Translation confusions

mc_meatt

For the following statement "I only work on Tuesday," i translated it as Tuesday -> Work.. but I guess it's Work -> Tuesday.
Not sure why. "Only" is group 2 and introduces necessary condition (in this case, it's work). Did I get something wrong?

Thanks!

runiggyrun

I think this one is tricky because of the way the words are arranged. Even though "only" comes right before work, it actually introduces Tuesday. Most people would read it as "I only work ON TUESDAY (not Monday, or Wednesday, just Tuesday). You can rearrange it to "I work only on Tuesday". So, Work-->Tuesday.
If it were introducing "work", it would read as "I only WORK on Tuesday. I don't sleep, I don't eat, I don't ski, I only work. In that case it would indeed be Tuesday-->work". I think most people would intuitively find the first interpretation as most plausible. And in real LSAT examples there are probably no competing interpretations.
Take home message - it helps to think about the phrase a bit before applying the conditional indicators, so you're not thrown off by the order of the words not matching the logical chain of the phrase

Nanchito-1-1

In this case "I only" is "the only" which is a sufficient group one.
You can basically say, the only days I work are Tuesdays.
If I work than it's Tuesday.
w-->t
We're talking about working. I know that if I work it's a Tuesday. Does that mean that if it's Tuesday I have to work? Naw. What if there is a snowstorm and I cant make it. or I have car trouble. Hope this makes sense.

See this for more clarity.
http://7sage.com/lesson/clarification-for-the-only/

mc_meatt

THANKS A LOT

dcdcdcdcdc

Came here looking for this post. Thanks so much for the above comments. Ran into this translation on page 257 of The LSAT Trainer by Mike Kim. He has it translated as if the indicator was for sufficiency rather than necessity, but has "only" listed as indicating a necessary result.

However, running the contrapositive helps make it clear why the translation (as well as the grammatical reasons given above) are the most reasonable interpretation. As stated, it seems OK to say if it is a Tuesday, then I am working, but it feels wrong to do the contrapositive stating that If I am not working, then it is not a Tuesday. The red flag for me was that it seems that one could not work on Tuesday as well, there is no "requirement" for work on Tuesday, but rather the requirement is for it to be a Tuesday in order to work. As you guys note above, the brute force translation that is incorrect actually implies that this person must work straight through from midnight Tuesday until 11:59 pm and has no option to take a day off from work.

MrSamIam

This one is a tad trickier than some other LR stimuli, since the two variables to be diagrammed come after the logical indicator.
As discussed above, the "I only" in this stimulus acts as a "the only". So, W --> T
When you get confused, try using your intuition. You'll be surprised how much that can help.

One thing that I always ask myself is, "based on the sentence to be translated, what do I ABSOLUTELY know?"

"I only work on Tuesdays".
Well, there are really only two potential diagrams for this:
It's either W --> T or it's T -->W
Now think about this sentence: "Jeff only works on Tuesdays."
So, if it is a Tuesday, do I know that Jeff is working? Absolutely not. All I know is that Tuesday is the one day that he COULD be working.
However, if Jeff is working, do I know that it is a Tuesday? Of course! Why? Because there is only one day in the week that Jeff could possibly be working. That day is Tuesday. So, if I know that Jeff is working, it must be the case that he is working on a Tuesday.