How I notate LR.

lewis.waring

I have found that labelling the answers in LR as either "True," "Could be...," or "False" helps me to understand the question types better.
The only significance compared to the way I've seen answer choices labelled in other places is that I don't separate Could be true or could be false.
If you think about it, there is no question where you would need both could be true and could be false answers. If an answer COULD be true then just by definition it could also be false.
In a can't be true question, you would say a wrong answer choice could be true.
In a must be true question, you would say that very same answer choice could be false.
So, in the context of the question, it doesn't matter if you label CBT or CBF, you might as well shorten it to C.

I eventually started to notice that question types tend towards distribution patterns.
For instance, a necessary assumption might have a distribution like T T T C F where..
T (1) is the correct answer, a necessary assumption...
T (2) restates the conclusion and...
T (3) restates a premise,
C is a sufficient assumption answer choice (and so it COULD be true and so bring the argument to validity, but also COULD be false, and so must not be true in other words is not a necessary assumption.), and...
F is a can't be true answer choice, that is, it would evoke some sort of contradiction in the stimulus.

Compare that to a Can't be true question, which might be F C C C T

F - Correct answer. Evokes a contradiction.
C - Random, Irrelevant. And so could be true or could be false.
C - Random, Irrelevant. And so could be true or false.
C - Random, Irrelevant. T/F
T - Something that must be true. Some tautology or inference.

Compared to a Could be true, which is probably C F F F F (and is pretty strict, I find)

C Correct answer. Some possibility given the stimulus.
F Contradiction
F Contradiction
F Contradiction
F Contradiction

So you can see that the question types tend to have different types of distributions...

This is not to say that every question type has an exact distribution, but they tend towards particular patterns.

A CBT question couldn't have a distribution like CCFFF and it also probably wouldn't have a distribution like CTTTT. I've rarely seen one that has any T's in it, though I do remember one case where they put a T into a CBT Q.

Any critiques or comments?