Self-study
John's literature professor believes that the ability to judge the greatness of literary works accurately can be acquired only after years of specialized training. ████ ████████ ███ ██ █████ ████ ██ ████████ ██ ██████ █ ██████████ ██████████ ███ ██ ████ ████ █████ ████ ███ ████ ████████ ██ ███ ███████ ██████ ████ ███ ████ ██████ ██ ████ ███████████ █████████
Summary
According to John’s literature professor:
Most of the reading public doesn’t have years of specialized training.
If you don’t have years of specialized training, you can’t judge the greatness of literary works accurately.
If you don’t have years of specialized training, you also can’t become a literature professor.
Notable Valid Inferences
Most of the reading public cannot judge the greatness of literary works accurately.
Most of the reading public are not literature professors.
6.
Which one of the following ██████████ ████ ██ ████ ██ ████ ██████ ██████████ █████████ ████████ ██ █████
a
John's literature professor ███ █████ ███ █████████ ██ █████ ██ ██████████ ███████████
Could be false. This answer choice confuses sufficiency for necessity. We know that literature professors have years of special training, but we don’t know whether everyone with this training is able to judge the greatness of literary works accurately. Years of training are necessary for judging greatness, but not sufficient.
b
Anyone who is ███ █ ██████████ █████████ ██████ █████ ███ █████████ ██ █████ ██ ██████████ ███████████
Could be false. We don’t have any information in the stimulus about all people who are not literature professors. As shown on our diagram, there are no necessary conditions attached to the condition of not being a literature professor. If you liked this, you probably thought people who are not literature professors cannot have years of specialized training. But this confuses sufficiency and necessity. It's possible someone is not a literature professor but still has years of specialized training.
c
Specialized training like ████ ████████ ██ ██████ ██████████ █████████ ██████ ██ ████ ███████ █████████ ██ ███████ ██ ███ ███████ ███████
Could be false. The stimulus does not make a value judgment about what should occur.
d
Literature professors do ███ ██████ ██ ███ ███████ ███████
Could be false. As shown on our diagram, we can infer that among the reading public, most people are not literature professors. But this tells us nothing about how many literature professors belong to the reading public. It’s still possible that some, or even all, literature professors belong to the reading public.
e
The vast majority ██ ███ ███████ ██████ ██ ██████ ██ █████ ███ █████████ ██ █████ ██ ██████████ ███████████
Must be true. The vast majority of the reading public lacks years of special training, which means they can’t judge the greatness of literary works accurately.