ ███ █████████ ████ █████████ █████
This translates to:
irritating ←s→ beautiful cats
Remember that "some" statements can be read both ways. This is just a restatement of the inference we made that some of the world's most beautiful cats are irritating. So this must be true, and isn't the answer choice we're looking for.
c
Any cat that ██ ███ ██████████ ██ ███ █ ███████ ████
This may seem counterintuitive, but it must be true. It translates to:
/irritating → /Persian cat
Notice that this is just the contrapositive of one of the inferences we drew, that all Persian cats are irritating:
Persian cat → irritating
Since this is just a restatement of one of our inferences, it must be true. This isn't the answer choice we're looking for.
d
Some pompous cats ███ █████ ███ █████████ ████ █████████ █████
This translates to:
pompous ←s→ beautiful cats
Since "some" statements can be read both ways, this is just a restatement of the inference we made that some of the world's most beautiful cats are pompous. This must be true, and isn't the answer choice we're looking for.
e
Some irritating and █████████ ████ ███ ███ ███████ █████
This is what we're looking for. This translates to:
irritating AND beautiful ←s→ /Persian cat
This doesn't map onto any of the inferences we made. Since we know that all Persian cats are irritating, we also know that a cat that is not irritating is not a Persian cat:
Persian cat → irritating
/irritating → /Persian cat
But we don't have any information to draw a conclusion about cats that are irritating. Similarly, while we know that some of the world's most beautiful cats are Persian cats, we don't know anything about beautiful cats, let alone beautiful AND irritating cats, that are not Persian cats. So this answer choice doesn't have to be true.