@elysestraka Depends on how you're currently approaching questions I think. Writing a lot down on scratch paper? Using the highlighting tool a lot? Diagramming? Going back and reading the stimulus multiple times to get a good understanding? Maybe even reading the stimulus too slow on the first pass?

If any of these yell out to you as what may be causing some extra time on each question, they are good places to start seeing where you can mentally start improving on time. Whether that is doing more "mental math" instead of highlighting and writing things down, or improving your reading skills to understand your stimulus on the first pass. Or even the "shallow dip" method talked about in the parallel flaw section to eliminate answers faster off the bat.

@dancingqueen138 "which one (proposition) is best illustrated" tells us that we are looking for a conclusion in the answer choices that is supported (illustrated) by the stimulus. "which one is best" tells us that we aren't looking for an air-tight valid conclusion, but rather which one is the best fit. Both of these point combined end up pointing us in the most strongly supported direction.

^(I was stumped by this one too but this is how I'm thinking about it on review)

@DeliaCanDoIt! I don't think there is an issue between saying "few" = "not many". In my mind, I do however think there is an issue with your logic because "remaining" is not the opposite of "migrating".

"few birds remain during winter" could mean a bunch of things that aren't migration. what if a ton of birds died from disease? a few would remain after that and most birds wouldn't have migrated. You can't conclude most birds left just because few remain without making an assumption that ruins your validity.

Also, keep in mind that "most birds are migratory" could mean 51% of the total birds are migratory. Then your next premise says "most migratory birds have left" so 51% of our 51% (which comes out to about 25%). That means only 25% of total birds migrate -- so no! we couldn't validly assume few birds (which is both inclusive of migratory and not) migrate.

@Nena_lena AC (B) "relies on an assumption that is tantamount to assuming that the conclusion is true". If we assume the assumption is true, in your case that removing lead paint leads to decrease in lead poisoning, it still doesn't go as far as to "being tantamount to assuming" that eradicating homes of lead would eradicate lead poisoining (conclusion) is true. One reason being exactly the reason answer C is correct, what if lead is in buildings that aren't homes (like a schoolbuilding)? Even making our initial remove lead -c-> decrease in lead poisoining assumption can be true and the conclusion still not be assumed/true.

@EmmaDjukic I think you can! We just haven't seen an example here.

What we did see an example of is that you just have to be very careful because a lot of trap answers will say something like "if it is not raining, then the hotel is not required to give an umbrella to guests" which confuses sufficiency and necessity. (what if the hotel owner really, really cares about guest sun protection and made the umbrella a requirement on sunny days??)

@OmarAlmi short-handing the diagram or doing it mentally can help! I got it under the time by about half a minute by realizing the right answer could reach the justification (J) conclusion if it fulfilled "computer used in business" (CiB) & "reasonable grounds for evidence in a legal proceeding against computer owner" (RG in LP). Allowed me to cross off some answers pretty fast that left one or more out.

@mahi0615 C is still correct because if the joke doesn't show contempt for "anyone" than we can assume it doesn't show contempt for that one person, because it shows contempt for no one! Therefore, that piece of the application fits the stimulus. (Note: this is different from D listing "someone" is shown contempt because we cannot assume that this is or isn't the "someone" that the joke is being played on).

B has an unreachable conclusion in that not fulfilling the "contempt" or "harm" conditions does not guarantee that the prank should be played.

Hope this helps!

@Sidly I feel like breaking down the stimulus into Lawgic is only helpful in formal logic, which this stimulus is not. I only really make a point to think about Lawgic or write it down on stimuli that have many conditional relationships. With stimuli on these ones, I just focus on translating in my head through all the grammar and understanding what the premises and conclusions are really saying.

@IsabelSafar The stimulus specifies desert regions because that is an area, that by definition, has little to no rainfall/fresh water sources (rivers, etc). The reasonable assumption in the stimulus is that desert regions (mentioned in conclusion) is equated to regions that can only get fresh water by pumping from deep wells (2nd sentence, premise).

@mrunordinary If you are highlighting or writing notes down on scratch paper, practice getting away from that (and moving to mental notes)! If it's the stimulus that's taking you a long time to read because you keep re-reading it, I'd say practice your comprehension and slowing down a tad to understand it on the first read through. The speed will come after that and more practice, don't lose the faith! :)

@AndreCarter I (certified skeptic) instinctively criticize the stimulus arguments and think of my own alternative hypotheses or flaws when reading arguments. So how I approach the answer choices on Strengthen questions is, what covers that weakness I just came up with and eliminates it? So essentially looking for something to rule out that alternative hypothesis.

@KarlieS Choice E strengthens because it gets rid of another definitely possible explanation! In our causal reasoning lesson, we learned that when the premise gives us a correlation, you can have one of four explanations: 1) A causes B, 2) B causes A, 3) C causes both A & B, 4) No causal relationship.

Since the stimulus conclusion jumps to that snoring causes damage (A causes B). But what about the other 3 possible explanations of correlations? Picking answer E at least eliminates one of the possible explanations (B causes A), thus making our stimulus conclusion stronger.

@cworth1512 I feel like you can slowly start to improve timing as you're working through these. For me for example, on the "You Try" single questions, I let myself feel free to highlight, write down notes on scratch paper, etc to really focus on accuracy and understanding. To save time on these drills of 5, I push myself to highlight less and to write less and understand the stimulus on the first try with minimal rereading for clarification. Still focused on accuracy, just pushing myself to do more "mental math" and that saves me a lot of time alone and is getting me faster, plus it exposes a lot of my quick assumptions if I get one wrong.

@KarlieS I think working at a "single workstation" implies that they work together at that station. If you work together at a single station, you can assume that the single station is shared among the both of you and therefore the "same" workstation.

Trying to interpret the "same" as to mean that they are different but identical (how I think you're defining it) is I think too much of a stretch in this context, especially when D) breaks the rules of the stimulus in a big conceptual way.

@Tannercho06897 Being chronological in the text doesn't make a difference. The "before" in the situation refers to your Lawgic chaining as written out from left to right following the arrow direction.

Example: Most birds sing songs. All storks are birds. Thus, some storks sing songs.

Most birds sing songs: B -m-> Si

All storks are birds: St --> B

Birds (B) is the interlocking point. So when we chain together it looks like:

St --> B -m-> Si

Now you can identify that this is an "all before most" situation which does not yield a valid inference. Even though the "all" statement was the second premise given by the example text chronologically.

If anyone is a visual learner, this is the best way I helped myself understand.

@Oblivion Thinking about it in terms of nesting dolls could work.

But in your written statement it has to be "some of A is in B, and all of B is in C, therefore some of A is in C."

You can't chain what you wrote: "some of A is in B and some of B is in C"

A <--s--> B, B <--s--> C

cannot become A <--s--> C

@AnthonyFlores Yes the negation of "some" is "none" or "no".

Original statement: Some alphabets are not phonetic. aka 1%-100% of alphabets are not phonetic

A <--s--> /P

Negation: No alphabets are not phonetic. aka 0% of alphabets are not phonetic -- No A are /P

Using "No" as it is a conditional indicator from group 4 where we negate the necessary condition,

A --> P, (All) Alphabets are phonetic.

@Oblivion I think you are confusing that "No A" means /A, which is not the case. "No" is instead a conditional indicator (Group 4) so

For your Q2, "no alphabets are not phonetic" does mean "All alphabets are phonetic".

No A are /P. & "No" is a Group 4 conditional indicator meaning that we negate the necessary and in this case that then makes it: A --> P

@16dnholli Thinking of this like math, you'd think that the slash would distribute, but this isn't math since we're only using arrows and symbols to represent language and short-hand logic.

/P <-s-> /C would mean "Some non-parrots are not clever". This really isn't the opposite of the original statement "Some parrots are clever".

Since "some" means anywhere from 1% to 100% of the parrots are clever, the opposite of a "some" relationship means that we have to be outside those boundaries to negate -- at 0%. So the opposite of "Some parrots are clever" is that "No parrots are clever". And if we make that statement into Lawgic it becomes P-->/C.

@mattiesas the negation of the whole relationship!

Just like how /A meant the negation of a single condition, the parenthesis show that the negation in /(A->B) applies to the whole relationship rather than just one condition.

@Tannercho06897 Contrapositive and negation are different!

Contrapositive is an equivalent way of expressing the relationship. We typically create a contrapositive of a normal conditional relationship (ex. cats are mammals) by flipping sufficient and necessary conditions, and negating each condition (ex. if not a mammal, then not a cat). These are two ways of expressing the same relationship.

Negation of an All statement/relationship ("it is not the case that all ...") is creating the opposite of the relationship. For example, the negation of "all cats are mammals" would be "some cats are not mammals". They express totally different relationships between the sets.

@Valleygirlala I think he means that if an adoption center is not eligible, it could mean any one of three things:

1. it does not have an interactive website (/IW)

2. it is not a 501c (/501c)

3. it does not have either a website and is not a 501c (/IW and /501c)

He is merely reminding us that option 3 is also possible, which is that an ineligible adoption center could lack both a website and not be a 501c.

@MRod I think the reason it is being broken apart is if you are trying to link to another premise such that says "if O happens then ...". Although the new premise doesn't explicitly say anything about N happening, you still know the new conditional relationship is triggered if M happens because M triggers both N and O.

@emill1517 My favorite way to think about unless is this:

"A will occur unless B occurs."

In my head, this means that the only way for A not to happen (/A), is for B to happen. So, if A does not occur, then B did.

Translation: /A --> B

In this example, "There will not be a good show unless there are sophisticated listeners in the audience"

The only way for there to be a good show, is for sophisticated listeners to be in the audience. If there was a good show, then sophisticated listeners were there. Therefore, good show --> sophisticated listeners