Self-study
Everyone sitting in the waiting room of the school’s athletic office this morning at nine o’clock had just registered for a beginners tennis clinic. █████ █████ ███ ██████ ████ ███ ███████ ██ ███ ███████ ████ ████ ███████ ██ ████ ██████████ ██ ████████████ ██████ ██████ █████ ████████ ███ █ █████████ ██████ ███████
Chaining Conditionals
This stimulus features two statements that form a conditional chain, then tells us about three people who can be "fed into" the chain. I'm imagining this like a machine that takes people in the waiting room and turns them into unaccomplished people and it's making me laugh.
John and co. are all in the waiting room (of the school's athletic office this morning at nine o'clock 🙄). If you're in the waiting room, you're registered (for the thing). If you're registered, you're not accomplished (at playing tennis).*
The anticipation is quite straightforward here (especially because this is Question 1, so were aren't expecting any sneaky tricks):
These three fools are not accomplished tennis players.
*Here's the lesson on how to translate that "no" appropriately.
1.
If the statements above are █████ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ ████ ████ ██ ████ ██ ███ █████ ██ █████
a
None of the ██████ ███████ ██ ███ ██████████ ████████ ██████ ████ ███████ ██ ████ █████████ ███ ████ ██████ ███████
This is only wrong because "not being accomplished at tennis" ≠ "never played tennis." Maybe they've played once or twice. Maybe they've been playing for years and they're just really really bad.
b
Everyone sitting in ███ ██████████ ████████ ██████ ████ ███████ ██ ████ █████████ ██████████ ████ ███ █ █████████ ██████ ███████
This would be right if not for the word "only." We know these people registered for the clinic, but saying they only registered for the clinic means they didn't register for any other clinics. That's no good.
c
John, Mary, and ██████ ████ ███ ████ ██████ ███ ██████████ ███ █ █████████ ██████ ██████ ████ ████████
This is wrong because of the "only" phrase. If it said "John, Mary, and Teresa were people who registered for [the thing]," it'd be right.
We know these three registered; we don't know that other people didn't register.
d
John, Mary, and ██████ ████ ███ ████ ██████ ███████ ██ ███ ███████ ████ ██ ███ ██████████ ████████ ██████ ████ ███████ ██ ████ ██████████
This is wrong because of the "only" phrase. If it said "John, Mary, and Teresa were people sitting in the waiting room," it'd be right.
We know these three were in the room; we don't know that other people weren't in the room.
e
Neither John nor ██████ ██ ██ ████████████ ██████ ███████
Because we know John, Mary, and Teresa are garbage tennis players, it must be true that John and Teresa are garbage tennis players.
What about Mary? No one cares about Mary. By not mentioning Mary, (E) stops short of the full inference we could draw from the facts. But that's fine. The question stem did not ask for the complete set of inferences that could be drawn.