How can one Discern Formal Logical vs Conditional Reason

[lathlee]

Dear LSAT Bible Admins.

I am so sorry I keep giving troubles and causing problems in similar issues. This is my asking.
This curiosity originated by the following conversation between Dave and me last week.

lsat/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14366

I asked originally what is the consistent bad habit that students consistently committee.

Then I asked David what does this mean? cuz I informed him that I thought we should only practice the ones we got incorrec :

Hi. David, Thank you so much for the last reply. It was tremendous help as always. Anyways, I want to clarify some misunderstanding that I seem to have with your post.

"Taking a practice test and then not studying the questions sufficiently. I see this happen all the time, and the real value in taking a PT is in going through the questions and learning from them. Some students fail to do that, or they only go over the ones they missed, and in doing so they deprive themselves of learning opportunities. "

" they only go over the ones they missed, and in doing so they deprive themselves of learning opportunities."


After i get any LSAT incorrectly, I practice the wrong ones over and over again until I am so sure I got it but do not go over the correctly got questions cuz test psychology stats show any test takers have at least 85% chance of getting the same question or same question with minor variations correctly even correctly got questions involved the process of making a choice based on some uncertainties in their mind if one got the question correctly in first place.

Then Dave Replied me back which I also replied him with this comment.

Hi Lathlee,

If I understand you correctly, the reason we recommend going over correct answers is that one pass through on an LSAT question is never enough to get all the info. By studying correct problems, you can learn how you could have done it faster and in a more definite way.

On the subject of MJ, I never thought anyone would ever even come close to matching him. But Lebron James is certainly in the running, which by itself is a monumental achievement. I personally think Lebron has a more versatile game and can do more things on the court, but a large part of that is his physicality. In their own ways, they are each the greatest (one as a shooting guard and the other as a forward), but overall I think Lebron is the more complete player (it's just the championships holding him back, but seriously he often has arrived at the finals with a weaker team; when you compare performance in the earlier rounds, Jordan was markedly worse than LBJ. It's just that once Jordan got to the final round, he never lost)). I like Steph Curry and have followed him since he was at Davidson, but he's not in the same league as either player in my opinion, and I think time will show that KD is better than Steph, especially as KD amps up his defense.

Thanks!
Dave Killoran

Hi. David

As I was reading your answer, I found it very interesting cuz I use what I learned from you to over the information asymmetric situation between you and I. When I said Correct question do not needed to be not repeat, I also meant and assumed that you would see it as one got the question correct under the reasonable time limit as in consumed like 1 min 10-20 seconds. which was my assumption, unstated fact. (I learned from you)

My definition of correct in practice in above meant in the same situation as the LSAT performance standard.

Yep you are right and my bad, if I got the question correct let's say wasting 3 minutes for 1 questions, then I need to go over that question again regardless of whether I got the question correct or not because I won't have such time privilege in actual lsat.

This conversation between David and me made me think.

One of significant reason that I know why i am so hang up about diagramming Conditional reasoning is
(also I bothered admins before with this issue)
that Conditional reasoning and formal logic shares some similarities In-terms of the indicators; All, Always, Never, etc. can be either used as to express Formal Logical indicators or Conditional reasoning indicators depends on the context.
(lsat/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14117)

So for simplified example, question asks the following. Stem: All Billionaires are academic geniuses. an academic genius is never the socialite. Question Stem: what must be true.

After prephrasing , now I make my mind and prepare that The answer contenders can contain MT or Formal Logic relationship expressed answer contenders. How can I discern what would be the correct answer choice if out of five possible contenders, three try to express in Formal Logic sense but another two express in Conditional reasoning sense Then, there seems to two choices for the final consideration.one is from Formal Logic and another is from Conditional logic sense,
The edited Part: I know the correct answer,in this instance, must pass the Fact Test. but in a question of difficulty level high up where there are a lot of more premises.

Another question I ask is there effective technique exist or lesson or practices you guys recommend for students to build a right habit or intuition , to discern the pattern or recognize the direction of test taker which of the two reasoning will be used when a question can express either one group term? Then apply to my prephrasing step of getting a question correct then get the answer little bit more quick and easily? (I know statically there is more Conditional reasoning than Formal Logic questions. )
Prior, I didn't care about the discerning quickly enough before becuz I was confident that I can eventually recognize and figure the correct answer if the question seems to ask one of the two logical reasoning structure only.

but after Dave's reply regarding going over the correction question again too made me think differently about this issue, and as always, Dave is correct: any time I can Save during LSAT would provide good Advantages for a test taker. Cuz Dave's answer enlightened me with a great wisdom, any time I can save can be used for other questions that I tend to have difficult time.

I am sure I ask behalf of many test takers out since as all test takers know of, even saving 0.2 second in one question can result in getting another question in LSAT correctly or Not.

[lathlee]

The reason I am so bothered with these relationships between the Formal logic vs Conditional reasoning ambiguity which the correct answer can be either of the one, conditional reasoning or Formal Reasoning when using indicators such as; All, Always, Never, etc. (the indicators to express either one of them): The test makers have tremendous advantage of confuse the test takers until the last moment of revealing with concealing the nature of which logical reasoning they might use, Which I hate

In other words.i want to know what kind of mindsets test makers have when presenting a situation which can be either; how the test makers are thinking of using these kinds of indicator ambiguity
in order to confuse the test takers. I want come out as TOP regardless of what kind of breakig ball they throw up at me. Lets supposed
The test makers are pitcher and the betters are the test takers. Lets say there is a better who earned tremendous reputation as throwing a curve of a mixture of slider and curve, aka Slove, and if i can have any peek at their mindset decide to throw this kind of breaking ball, i believe it would result in advantages for the better.

[Eric Ockert]

Hi Lathlee

There is no real absolute answer to your question about the difference between the two. Conditional rules such as "all" and "none" statements exist within formal logic.

The good news is that, typically, you won't see more than 1 or 2 Formal Logic questions on any given test these days. So, most of the time you see conditional rules, that's all you are going to need to think about. For me, I usually default to a standard conditional reasoning approach. I don't typically tap into that Formal Logic mentality until I see one of the "non-conditional" expressions such as "some", "not all", or "most" present somewhere in the stimulus or answer choices.

Also, regardless of whether the question deals with Conditional Reasoning or Formal Logic, the "all" and "none" expressions are the same. The inferences that they lead to are the same. The only thing that changes is the interaction of these classic conditional rules with other kinds of rules.

Hope that helps!