Page 2-72 Conditional Possibilities vs Certainties Drill #4

[krosenow220]

Hi I am very confused on this drill, if you could please help that would be great!

I am especially confused, for example, on question #4 where it asks for the "could be true" items for "if O occurs, what:". How "could it be true" that N occurs; N does not occur. My question is doesn't N have to not occur (hence the crossed out N in the statement) in order for O to occur?

Similarly, I am also confused how in the second half of this question (If Q occurs) the answers for "could be true" include "o occurs, o does not occur, n occurs, n does not occur". Again, don't these have to in order for Q to occur?

Not sure why, but this part is not clicking with me very well. I would really appreciate your help! Thanks!

[Dave Killoran]

Hi K,

Thanks for the question! There's actually a separate section in the forum for Homework Drill questions that you might have missed, and this question has been addressed there are few times:

lsat/viewtopic.php?t=5968

lsat/viewtopic.php?t=4606

lsat/viewtopic.php?t=3763


I'll move your post to that subforum shortly!

The gist of this is that when O occurs, that doesn't tell you anything about N (to think so is a Mistaken Reversal). Think about it like this:

• If I do not get an A in history class, then I will be unhappy.
  
  So, knowing the above is true, let's say we later discover this person is unhappy. Does that tell us whether they received an A or not? No, because they could be unhappy for other reasons. The same logic applies here: all we know is that O occurred; that doesn't tell us anything about N. Hopefully that helps a bit, but also check out those explanations above. If it's still not clear, let me know and I'll clarify further!

Thanks!

[krosenow220]

Definitely could not find that section, thank you SO much!