Conditional Statements

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siddus: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 87; Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2010 8:36 am; Thanked: 3 times; Followed by:1 members

Conditional Statements

by siddus » Sat May 22, 2010 10:49 pm

I am finding it a bit difficult to identify conditionality in an argument. Normally if there is conditional reasoning in an argument, I am able to identify these by looking for necessary and sufficient 'identifiers'.

But in statements such as the following, how would you identify the necessary and sufficient parts? Is there an identifier here that I am missing?

"Jenny will have lots of balloons at her birthday party."

Any help will be appreciated.

Cheers.
Siddus

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Source: Beat The GMAT — Critical Reasoning | Sat May 22, 2010 10:49 pm

grockit_andrea: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 357; Joined: Wed Aug 12, 2009 8:31 pm; Thanked: 128 times; Followed by:7 members

by grockit_andrea » Sun May 23, 2010 5:11 am

Because your statement "Jenny will have lots of balloons at her birthday party" is so strongly phrased, you can turn it into a conditional statement: If a birthday party is Jenny's => there will be lots of balloons. And the contrapositive states: If there are not lots of balloons => it's not Jenny's birthday party. Basically, whenever a statement puts something into definite terms, it can be made into a conditional statement. If there are words like "may" or "could" or "some," it's generally not a conditional statement.

Andrea A.
Grockit Tutor
https://www.grockit.com

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siddus: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 87; Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2010 8:36 am; Thanked: 3 times; Followed by:1 members

by siddus » Sun May 23, 2010 9:44 am

Hi, thanks for your kind inputs.

I have couple of questions based on your response -

1) Can I argue that it may well be possible that the relationship is reversed - "There will be lots of balloons ==> Its Jenny's birthday party". The lack of an indicator could leave the interpretation of the relationship open.

2) Can it be the case that in such strongly phrased statements have a cause-effect relationship? If not then is it safe to assume that cause-effect relationships will be clearly demarcated with the use of indicators such as "as a result of, leads to, because of" and so on..

Sorry if the questions are novice, but I wish to get my concepts right.

Cheers

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grockit_andrea: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 357; Joined: Wed Aug 12, 2009 8:31 pm; Thanked: 128 times; Followed by:7 members

by grockit_andrea » Mon May 24, 2010 6:52 am

siddus wrote:Hi, thanks for your kind inputs.

I have couple of questions based on your response -

1) Can I argue that it may well be possible that the relationship is reversed - "There will be lots of balloons ==> Its Jenny's birthday party". The lack of an indicator could leave the interpretation of the relationship open.

2) Can it be the case that in such strongly phrased statements have a cause-effect relationship? If not then is it safe to assume that cause-effect relationships will be clearly demarcated with the use of indicators such as "as a result of, leads to, because of" and so on..

Sorry if the questions are novice, but I wish to get my concepts right.

Cheers

1. No, you can't switch the causality in that statement. The statement doesn't say that ONLY Jenny's birthday party will have lots of balloons. It's possible that some completely unrelated event could also have lots of balloons. But since Jenny's party WILL have lots of balloons, then if there aren't lots of balloons, it's not Jenny's party.

2. I'm not sure I understand exactly what you mean here. Conditional logic often uses different ideas of cause and effect, which don't always conform to actual causality but are still crucial to understanding the necessary and sufficient conditions.

I've written a couple of articles on conditional logic, necessary and sufficient factors, etc., for BTG. If you search the archives, those might help answer some of your questions here.

Andrea A.
Grockit Tutor
https://www.grockit.com

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siddus: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 87; Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2010 8:36 am; Thanked: 3 times; Followed by:1 members

by siddus » Mon May 24, 2010 10:44 am

Thanks Andrea, I will go through your examples.

Would you be so kind to guide me in reference to the following points?

1. I have run through the LSAT CR book and have just started practicing questions a while back. I am using the 1000 series for practice questions. If you are aware of this particular collection of questions can you let me know if the difficulty level of the LSAT CR questions in this series is higher than the actual GMAT test?

2. Also, what do you think is a good accuracy while solving these questions. I am missing about 4 out of every 24 at an average.

3. I feel I am taking more time to solve these questions. The document recommends a time of 35 minutes for 24 questions, which is about 1.5 mins per question. I am doing 45-50 minutes at the moment and am not very happy with this. Sometimes I lose time thinking about a problem and other times I lose time in applying theoretical knowledge to a question. Do you feel this will improve as I practice more questions or am I making some other fundamental mistake here?

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grockit_andrea: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 357; Joined: Wed Aug 12, 2009 8:31 pm; Thanked: 128 times; Followed by:7 members

by grockit_andrea » Mon May 24, 2010 1:30 pm

Generally speaking, the hardest GMAT critical reasoning questions are about as hard as the medium-difficulty LSAT questions. I wouldn't worry at all about missing a few per section on the LSAT, especially if they're the tougher ones that come later in the section. As for timing, the pace of the LSAT requires that you move quickly, but on the GMAT, you have almost 2 minutes per question in verbal, so the time it's taking you is definitely acceptable at this point. Keep practicing, and your timing will improve, along with your accuracy.

Andrea A.
Grockit Tutor
https://www.grockit.com