Very stupid mistake on my part. Not sure why I interpreted the last sentence this way but I thought the statement that "only Medina shares her opinion on that issue" was saying that only Medina disclosed her opinion while the other two remained silent on that particular issue. So I screwed up this question rip...

After reading it correctly, it makes perfect sense.

I was between A and B, but chose A bc I wasn't a fan of the second half of B. AC B is saying that the people used some plants in ways that no other people did at that time. But the stimulus tells us if plants were cultivated, then people who occupied the site discovered agriculture thousands of years before any other people are known to have done so. The "known" to me made me believe that we couldn't conclude with certainty that no other people used these plants in that way. What if there were other people of that time that used some plants in similar ways, but that evidence just hasn't been discovered? I thought the stimulus suggested this.

It seems like my interpretation of B was too extreme?

I do see now that I could have eliminated A bc there is nothing in the stimulus that tells us whether the archaeologists will or will not be able to determine which plants were cultivated vs wild. The stimulus only tells us what the findings will mean if they are able to determine which were cultivated or were wild. Through POE, I would have only been left with AC B after eliminating A.

B is incorrect bc being part of the exception does NOT mean the opposite of the rule applies!!! Rather, we cannot conclude what would happen for those part of the exception. We can only draw conclusions about those instances that the rule applies to.

If the gov restricts liberty when failing to do so would allow individuals to cause harm (aka the exception), we have no idea whether it's right or wrong.

A is correct bc

• publishing something is a liberty

• literature that is only offensive does not cause harm (therefore, the rule applies)

If we were to restrict the publication of this literature it would be considered wrong (bc it does not fall under the exception).

D is incorrect bc no good reason to believe in centaurs is not the same thing as proving centaurs do not exist. Just bc there is no good reason to believe they exist doesn't allow us to conclude they def did not exist.

A is correct bc it matches the stimulus. They have confirmed no centaurs exist. Therefore, no unicorns exist either. We can infer that if unicorns do not exist, then a belief in unicorns is false.

Key takeaway:

/X --> B(X)F

If X does not exist, a belief in X is false.

Not sure if this is the best way to go about this type of question but I approached it with the Rule-Exception Framework.

Domain: Drivers in accidents

Rule: personal injury or property damage of $500+ --> report

Exception: incapable of reporting

Stimulus tells us Ted is not required to report the accident. BUT we have no idea if he was capable or incapable of reporting it.

A is incorrect bc this doesn't have to be true. Being incapable of reporting means he falls into the exception. He wouldn't have to report it even if there was property damage of $500+.

B is correct. If Ted's car sustained more than $500 in damage, then the reporting requirement would ordinarily apply. Since the stimulus tells us Ted is not required to report the accident, the only way to reconcile those facts is that Ted falls under the exception and is incapable of reporting the accident.

C is incorrect bc it is unsupported. Nothing in the stimulus allows us to reasonably draw this conclusion.

D is incorrect bc we don't know that incapacity is a result of injury from the accident. Nothing in the stimulus allows us to reasonably draw this conclusion. He could be incapable of reporting for a number of reasons (doesn't speak the language, has an intellectual disability, etc.)

E is incorrect bc we don't know whether or not he was incapable of reporting the accident in the first place. Without that piece of info, we cannot assume that the rule applied to him. It is possible that the accident did satisfy the conditions in order for reporting to be triggered. But this rule wouldn't have applied if he were incapable of reporting in the first place.

@billyg03 The example you shared is just another way of saying what I displayed in my example. The "x" are not negations, they are just a symbol for a variable "x".

For example, xA is not saying "not A". It's just saying "X is an A." So this can also be translated to the same statement I shared above: All As are Bs. X is an A. Therefore, X must also be a B.

7sage represents negations with "/"

Hope this helps!

Stim:

• P: tanzanite --> tanzania

• P: tanzanite

• C: probably from tanzania

reminder!! "THE only" introduces a sufficient condition

AC C:

• Animals known to live in lagoon --> frogs

• frogs

• probably from lagoon

Does not match stimulus. The second statement establishes that the necessary condition is present, whereas the second sentence of the stimulus established the presence of the sufficient condition.

AC D:

• frogs --> animals known to live in lagoon

• frogs

• probably from lagoon

Matches the reasoning used in the stimulus.

C is incorrect bc we have no idea what would happen if Slater doesn't win the election. One inference we can draw from the stimulus is that if Slater doesn't win, then the polls are grossly inaccurate. But that tells us nothing about who would win in a situation where Slater doesn't.

E is correct. Silly mistake on my part -- I misread /(polls inaccurate) in my conditional chain as the polls ARE inaccurate when it was really polls are NOT inaccurate. So when I read the first part of E, I thought it didn't match up with my diagram but it did. If polls are NOT inaccurate, I can relate that to polls being a good indication of how elections will turn out. This line of reasoning would logically follow from the stimulus:

/(polls inaccurate) --> Slater wins --> McGuinness appointed

The stimulus tells us Yerxes is more qualified than McGuinness, which implies McGuinness is less qualified than Yerxes.

@themoodyactivist its negate necessary condition. the page right before this (group 4 translations) has an example.

@taylorstryker You don't necessarily need to take the contrapositive right away. I usually start by diagramming the statement in its original form and then keep the contrapositive in mind as an equivalent version.

Whether you end up using the original conditional or the contrapositive depends on what the stimulus or answer choices give you. If an answer choice triggers the sufficient condition from your original diagram, use the original. If it gives you the negation of the necessary condition, the contrapositive may be more useful.

For example, if you have:

/BO --> HWA

the contrapositive is:

/HWA --> BO

Both statements are logically equivalent. So if an answer choice tells you heat waves do not abate, you would want to know that triggers blackouts occur (as given by the contrapositive). If it tells you blackouts do not occur, the original conditional is prob more helpful.

The main thing is not to think of the contrapositive as a separate rule that must be applied. It's just the same relationship expressed from the opposite direction. And sometimes that version will line up better with the information you're given.

@alisha.2k3 "Only" is a necessary condition indicator, so whatever immediately follows the word "only" becomes the necessary condition.

In this sentence: Only Italian plumbers can fly while wearing raccoon suits. "Italian plumbers" comes directly after "only," so it is the necessary condition:

can fly while wearing raccoon suits → Italian plumber

The reason your translation doesn't work is that it treats "wearing a raccoon suit" by itself as the sufficient condition. But the sentence is not saying that merely wearing a raccoon suit tells us someone is an Italian plumber.

The sufficient condition is the entire activity of being able to fly while wearing a raccoon suit. Anyone who satisfies that entire condition must be an Italian plumber.

i find it easier to see the relationship like this:

P: A --> B

P: A

C: B

(All As are Bs. X is an A. Therefore, X must also be a B.)

E is incorrect bc they agree on this point. Roxanne explicitly states that people should only buy ivory that is at least 75 years old. Salvador's statement isn't as explicit, but still suggests agreement with Roxanne. He believes that people concerned about endangered species should not buy any ivory at all (which includes ivory less than 75 years old).

B is correct bc Roxanne believes the new ivory and old ivory markets are entirely independent, meaning that a decreased demand for antique ivory would have no effect on the demand for new ivory. Salvador believes refraining from buying any ivory will indeed lead to a decrease in the demand for new ivory.

I picked C on first pass bc I thought the presence of other minerals in addition to the ferrous material would suggest that maybe one of the other materials is responsible for the increase in algae growth. But C is incorrect bc it did not give us enough information to suggest an alternate explanation. The presence of other minerals alone is not enough to determine what effect they had. We would need evidence that one of those other minerals could have caused the increase in algae growth.

D is correct bc if ocean-floor sediments show no increase in the accumulation of diatom shells during the last ice age, that suggests there may not have been a significant increase in the diatom population at all. This directly undermines the scientist's hypothesis that the ferrous material caused a large increase in Antarctic algae populations.

@LSAT1011 I eliminated A bc it said "since the last ice age". We are concerned with what happened during the ice age, not what happened after. Also, saying that diatoms have remained largely unchanged since the last ice age doesn't tell us anything about whether the ferrous material caused an increase in diatom populations during the last ice age. A doesn't weaken the argument, it leaves us with no clarity on the causal relationship being proposed:

ferrous material --c--> increase in algae pop. --c--> greater absorption of CO2 from atmosphere --c--> unusually large amounts of ferrous material and small amounts of CO2 in air bubbles

Got this correct but kinda off a gut feeling, not a full understanding on first pass.

Conclusion: drinking tea boosts immune system defenses.

C is correct bc if negated -- if drinking coffee DID cause the blood cell response time to double -- this introduces an alternate explanation to the results the study found. If coffee doubled the response time then maybe it's not bc the tea sped up the process, but instead that coffee suppressed immune system blood cells, slowing their response time. The author depends on C being true bc the negation of this answer choice would destroy the argument.

Important to distinguish between public places in general and well-designed public places. I diagrammed correctly but made a false connection in my mind between

• coffeehouses --> public places

• well-designed public places --m--> artwork

We know that all coffeehouses are public places, but we do not know how many of those are well-designed places. So we cannot connect those two statements or conclude anything about whether most coffeehouses feature artwork (making C incorrect).

However, we can connect

• WDPP --> comfortable --> SI

This conditional chain allows us to conclude that any well-designed public place (which includes coffeehouses and restaurants) has a spacious interior.

Didn't understand wtf the last sentence was saying.

"If the critics were right" refers to the conditional statement in the first sentence:

• continued public funding justified --> public benefit can be indicated

If critics are right --> no tremendous public support for project

"...the tremendous public support for the project that even its critics acknowledge" suggests that there IS indeed public support.

Argument template:

A-->B

not B

Therefore, not A

P: if critics are right --> no tremendous public support

P: there IS tremendous public support

C: critics are NOT right

If the critics are not right, there must be at least one instance where continued public funding is justified without public benefit being able to be indicated.

• aka public funding is justified and public benefit cannot be indicated

A is incorrect because this is not necessary for the argument. Intended is the key word. If negated -- if there were tests intended for diagnosing autism at such an early age before this new test -- this would not hurt the argument. The stimulus tells us that this new test is the first to accurately diagnose autism in children at this young age. So earlier attempts to create a test to diagnose autism don't matter. We know this is the first test to be effective.

B is correct bc if it were negated -- if a diagnostic test that sometimes falsely gives a positive diagnosis CANNOT still provide a reasonable basis for treatment -- then the results from this new test would not be able to help diagnosed children receive treatments at such an early age like the conclusion suggests.

@Maycampagna I had similar reasoning and also went with C. I think the problem with C is that the anthropologist never argues that his hypothesis is more plausible. He's simply offering an alternative explanation, suggesting that the researchers have not ruled out all other possibilities (hence, their conclusion is unwarranted for that reason). He's not arguing that his explanation is the most likely one.

I interpret unwarranted here as not sufficiently supported given the premises.

This question is concerned with a comparison between decaf drinkers and regular coffee drinkers.

A is incorrect because it does not provide meaningful comparative information between decaf drinkers and regular coffee drinkers. Knowing whether people who exercise regularly are more likely to drink decaffeinated beverages tells us nothing about whether exercise habits differ between the decaf and regular coffee groups. This would tell us nothing about how the regular coffee group compares to the decaf group and is therefore not helpful in evaluating the argument.

E is incorrect for a similar reason to A. E is comparing people with or without arthritis to people who drink any kind of coffee. This does not differentiate between the two groups of interest, decaf and regular coffee.

C is correct because it provides an alternate explanation. If degeneration of connective tissue is slowed by consuming regular coffee then maybe it's not that decaf contains something damaging to connective tissue, but that regular coffee contains something preventative/beneficial to connective tissue.

A) Helps resolve the discrepancy because it suggests that fires caused by smoking in bed are not among the deadliest home fires. If fires caused by smoking in bed generally cause relatively little damage, then a decline in those fires would not necessarily produce a comparable decline in home-fire deaths.

B) Deepens the discrepancy. If home fires caused by smoking in bed often occur after the people in the home fall asleep, this would increase the likelihood of them being killed in that home fire. If this were the case, we would expect a decrease in smoking to be accompanied by a decrease in home fire deaths. Therefore, B makes it harder to resolve the discrepancy.

Conclusion: There cannot be real evidence that lax radiation from nuclear reactors contributed to increase in cancer rates.

Support: We cannot say that a particular cancer case was caused by a specific factor.

However, even if we can't point to a specific thing that caused a particular case of cancer, there could still exist evidence that explains an increase in cancer rates for a group/population without identifying the exact cause of each individual case.

Takeaway: Don't confuse the inability to identify the cause of an individual case with an inability to establish a causal relationship at the group level.

D is incorrect bc the conclusion is that venereal disease caused Beethoven's deafness. The stimulus simply suggests that the presence of mercury in his hair would be indicative of venereal disease. Therefore, we do not need it to be true that mercury itself caused his deafness.

B is correct bc if negated -- all people in Beethoven's time DID ingest mercury -- then finding mercury in his hair would not be indicative of anything. If everyone had mercury in their system there's no way to connect the presence of mercury to venereal disease.

the statement introduced by "no" = sufficient

the negation of the other part of the statement = necessary

Answer C:

• celestial object with no L --> not a brown dwarf OR

• brown dwarf --> celestial object with L