What is your favorite P.O.E./answering strategy for LR? Let's get a taxonomy going!

LetsHigh5LetsHigh5 Alum Member
in Logical Reasoning 703 karma

Goal: To further refine my process of elimination (P.O.E.) and answering skills for LR by building a crowd-sourced taxonomy of techniques.

How you can help me (and all other 7Sages): Contribute your favorite(s) below. Be sure to mention...

  1. Which question type it works for.
  2. How the technique works.
  3. Any important caveats to remember.

Here are two examples:

EXAMPLE A:
- (1) PMR & PF
- (2) First, circle all quantifier (e.g. "all", "some", etc.), modal (e.g. "must", "likely", etc.), and conjunctive ("and")/disjunctive ("or") words in while reading the stimulus (honestly, you should ALWAYS do this anyway). Then, when going to the answer choices, quickly skim each answer choice, only looking to eliminate ANY mismatches on quantifier/modal/conjunctive/disjunctive words. Finally, read the remaining answer choices and select the right ones. In short, don't waste time trying to actually understand each answer choice; if there's even one mismatch on this question type, it's gone!
- (3) Beware the contrapositive and DeMorgan's Law (i.e. sometimes "and" changes to "or", and vice versa). I find it's rare, but it can happen.

EXAMPLE B:
- (1) MBT, MSS, & Principle (with conditional logic & quantifiers)
- (2) First, circle all quantifier (e.g. "all", "some", etc.), modal (e.g. "must", "likely", etc.), and conjunctive ("and")/disjunctive ("or") words in while reading the stimulus (honestly, you should ALWAYS do this anyway). Then, when going to the answer choices, always check them in order from weakest terms to terms strongest (e.g. "some"/"possible"/"might" ---> "most"/"likely"/"probably" ---> "all"/"will"/"must"). Why? Because it's always easier to defend a narrow/probabilistic argument than a broad/absolutist one.
- No caveats, but one tip. If you're honestly stuck between two seemingly legitimate answers, chances are you missed a single quantifier/modal/conjunctive/disjunctive word. Quickly re-read and if you're still stuck, just choose the weaker one and move on.

The more people that reply, the better we'll all get!

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