How do you make inferences in LG?

mzoodle

Any advice would be appreciated.

tanes256

@mzoodle How far are you in the curriculum? It's kinda hard to explain. Inferences are things that must be true but you're not specifically told. Some are blatantly obvious and others aren't. It's pretty much like solving a puzzle. Take a look at the videos. JY is great with pulling out inferences.

akistotle

Could you maybe tell us what question you are having difficulty making inferences? Have you fool-proofed all the games in PT1-35? As @tanes256 says, J.Y.'s explanation videos are great, so if you haven't seen them, you definitely should

shanedrider

Some inferences are harder than others. Sometimes it's reading a rule in a different way than it is written.

For example: If your game pieces are Pete, Randy, and Simon, and it's a sequencing game of who does the dishes Monday-Friday, and rule 1 says "Simon has didgeridoo practice on Thursdays and does not eat dinner," the inference would be that for the Thursday slot, you write in P/R instead of S to signify that it's either Pete or Randy that does the dishes. It's not explicitly stated, but that's the inference you want to make. Usually those easy references are enough to knock out an answer choice for the "Acceptable Situation" question that typically starts out a game (you would just look for the answer that has Simon on a Thursday and cross it out - obvious wrong choice.)

Other inferences require you to mesh two rules together. Going back to this theoretical game, if another rule stated that nobody does the dishes on consecutive days, you would know then that whomever does the dishes on Thursday does not do them on Friday nor Wednesday. From there, it would be easy to split your game board up into 2 sub-game boards where you use rule 1 so that in one Pete does them on Thursday and in one Randy does the dishes on Thursday. From there, you'd apply the rest of the rules.

Hope this helps!

danielznelson

Just mathematically speaking, start with variable/groups/slots that are the most/least restricted. For example, when attempting to find what must be true, begin by looking at the variables/groups /slots that have the least amount of room to budge. Again, mathematically, those are the most likely to yield a must be true inference.

Conversely, if you need a standard could be true inference, begin with the variables/groups/slots that are the freest. No rules talk about "A"? "A" is a floater - start there. Then move to the next freest.

You won't always see what is the most or least restricted and that's okay. Practice can help with that. But it's important to have at least an inkling of how to objectively approach inferences. Otherwise, if they're just "not coming to you," you're screwed. Over time, your intuition will probably get really, really good. But even I would get stuck in LG and would be forced to use this technique. It's also especially helpful for rushing through ACs. For example, If I need a CBT AC, I'm not going to test out the ACs that have very restricted variables.