Q20 - The company president says

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Question Type:
Sufficient Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
The argument concludes that unless what Grimes or the company president said was incorrect, the contract was violated. It offers as support that the company president says that significant procedural changes were made before either she or Yeung was told about them. It also states that according to Grimes, the contract requires that the company president or any lawyer in the company's legal department be told about proposed procedural changes before they are made.

Answer Anticipation:
The issue with this argument is that we don't know whether Yeung is the only lawyer in the company's legal department. If there are other lawyers in the company's legal department, the argument is vulnerable to possibility that one of those other lawyers were told about the proposed procedural change before it was made.

Correct answer:
(C)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) is too weak. This answer does rule out the possibility that another lawyer in the company's legal department was told about the proposed procedural changes before they were made.

(B)

(C) is correct. This answer guarantees that either the contract was violated, that what Grimes said was incorrect, or that what the company president said was incorrect.

(D) reverses the logic the statement made by Grimes.

(E) rephrases the statement made by Grimes.

Takeaway/Pattern: Reasoning Structure: Conditional Logic

#officialexplanation

[abc3210]

Could someone explain why C is correct please?
Also, how can we diagram the last sentence?

Thanks in advance!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Could someone explain why C is correct please?
Also, how can we diagram the last sentence?

Thanks in advance!

To convert this one to conditional logic (which I don't think I would on this one), I'd ignore a significant portion of the argument--the part about what the company president and Grimes said.

~tell president + ~tell a company lawyer --> contract violated
~tell president
-------------------------------------------
contract violated

Assumption: ~tell a company lawyer

Hope that helps!

[andrewgong01]

What confused me in this SA question was the conclusion starting to say "unless what Grimes or the president said is incorrect then the contract was violated", was the "unless" part of the conclusion basically something we could ignore?

I had trouble in the question because I was unsure of how do we also prove the unless part. In other words, we need to prove the contract was violated but what was the role of "If Grimes or the President were not incorrect" because it seems like this was not needed to draw the missing gap of the argument. Was it just merely there to serve as a "hedge" to defend against a possible falsity in the premise (e.g. the contract is only violated if it has been leaked to competitors) and in a SA question we can just ignore the hedge in drawing the missing link?

[CharleneT786]

Hi, my question is, doesn't (E) basically say the same thing (C) does?

Is (E) incorrect because it's stating a conditional rule that adds to the premises, but doesn't exclude the possibility that a lawyer was told about the changes before they were made?

This brings me to another question, are there any tips to seeing conditional logic in answer choices vs. non-conditional answer choices? Are any more likely to be correct in certain question types?

Thanks!!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For reference, my thought process for this question was:

Since the conclusion is:
Violated —> Grimes and company president are correct

and the premises are:
President said: President + Yeung not informed
Grimes said: ~Violated —> president or any lawyer informed

Connecting the premises to the conclusion:
President and lawyer(s) not informed —> Violated —> Grimes and company president are correct

The conclusion assumes that the president and Grimes are correct, so to make sure that this argument stands, the answer choice has to make sure that neither the president nor any lawyer was informed of the changes.

[ohthatpatrick]

Correct answers are usually conditional statements in
SUFFICIENT ASSUMPTION
and
PRINCIPLE-SUPPORT

They are often correct (but more often incorrect) in
NEC ASSUMP
and
INFERENCE - must be true

No matter what, when you see conditional answer choices, you're mainly checking whether they correctly reflect the order of thinking in the argument. One of the most common ways for the test writers to create a trap answer is to do an illegal reversal or negation of the argument being made.

If we had an argument that went, "Paul is tall. Thus, he loves his Mom."
then there would be trap answers like
(A) if you're not tall, you don't love your Mom
or
(A) if you love your Mom, you're tall

===============

Your thinking on this problem is off in a couple ways. Most importantly, you have the conclusion diagrammed wrong.

If you haven't yet, you should memorize that "unless" = "if not".

CONC: If Grimes and the Pres are NOT incorrect, the contract was violated
(cleaning up the double negative)
CONC: If Grimes and the Pres are correct, the contract was violated.

So we're essentially trying to prove that the contract was violated, and along the way we are going to trust the truth of what Grimes and the Pres said.

How do you prove this contract was violated? According to Grimes,
if neither the Pres nor any lawyer was told about the changes before they were made, then the contract was violated.

What did the Pres say?
She and Yeung weren't told about the changes before they were made

Okay, have we proven the contract was violated?
To do so we have to establish two things:
1. the pres wasn't notified
2. no lawyer in the company's legal department was notified

We have established #1, because the Pres wasn't notified.

We have no idea about #2, so all we need this answer to do for us is to convince us that no lawyer in the company's legal department was notified.

(C) delivers us that idea.
(E) says, "IF none of them were notified .... yada yada yada."

That's doesn't give us the concrete fact we're looking for. It only says "IF, hypothetically, the fact you're looking for is true, then something else would also be true."

The most important takeaways for you from this problem are:
1. Find conclusion (need to prove the contract was violated)
2. Seek out a rule for what we need to establish to prove the contract was violated (we must establish that Pres wasn't told and Lawyers weren't told)
3. See whether we can establish any of that (we know Pres wasn't told).
4. Articulate what's missing in order to prove contract was violated (lawyers weren't told)
5. Find an answer that convinces you that the lawyers weren't told.

Hope this helps.

[CharleneT786]

Thank you! This was very helpful

[arghavans178]

I found this question to be a little difficult and I thought diagramming would help the answer choices were mostly in a negated form and I think I just couldnt follow the order. I chose A as my answer but maybe thats because I didnt really understand the stimulus or the other answer choices.
Could you please explain this question using diagramming for both the stimulus and the answer choices.

Thank you!

[ohthatpatrick]

Sure, we can look at it conditionally, but just remember you have multiple experts on this thread saying, "Hey, we wouldn't approach this one conditionally", so make sure you're trying to also understand it the way we would see it / approach it.

The way I'd approach it is this:
1. Find conclusion (need to prove the contract was violated)
2. Seek out a rule for what we need to establish to prove the contract was violated (we must establish that Pres wasn't told and Lawyers weren't told)
3. See whether we can establish any of that (we know Pres wasn't told).
4. Articulate what's missing in order to prove contract was violated (we need to know that lawyers weren't told)
5. Find an answer that convinces you that the lawyers weren't told.


Conditionally, the conclusion we're trying to prove is:
If G's and P's claims are true, then the contract was violated.


Evidence:
Grimes: If neither the president nor any lawyer in the legal department was told about changes beforehand, then the contract was violated.

Pres: Neither I nor Yeung were told about the changes beforehand.


Gap: We would need to know that
if "neither the President nor Yeung were told about the changes beforehand" then "neither the President nor any lawyer in the legal department was told about the changes beforehand".


more symbolically ...

CONC:
G and P's claims true --> C violated

G's claim:
~P and ~L's --> C violated

P's claim:
~P.

Gap:
~L.



(A) and (B) aren't conditional, so we can't diagram those.

We could say
(A) says Y is an L.
(B) says ~G and ~Y.
(C) ~L.
(D) P --> not C violated
(E) ~L's --> C violated


Let me know if this made anything more confusing

[RuonanW40]

Hi Patrick,
I understand why C is a sufficient condition when I see the conclusion as " If both Grimes and the company president were correct, then the contract was violated". However, I do not know how this works when I see the conclusion as "If the contract was not violated, then at least one of them (Grime and the company president) was incorrect.
Thanks,
Rona

Correct answers are usually conditional statements in
SUFFICIENT ASSUMPTION
and
PRINCIPLE-SUPPORT

They are often correct (but more often incorrect) in
NEC ASSUMP
and
INFERENCE - must be true

No matter what, when you see conditional answer choices, you're mainly checking whether they correctly reflect the order of thinking in the argument. One of the most common ways for the test writers to create a trap answer is to do an illegal reversal or negation of the argument being made.

If we had an argument that went, "Paul is tall. Thus, he loves his Mom."
then there would be trap answers like
(A) if you're not tall, you don't love your Mom
or
(A) if you love your Mom, you're tall

===============

Your thinking on this problem is off in a couple ways. Most importantly, you have the conclusion diagrammed wrong.

If you haven't yet, you should memorize that "unless" = "if not".

CONC: If Grimes and the Pres are NOT incorrect, the contract was violated
(cleaning up the double negative)
CONC: If Grimes and the Pres are correct, the contract was violated.

So we're essentially trying to prove that the contract was violated, and along the way we are going to trust the truth of what Grimes and the Pres said.

How do you prove this contract was violated? According to Grimes,
if neither the Pres nor any lawyer was told about the changes before they were made, then the contract was violated.

What did the Pres say?
She and Yeung weren't told about the changes before they were made

Okay, have we proven the contract was violated?
To do so we have to establish two things:
1. the pres wasn't notified
2. no lawyer in the company's legal department was notified

We have established #1, because the Pres wasn't notified.

We have no idea about #2, so all we need this answer to do for us is to convince us that no lawyer in the company's legal department was notified.

(C) delivers us that idea.
(E) says, "IF none of them were notified .... yada yada yada."

That's doesn't give us the concrete fact we're looking for. It only says "IF, hypothetically, the fact you're looking for is true, then something else would also be true."

The most important takeaways for you from this problem are:
1. Find conclusion (need to prove the contract was violated)
2. Seek out a rule for what we need to establish to prove the contract was violated (we must establish that Pres wasn't told and Lawyers weren't told)
3. See whether we can establish any of that (we know Pres wasn't told).
4. Articulate what's missing in order to prove contract was violated (lawyers weren't told)
5. Find an answer that convinces you that the lawyers weren't told.

Hope this helps.

[ZhengL938]

Evidence:
Grimes: If neither the president nor any lawyer in the legal department was told about changes beforehand, then the contract was violated.

Pres: Neither I nor Yeung were told about the changes beforehand.


Gap: We would need to know that
if "neither the President nor Yeung were told about the changes beforehand" then "neither the President nor any lawyer in the legal department was told about the changes beforehand".


more symbolically ...

CONC:
G and P's claims true --> C violated

G's claim:
~P and ~L's --> C violated

P's claim:
~P.

Gap:
~L.

Hi ohthatpatrick, I am not sure if my logical knowledge is right, but I assume the first sentence in the stimulus saying "significant procedural changes were made before either she or Yeung was told about them" as "At least one of president and Yeung was told after procedural changes were made."

And that does not necessary means "neither Yeung nor president was told before changes were made."

Is something wrong with my thinking?
Thanks in advance!

[ohthatpatrick]

Yeah, it's some weird tic of English that you don't interpret either as "at least one" in that context.

If my brother and I said, "Awwww ... you threw away the the rest of the pizza before either of us had a chance to eat it?"

That does NOT mean that at least one of us got to eat the pizza.
It means that neither of us got to eat the pizza.

If we had said, "you threw away the rest of the pizza before both of us had chance to eat it", that would sound a little weird, like we're referring to both of us at the same time getting a chance.

When we're using the "before either of us had the chance" formulation, it better conveys each of us, separately didn't get a chance.