To map or not to map.

szambelan1996

I have been having trouble deciphering when I need to map, infer, or write out conditionally different stimulus' in LR. Is there a cookie cutter way of knowing when to or when not to? I'm thinking it's something that I will just have to teach my own intuition to pick out.

BlueRiceCake

I think it's intuition based. Really it's a skill you get good at the more of it you practice.

I was previously of the opinion that you should should never map and that conditional reasoning should always be done in your head.

I'm changing my opinion on it. Not because conditional reasoning can't be done in your head, it can, but because for hard conditional reasoning questions(specifically parallel reasoning questions) sometimes have 2 or more answer choices that match the conditional reasoning in the stimulus but fail to match the argument in some other way, often subtly. So I want to make conditional reasoning a non factor in the analysis of the flaw of that question type. That's why I've been recently trying to map out every difficult conditional reasoning question. It's a work in progress, I'm still a bit slow but I think I'm going to improve if I keep trying.

The author of The Loophole recommends writing out conditional reasoning in LR when you need to. She says it's a skill most people suck at in the beginning but improve as they keep doing it.

canihazJD

IMO you're going to be sitting there thinking about it anyway, so its not like youre saving significant time if any at all.

Its much more common, especially early on to say, "if I'd have drawn that out I might have gotten it right" as opposed to "drawing it out really screwed me there" when reviewing a wrong answer.

If there's a chance putting it on paper would help, why preclude yourself from that? If it turns out to be unproductive you can always stop. That goes for anything... not just conditional logic.

What you absolutely don't want to do is not diagram something that might help you because you think you shouldn't have to or you can make it work without doing so. Ego typically isn't a good thing in general, and it has no place in your test prep.

Low risk high reward. When in doubt, draw it out.

clear227

Ideally you don't need to resort to conditionals, but if you do, then there is no shame in drawing. Basically, you want to do whatever is fastest and gets you the right answer.