MBT v MSS

Addistotle

Hello guys,

My first study buddy meeting has been really good, but I feel like I've stumbled a bit on explaining the difference between MBT and MSS questions!

I've touched on how MBT relies on formal logic and validity, if the stimulus is true, the answer must be true. Whereas MSS is more general, you are trying to add a conclusion to the information above by drawing one out of the stimulus.

Any input here would be greatly appreciated!

Seriousbird

The way I look at it for MBT questions the answer will be confirmed by the information in the stimulus. MBT questions are heavily based off of valid arguments and formal logic.

For MSS questions (I really struggled with these and spent 2 months on them), I noticed that the answer choice will provide support to a premise or the argument in the stimulus, it doesn't always provide concrete support and sometimes the support is weak, but it provides a certain level of support.

After hard core drilling and reviewing MSS questions I noticed some patterns that emerged in this question type:

1) You are provided limited information in the stimulus, and you find a conclusion which is supported by a premise or some premises in the answer choice.

2) You resolve a discrepancy between two different facts i.e. apples are sour but apples are not sour and find the explanation in the answer choices.

3) The stimulus is a set of facts, the answer choice is either paraphrasing one of the premises and ignoring the rest, or somehow tangentially supporting the premises.

Also in the comment section for one the MSS questions, someone gave 5 tricks that I wrote in my notebook. I found these to be really helpful!

Addistotle

Thanks! Will pass along

runiggyrun

MBT questions are going to rely very heavily on formal logic and valid arguments. I think of them as cousins of SA questions - these are the two kinds of questions where the correct choice needs to be 100% airtight. For MBT, if you take the statements in the stimulus to be true, there's a 0% chance that the correct answer can be false. If you can think of one instance where the answer is false while all the premises are still true, it's not the right answer.
For MSS, it helps to forget the part about "most strongly" and focus on the "supported", because you won't ever have to choose between two answers that are somewhat supported and you have to select the "most" supported. You'll have 4 answers that are either in direct contradiction to a premise in the stimulus (stimulus: "some cats are white; all cats chase mice"; incorrect answer "all cats are grey") or completely not supported by the stimulus (some mice are also white), and one answer that can range from 100% supported (some white things are cats) to barely supported if you look at it just right (there's a chance this mouse was chased by a white mammal).