Question About Sufficient Assumption

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• 2 Likes

  Accounts Playable Live Sage ⭐

  August 2016 3107 karma

  Strictly speaking, the distinction between a conditional statement and its contrapositive is arbitrary. Both mean the same thing, and determining which one is the "original" statement and which one is the "contrapositive" has a lot to do with the preferences of the reader.
  
  There is actually some pretty decent psychology research (Logic Made Easy by Deborah Bennett talks about this; I don't really recommend the book as a whole, though) done about hiding statements in the contrapositive (especially if the contrapositive has a lot of "nots" in it). Having a lot of negations tends to confuse people, and it's a pretty simple way to add difficulty to a question.
  
  For practical purposes, if you need to think about both translations to get the question correct in a time efficient manner, then do that. A lot of the time, diagramming out a really hard sufficient assumption question really is necessary.
• CalPoliSci Member

  August 2016 236 karma

  @"Accounts Playable" That makes sense. Of course on easier SA questions where the gap and the answer choice is obvious, I won't translate to the contrapositive. But now I realize that when I'm in a difficult SA question, translating difficult answer choices will be another useful tool in my toolkit, along with diagramming.
• 1 Like

  BinghamtonDave Alum Member ⭐ 🍌🍌

  August 2016 8716 karma

  As an aside: the question you referenced, I think 9/10 times I would have gone with (D)...
• 1 Like

  CalPoliSci Member

  August 2016 236 karma

  @David3389 Yeah that's the answer I went with too. But when you apply what I said about contrapositives, the actual answer sounds so much better. During my timed session, I had such a hard time distinguishing between D and the correct answer.