Critical Reasoning

nolf wrote:Hi

I have taken a few practice tests till now and seen that no matter what i do I am failing badly in the critical reasoning questions

Can anyone help me as to how to tackle it?

In the quant section i am getting around 30 uestions right.

and in the verbal my total questions right goes to 25 cause most of my critical reasoning questions are wrong.

Can i guess my score based on the no of questions right i mean approx score???

Is there any formula??? Also pls help me as to what to do for CR?

Thanks

well, for starters, it'd be impossible to address the whole of critical reasoning in one forum thread. in fact, your apparent conviction that critical reasoning can be addressed in a single forum thread reveals a big part of the problem: the fact you seem to think of critical reasoning as a unitary, monolithic whole, rather than as a collection of several fundamentally different types of problems.

in other words, you absolutely cannot attack the different critical reasoning problem types with the same strategy. for instance, the type of reasoning that solves Weaken problems most efficiently will crash and burn on Draw a Conclusion problems, and vice versa; and so on.

are there particular CR problem types on which you're having the most difficulty? if so, which types? if you narrow the focus down a little, we'll be much better able to give you meaningful advice.

nolf wrote:could you tell me if we can decide on the score based on no of questions right.

no. not at all.

the test is adaptive, meaning that it adjusts the questions' difficulty level to match the way you've been performing on the exam. because the test works this way, it follows that almost everyone will get significant numbers of questions both right and wrong.
consequence: the numbers of questions you get right and wrong will have very, very little predictive value, unless your score is near 200 or near 800.

analogy: imagine you're in a karate tournament, in which winning a match earns you a match against a better opponent, but losing a match earns you a match against a lesser opponent. in this tournament, unless you're one of the very best or very worst fighters, you're going to have lots of wins and lots of losses. if you're a good fighter, you'll still have lots of losses, because most of your matches will be against fighters who are just as good as you; if you're a bad fighter, you'll still have lots of wins, because you'll mostly be fighting other bad opponents.
same thing with the adaptive test. if you're a 700-750 level scorer, you'll still miss lots of problems; they'll just be really hard problems.

this is extremely unnerving for a lot of high scorers, who aren't used to missing lots of problems (or even a few problems) on a test. you'll have to get used to it; mental preparation is a huge part of this game.
also, the adaptive nature of the test is a HUGE reason behind the time-management advice we dispense here. since you pretty much WON'T get "easy" questions, it's much more important to manage your time perfectly than it would be on a paper test. even more so because you can't skip questions and then return to them.

* on Find an Assumption problems, you must STICK TO THE CONTENT OF THE PASSAGE. (by contrast, for other problem types, such as 'strengthen the conclusion', you MUST go OUTSIDE of the passage for additional information.)
- this simple observation can be a powerful tool for process of elimination. to wit: imagine that a debate judge has handed you a list of the SPECIFICS that are treated in the passage, and will "buzz" you if you mention anything that doesn't show up on that list of specifics.
here's the key: correct answers to 'find the assumption' problems WON'T GET BUZZED in this situation, because they stick to the specific points actually contained in the passage. you'd be surprised how much mileage you can get from just eliminating the answer choices that get 'buzzed'.
in short:
"find the assumption" problems don't contain any concepts that aren't in the original passage, and don't make any distinctions that aren't made in the original passage.

when you go through critical reasoning passages, but especially for Find the Assumption problems, you need to be able to sort out IRRELEVANT INFORMATION. there are 2 kinds of irrelevant information:
- (a) parts of "conclusions" that really aren't conclusions at all. there's a simple way to tell whether this happens: if something isn't mentioned in the premises, then it can't possibly be part of the conclusion. in other words, the conclusion actually has to come FROM the premises, so anything not in the premises can't be part of the conclusion. for an example, see problem #7 in the OG purple verbal supplement. the part about "physical disease" isn't part of the actual conclusion, since NOTHING in the passage actually deals with physical disease.
- (b) "bowling pins" or "setup statements": if a passage starts out by telling you some piece of information and then constructs an argument for the sole purpose of proving that statement wrong, then the initial statement (the "bowling pin") doesn't even count as part of the argument.
if you detect irrelevant information, ignore it completely. in other words, solve the problem as though those words literally weren't there.

--

when you're looking for an ASSUMPTION or trying to draw a CONCLUSION, remember that those things can NEVER, ever, be more general than the premises you start with. for instance, if a passage talks about weightlifting, you CANNOT have assumptions regarding "exercise" in general - because any other exercise is irrelevant to / out of the scope of the passage.

--

remember that assumptions are things that MUST be true. because of this, there's another way that you can attack assumption problems, if necessary:
- REVERSE the assumption in the answer choice, and see if the argument FALLS APART. if it doesn't, then the assumption is not required.

--

on ALL critical reasoning questions, but especially on "find the assumption" and "draw a conclusion", you need to be able to do the following 2 things:
- (1) learn to treat all SPECIFICS as objective, judgment-free things. for instance, in problem #V63, "easily" (in choice c) should be treated as would any other mention of an irrelevant specific. in other words, just because "easily" is a common word that's thrown around a lot in conversation doesn't mean you can gloss over it in the answer choice. you should pay absolutely as much attention to it as you would to something like "decisions should be made in blue jeans".
- (2) learn to treat ANY SPECIFICS THAT ARE AT ALL DIFFERENT as COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. in other words, in CR land, there are only two possibilities: (a) two things are exactly the same, or (b) they are completely unrelated without evidence. in CR land, there is no such thing as "similar" or "like each other". so you should get to the point where 2 things such as "people who commit murder" and "people convicted of murder" sound COMPLETELY unrelated, just because they're not exactly the same.

--

* if your goal is to WEAKEN an argument, try to identify the ASSUMPTIONS behind the argument, and choose a choice that strikes down one of those assumptions. if all else fails, pick the choice that stays closest to the content of the passage itself (the more "links" you need to connect the answer choice to the passage, the less likely it is to be the correct answer).

- you can also solve "weaken" problems by reverse engineering. here's how:
(1) take the statement that's supposed to weaken the passage
(2) figure out what assumption would be struck down by that statement (i.e., "town X is bigger than town Y" would strike down an assumption that the towns are of equal size)
(3) ask yourself whether that assumption is necessary to the passage.
if the answer is "yes, the assumption is necessary", then the statement weakens the argument. if the answer is no, then the statement doesn't weaken the argument.

- if all else fails, try to pick the answer choice that's MOST DIRECTLY RELATED to the passage - the more degrees of separation, the smaller the choice of being correct.
answer choices that need 2 or more "links" to connect logically to the passage WILL be wrong.

Moved this thread to the CR section.