Q8

[ShariS937]

I'm not sure I am thinking about this type of conditional problem well...

Given (chunk):
R
S

Therefore, which must be true?

If I draw out all the answer choices, NH chunk can be in one of two places, so can RS chunk. Q is always in position 4, by itself. If not for the rule that RS is a chunk, Q could have S (defeating the MBT).

N H R Q
__ I S __

R N H Q
S __ I __

R N H Q
S __ I __

N H R Q
__ I S __ - If I'm looking for what changes from CBT to MBT, when I remove S from floater-land and bundle it with R, I'd pick D. D is correct - but do I have the reasons right? (RS --> only Q in 4, every single time)

S N H Q
R __ I __ - This is the tempting answer bc S forces the chunk to be in column 1, which forces all the remaining elements. Why is it not correct? (bc this would mean S --> RS ?)

*apologies for the messy drawing, formatting is tricky.

Thanks!
s

[Laura Damone]

Sorry for the delayed response here. We had a technical difficulty that caused your post to be mistakenly categorized and it slipped through the cracks.

The first step in a conditional question is to represent the new condition. The next step is to figure out everything that must be true. Don't test answers until you've done that other work!

These steps are easiest to follow when the new condition allows you to place elements directly into your gameboard: draw a new game board and build in the new rule.

This is more challenging with a new condition that doesn't give you a concrete placement. Here, we're given an RS vertical chunk, but we don't know where to place it. We can still make a lot of inferences, though!

Start by writing out the RS chunk on your paper. Since R is part of the third rule, I look there to see what else must be true. Since R can't go with H now, I must. So, we have an IH vertical chunk, too. I write that down beside the RS chunk.

Since we can only have two vertical chunks, Q and N must go solo. And rule two tells us that N will have to immediately precede the HI chunk. I build the N in to the left of HI, and write Q out separately.

Now let's look at the game board. Since at most one song gets more stars than Q, Q always gets 3 stars or 4 starts. 3 stars wouldn't work here because we could only have one 4-star song. N is the only other song that will be in a group by itself, and it can't go in the 4-star group because of the rule 2. That means Q is in group 4, which answers the question.

The rest of the elements spread over groups 1-3 in one of two ways: 1- SR ; 2-N ; 3- IH OR 1- N ; 2- IH ; 3- SR.

Try to go through this process before testing answers on all conditional questions, and only plug and chug if you get stuck.

Hope this helps!