#24 - Advertisement: In today's world, you make a statement

[mpoulson]

Adam,

That was a great explanation and I get your point. I also misinterpreted the rules for multiple conditions and had to reread them to understand. I know now that the contrapositive of the statement necessitates that if you are not all of three things (D,A,S) then the statement fails and that would be a misrepresentation. Thanks.

[KhaliaCWilliams]

Hi! I came across this question, so the sole reason that E is incorrect is because there's a difference between sending a message and people actually understanding the message?

Thanks

[Zach Foreman]

Khalia,
Not exactly. The main problem with answer E, as Adam pointed out, is that the car is not necessarily involved. It states that recognition of the person is independent from ownership. They could be away from the car (in the grocery store?) or perhaps they don't even own the car yet but would choose to own it if they could.
Maybe it would be correct if it said "Almost no one would fail to recognize the kind of person who owns an SKX Mach-5", which removes the problematically ambiguous "chooses to own".

[anureet]

Hi wilu24,

To see why (B) is the better answer, try setting up the advertiser's claims as conditional statements. So the claim is about the SKX Mach-5:

owner of SKX dynamic & aggressive & successful

contrapositive: not dynamic or not aggressive or not successful not owner of SKX

(B) is another wording of the contrapositive. Since the question stem asks us to suppose the claims in the advertisement are true, then we can see from the contrapositive that if a person is missing any of the given attributes, then they would not be sending an accurate message by driving the SKX. (B) only mentions two of the attributes, but that is enough, since it asks you to suppose the owner was missing one or the other, either of which would be sufficient to conclude the owner was conveying an inaccurate representation to others by driving the SKX.

This is a Must Be True question, but we aren't given any truth claims about the relationship between dynamic, aggressive, and successful, which is why (A) can't be correct. We only know that all three are conveyed to others when one drives the SKX.

I was able to draw out the exact diagram as you above. However, for the contrapositive, I interpreted it as if you missing one of these attributes, you are not the owner of SKX ( as stated above). That is why I skipped option B because I simply thought that if you miss one of these attributes it does not mean you would misrepresent yourself but you just dont own the car in the first place.

[Beatrice Brown]

Hi Anureet! Thanks for your question, and happy to help you out with understanding this

First, great job drawing out the diagram of the conditional statement and the contrapositive!

Let's take a closer look at answer choice (B) and the stimulus to see how we can infer this statement from the claims in the advertisement.

As you correctly stated, if you are not dynamic or aggressive or successful, then you are not the owner of an SKX Mach-5. According to the original conditional statement, if you are the owner of an SKX Mach-5, then you have all three of these traits.

Although the conditional statement and its contrapositive do not directly mention the idea of misrepresenting oneself, the first sentence of the stimulus tells us that the car you own makes a statement about who you are as a person. So if you own an SKX Mach-5, then you are sending the statement to others that you are dynamic, aggressive and successful. If you fail to possess one of these traits and own an SKX Mach-5, you would be misrepresenting yourself, since owning this car sends a message to others that you have these traits when you do not in fact have these traits.

To sum up, the conditional statement tells us that being the owner of this car necessarily entails that one is dynamic, aggressive, and successful. If owners of this car must have these three traits, then failing to possess these traits but owning the car would be a misrepresentation of oneself since, according to the first sentence of the stimulus, the car you own sends a message about the person you are.

The key to making the connection between the conditional statement and the idea of "misrepresenting" oneself in answer choice (B) is combining the conditional statement and its contrapositive with the first sentence of the stimulus.

This is definitely a tricky question, but I hope this helps, and please let me know if you have any other questions!

[cgleeson]

Hi,
I think I see where I screwed up. I chose answer choice E, however I wasn't so sure because of the wording "almost no one" the wording in the stimulus is unambiguous which means it can't be mistaken which seems like a definitive statement to me.
Answer choice B was kind of spot on but the way I diagrammed it (definitely wrong on that) didn't seem right
DAS --> SKX
I thought B was stating:
~DAS-->SKX
even though looking at B is made sense to me. I think the diagramming threw me off, and it didn't help I didn't diagram it correctly I suspect.
Any suggestions?

[Robert Carroll]

Hi cgleeson,

I think diagramming here sometimes straitjackets the way we think about what's occurring here. Think instead of the stimulus - a person who owns the SKX Mach-5 sends an unambiguous message conveying dynamism, aggression, and success. The issue not resolved by the stimulus is this: is the person owning that car actually dynamic, aggressive, and successful? In order to "recognize" someone as something, as answer choice (E) discusses, the person has to actually be the way he/she is "recognized". If I perceive someone who isn't dynamic as dynamic, I am not recognizing that person as dynamic, but instead deceived as to their dynamism. So the message of the SKX Mach-5 is unambiguous, but whether that message matches reality is not dealt with at all. So I can't say what answer choice (E) says about anyone, much less almost all people.

Robert Carroll

[kaitlynwilliams00@gmail.com]

I understand why all of the other answers are incorrect, but I am still having a hard time understanding why B is correct.

So the diagram is SKX owner --> dynamic AND aggressive AND successful.
The contrapositive would be not dynamic OR not aggressive OR not successful --> not SKX owner.

B says that "anyone who is not both dynamic and successful would misrepresent himself or herself by being the owner of an SKX Mach-5". Wouldn't the owner just have to not be one or the other?

I might be reading too far into it but am a little confused on the conditional reasoning/the word "and"/"or" and it's interpretation in this one.

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Kaitlyn,

Thanks for the question! "Not both" actually means that you aren't at least one of the two, so it works the way you want it to here; it's not saying that you are automatically neither. Think about how that phrase works: if you aren't both rich and happy, it doesn't mean for sure you are neither, it simply means you aren't at least one.

That said, even if it did mean neither, this answer would still be correct. As soon as you aren't one or more of the attributes, it's a misrepresentation if you own the car.

Thanks!

[wisnain]

Hi, I'm curious about the first sentence in this stimulus.

Is "by" a sufficient indicator? In other words, can I diagram the first sentence as: car -> person?