Q18 - Vanessa: All computer code must

[ohthatpatrick]

What does the Question Stem tell us?
Principle - Contradict (inconsistent = contradicts)

Break down the Stimulus:
V: all code is written by two people at one workstation.
J: Most productive programmers must be allowed to work alone.

Any prephrase?
Not sure how we can accommodate both of those! If we're dealing with programmers who AREN'T the MOST productive, then Jo's rules ceases to matter. It sounds like if we're dealing with one of the most productive programmers, we're in disagreement. I guess we only have to "allow" them to work together. We don't have to force them to work together. So maybe you might get most productive programmers who are happy to work in pairs, even though we allow them to work alone.

Correct answer:
D

Answer choice analysis:
A) Since they're not-most-productive, we only care about V's rule. They must work at one station. They do.

B) Same as A.

C) Same as A.

D) Since Yolanda is most productive, we must allow her to work alone. It doesn't look like we have. We assigned her.

E) Same as A.

Takeaway/Pattern: This ended up being easier than I expected. V and J's rules only conflict when you're dealing with the most productive programmers. Since the four wrong answers didn't deal with those sorts of programmres, J's rule was irrelevant and we only had to check to see if we assigned them to work together at one workstation.

#officialexplanation

[a3friedm]

This took me much longer to understood than i'd care to admit so I'd like to make sure I understood it properly.

Vanessa says, all computer code must be written by a pair of programmers working at a single workstation.

Jo claims, The best (most productive) programmers should be able to work alone.

(A) Niether of which are the most productive, so it's consistant to have them write as a pair.

(B) same as A

(C) again, neither are the most productive

(E) Same as the previous


(D) Two of the most productive are forced to write together which violates Joe's statement.

After writing this explanation, I don't see why it took me so long.

[ohthatpatrick]

That was an awesome post ... I like how after conquering the question, you were ashamed of yourself.

It is definitely a weird, atypical question, so that's probably why it gave you pause as you worked through it initially. But once we see where the correct answer comes from, it ends up seeming more obvious.

The real lesson here, I think, is that it's helpful sometimes to take a brisk first pass through answer choices just to see if something clicks as being a much better answer than others.

I can imagine myself, not really knowing what I'm looking for on this weird question, thinking too hard about the first few answers because I'm not sure how to measure/examine them.

This question is essentially saying "all of these are consistent EXCEPT" ... which is the same as asking "which of these is INCONSISTENT" ... on LSAT, 'inconsistent' = 'contradictory'

I would think of this question as "must be false" and the correct answer to "must be false" questions normally goes against some conditional/absolute statement.

Jo had a couple wishy-washy thoughts .. "most" / "typically" / "generally" ... these are strong words, but not absolutes. They allow for exceptions, so you can't really contradict them.

Meanwhile, we have two absolute statements:
i. All code must be written by a pair of programmers
ii. The most productive programmers must be allowed to work by themselves

So I scanned the answers to see if any were contradicting the first idea, but all five end with "they have been assigned to work together at a single workstation". So the only other option is to contradict the second idea, which (D) does. (And if we're looking to break that rule, we should be scanning the choices looking for someone to be identified as a 'most productive programmer').

Hope this helps.

[a3friedm]

Thanks patrick! That's really good advice for me to keep in mind

[erikwoodward10]

Got this right because I chose the best wrong answer. But they're all wrong and I think that this question should have been thrown out. Here's my breakdown:

The stimulus basically gives us two conditional relationships:

If code-->Written by pair at single station

Most productive-->allowed to work alone.

Here are the answer choices with my reasoning:

A) This is consistent because it doesn’t go against any of the rules. We start with two of average productivity, and that doesn’t fit either of the SCs or their contrapositives, so we can't make a judgement based off this statement.
B) Again, consistent because “not the most productive” doesn’t trigger any of the SCs. This is OK by omission.
C) This is consistent either by omission, or by a lose interpretation of the contrapositive of Jo’s statement. They work together (so assume that they aren’t allowed to work by self)→ They are not the most productive. Either way, its OK. Wrong.
D) This triggers the SC in Jo’s statement, so Yolanda should be allowed to work by herself. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that she does. We aren’t talk if she was allowed to work by herself or not. This seems to trigger by omission as well. Going with this because it is the best of all the bad answers but I really don’t understand it.
E) Consistent with the first statement.

We don't have enough information to say that answer choice D violates Jo's statement. Jo says that the most productive programmers must be allowed to work by themselves, not that they must. Answer choice D only tells us that they do work together--we have no idea if they were allowed to work by themselves, so this isn't actually a violation of Jo's statement.

Thoughts?

[hayleychen12]

I'm posting here to remind myself of the stupidity that should never occur again ever!!!
Found out that I simply ignored the EXCEPT, after spending 2 or more minutes on this one........