Q14 - If Juan went to the party

[jlz1202]

D and E is so close, is E incorrect because of scope shift between its conclusion "will not win" and conclusion in the stimulus "unlike"?

Besides that, both are valid conditional reasoning:

A--> B
not B--> not A

and there is an extra sentence "this year...probably fair" which is absent in the stimulus.

Any thought would be appreciated!

[noah]

This is a tricky matching question! And you did figure out a problem with (E).

The stimulus has these components:

conclusion: highly unlikely that J occurred.

premises: If J --highly unlikely--> M.E(enjoyed)

M.E.

Let's do a sweep looking for conclusion mismatches:

(A) is a mismatch - it starts with "if so" we are looking for a conclusion that is based on something occurring, not a hypothetical.

(B) is OK (probably wrong because of the switch to positive from negative, but worth keeping around).

(C) is OK.

(D) is OK.

(E) is too strong - we need a high likelihood, not a "will" or "will not."

We're down to (B) - (D) as we look for premise mismatches based on If J --highly unlikely--> M.E(enjoyed) & M.E.

(B) seems OK until you look at the linkage within the premise:

Insurance --(most)--> Friendly
Insurance

We're supposed to hear about achieving friendly!

(C) boils down to this:

fair --(unlikely)--> winner won
likely winner won

And that's a bit off. We should hear that the winner won, not that it was likely the winner would win.

(D) boils down to this:

Missed --(quite unlikely)--> on time
on time

And concludes with quite unlikely missed. It's a match!

(By the way, (A) and (E) both also have premise mismatches, neither has a stated occurrence to match "Maria did enjoy the party.")

[samuelfbaron]

(D) really confused me because in the second sentence it stated the conclusion and premise in reverse!

Also what is confusing about this question is the 'unlikely' and 'not'. All the negatives made it difficult to diagram.

Am I correct to assume that the stimulus is valid reasoning?

A --> B
Not B, Not A. (contrapositive)

Is this how you diagram the stimulus? OR should it be:

A --> not B
B --> not A

[noah]

(D) really confused me because in the second sentence it stated the conclusion and premise in reverse!

Also what is confusing about this question is the 'unlikely' and 'not'. All the negatives made it difficult to diagram.

Am I correct to assume that the stimulus is valid reasoning?

A --> B
Not B, Not A. (contrapositive)

Is this how you diagram the stimulus? OR should it be:

A --> not B
B --> not A

It's tough to squeeze probably statements into conditional logic, but this argument seems valid.

For the record, I probably wouldn't diagram this during a real test, as it's pretty straightforward. If I did, I would write something like this:

Juan P --Prob--> ~ Maria enjoy
Maria enjoy --Prob--> ~ Juan P

[richietrentie]

I find it disconcerting to put a stimulus like this one into conditional logic form because I have worked under the impression that conditional logic implies a guarantee, and a stimulus like this one instead deals with probabilities.

That said, I wouldn't be able to solve a problem this abstract without some sort of notation, and so I scribbled something similar to what Noah wrote ( J --[highly unlikely]--> ME).

Although it did the job on this problem, will trying to fit a non-guarantee into conditional form ever come back to bite me?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[deedubbew]

I thought it was not okay to do contrapositives with quantities like "most" and "likely".

[RebekahD410]

Can someone please clarify how D is the correct answer? when I read this AC, I eliminated it because it looks like a mistaken reversal.
IF C missed bus its unlikely she was at work on time.
So it is unlikely C missed the bus since she was on time today.

Am I mixing up the indicators for the conclusion? is "since" a conclusion indicator?

[CarolL800]

Hi,
"Since" is a premise indicator. (Since this, therefore that.)

I approached this question with a diagram:

Juan went --> unlikely M enjoyed
M enjoyed
----------------------------------
unlikely Juan went

I looked over this to pin-point important characteristics:
1) there's 1 conditional premise
2) conclusion seems to be a contrapositive
3) "unlikely" is in 1 premise and conclusion (I'm not going to be looking exactly for "unlikely" but a similar word that isn't absolute.)

(A): Doesn't match our original stimulus... It mentions "eight teams" but doesn't mention it later on. Later, it introduces "goalie", which wasn't mentioned earlier... Too many variables here whereas in original, we only had 2 variables (Juan and Maria).

(B): It seems to have a transitive flow-- A--> B--> C (but our conclusion needs to be contrapositive)

K sells insurance
Most people who sell insurance are friendly
-----------------------------------------------------------------
CONC: K is probably friendly


(C): Lottery fair--> would not have been likely to win
would have been likely to win
-------------------------------------------------
CONC: Lottery probably unfair

This seems to follow the contrapositive structure-- I'll keep it for now-- but will come back to it later.

(D) C missed bus--> unlikely that she'd be on time
she was on time
---------------------------------------------------
CONC: Unlikely that C missed bus

This one has 1 conditional premise, has contrapositive, and the probability aspect ("unlikely") switches sides in premise & conclusion here just like the original stimulus-- unlike answer choice C. In order for answer choice C to work, I think it should look something like this:

Lottery fair--> would not have been likely to win
won (taking out the probability aspect)
-------------------------------------------------
CONC: Lottery probably unfair

(E): 2 premises instead of just 1 premise like our original stimulus (A---> B)
If I were to diagram (E), I think it would look like this:

Election fair--> P will probably not win
Eletction probably fair
-----------------------------------------------
P will not win

[JamieY105]

I know this isn't essential to the argument, but I don't believe this argument is valid.

I think it about it as if there are many parallel universes, some where Juan goes to the party and others where he doesn't.

If there were 7 of these parallel universes, the outcomes could be like this:
1. J attends, M enjoys
2. J attends, M enjoys
3. J attends, M doesn't enjoy
4. J attends, M doesn't enjoy
5. J attends, M doesn't enjoy
6. J attends, M doesn't enjoy
7. J doesn't attend, M does enjoy

In the 6 situations where J attends, it is unlikely M enjoys the party, only two out of 6. At the same time Maria attends the party there times and two out of the three times J was at the party; rendering the conclusion of this argument to be invalid.