Necessary Assumption questions

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• 3 Likes

  Sami Live Member Sage ⭐ 7Sage Tutor

  January 2018 10774 karma

  You are on the right track. You do not want to negate answer choices in NA just to see if it works. It adds an extra step that can take time and that you can mess up on.

  One thing that's really helpful is to know how well you understand the stimulus. Before going in the answer choices, you want to know if you understand the flaws of the stimulus. Most of the NA arguments have glaring gaps between the premise and the conclusion. The correct answer choice is often playing on that gap.

  For example:
  34.2.13
  Premise 1: Claims of Laissez faire theory: Increase in minimum wage decreases total number of minimum wage jobs.
  Premise 2: A study found that after an increase in minimum wage the fast food restaurant kept the same number of minimum wage employees.

  ---

  Conclusion: Laissez faire theory is not entirely accurate.

  At the end of this, you want to ask yourself -does the premise really support the conclusion?
  Does this study really say that Laissez faire theory many not be accurate?

  See if you can spot the gap?

  That gap is that the theory talks about a decrease in total number of minimum wage jobs while our support is just about what happens in fast food industry.
  For this support to actually disprove our Laissez faire theory it needs to be true that what happened in fast food industry is representative of the total number of minimum wage jobs. The correct answer choice is a version of this gap.

  Try doing an NA drill for (1-4 star) questions and see if you can identify and write down the gap/what's wrong with the stimulus before you go into answer choices.
• 1 Like

  joycool9567 Alum Member

  January 2018 133 karma

  It is of course impossible to run negation test on every answer choices. In a way you should find the missing link between the premisea and in a sense expect the answer. Negation test is a powerful tool to verify answers not so much of a selction mechanism i would say.

  Find discrepancy in wording that is all you need to do. Even if the premise seems like to support the conclusion theres gotta be a premise or even a single word that cannot be equated with the word in the conclusion
• 1 Like

  BD Alum Member

  January 2018 128 karma

  Necessary assumption questions used to be the death of me..I just couldn't crack them. I went through the Trainer's sections on LR and I think it's really helped. Also, just doing the NA problem sets in the CC have helped tremendously. Usually, there's one big jump/glaring gap in NA questions that you want to find - once you find that, chances are the right answer choice will address that gap by either bridging/shielding.

  Once you identify that glaring gap in the argument/the flaw, you need to find that one answer choice that needs to be true if the support/premises is ever going to prove the point. Remember, the correct answer will provide you with the bare minimum amount of support (compared to strengthen, PSA, SA questions). I hope that helps.