#23 - Book Review: When I read a novel set in a city I know

[ellenb]

Awesome ! thanks sorry for the whole confusion! Know I know I really got it down

Regards,

Ellen

[Echx73]

TeamPowerScore,

MBT Page 30 Q#34 The correct answer is E. I was able to deduct A, B, C and D as wrong, but I was wondering if you could tell me how I can have answer E pass the Fact Test?

Sincerely, I thank you so much for your help!

Eric

[Nikki Siclunov]

Eric,

The stimulus exhibits conditional relationships, which can be simplified and combined into a conditional chain as follows:

Take writer seriously Writer knows city at least as well as I do Trust storyteller Increase enjoyment

Now, what do we know about Peter Lee's second novel? It's set in SF, and it passes the book reviewer's test "with flying colors." What does she mean by that? Clearly, she takes Peter Lee seriously, which means that Peter Lee knows SF at least as well as the book reviewer does. This prephrase immediately agrees with answer choice (E) - the book reviewer does not believe that she knows SF better than Peter Lee does.

Does that make sense? Let me know.

Thanks!

[mankariousc]

So, when I was looking through the wrong answer choices, I eliminated them for different reasons. Could you tell me whether my reasoning is wrong?

For A, I eliminated it because the stimulus says that it "increases enjoyment" but the answer choice says that she "enjoys" the novel. I interpreted that just because it increases her enjoyment, doesn't mean she actually enjoyed it. It could have just gone from really not enjoying to kind of enjoying it. Does that reasoning work?

For B, I had the same logic for the phrase "a city that the book reviewer knows well". The stimulus said that she most know it "As well as the author" but I took that to mean that she doesn't necessarily know it "well". Is that correct reasoning as well?

Thanks so much!

[Jonathan Evans]

Mankariousc,

I think your reasoning impeccable! Great job and good observations. There are often multiple ways to get rid of incorrect answers, but you are correct to inquire whether your reasoning is sound. It most certainly is.

[az305203]

I'm reviewing question #25 from page 2-83 of the Live Online book

I got the question correct, but even though I've had a lot of practice with Conditional Reasoning from other prep even before taking the class it still took me a lot of time to break down the stimulus and hone in on the most important information especially because it had a lot of superfluous details. The explanation doesn't break it down part-by-part with diagrams as some of the others do (though I saw there were diagrams provided in the responses), but are there any tips on how to cut through the fluff to dissect it more rapidly?

I chose E because it makes sense and all of the others were obviously worse, but the answers were also time consuming to approach because of the extra details.

For A I nixed it because "enjoys a novel" is different than "increased enjoyment of a good novel" - the stimulus qualifies that it is already good, so I spent time analyzing that detail.

For B I nixed it because the stimulus is talking about needing to trust the author when reading a novel set in a city the reviewer knows well not the reverse, so I spent time analyzing the qualifier of knowing the city well.

C's obvious.

For D I nixed it for the same reason I nixed B. But in the question explanation it says that you can quickly eliminate this one because it's talking about trusting a novel and the stimulus talks about trusting an author, however the stimulus says "...the required knowledge, I trust the storyteller, so I trust the tale," so again I spent time analyzing the relationship of "tale" because that can sort of be seen as a conditional relationship - 'if I trust a storyteller, then I trust a tale'.

And for E I wasted time hesitating to choose it because in the first sentence the stimulus specifically qualifies the first conditional relationship with "When I read a novel set in a city I know well, I must see that the writer knows the city...", and it is never stated that the reviewer knows San Francisco well so I questioned whether the rule would be triggered because I felt this would be an unwarranted assumption. The question explanation says that this is implied, but it feels like that generally goes against the commandments of Must Be True questions - stick to the facts stated in the stimulus, don't bring in new or outside information, don't assume details that aren't explicitly stated. I am constantly using "Nope, that was never mentioned" as reasoning for eliminating answers which do, in fact, turn out to be correct, and when I read the question explanations the reasoning is because those things were not mentioned so an MBT stimulus where the correct answer hinges on an implication is frustrating

TL;DR - It took a long time for me to break down the stimulus details because there were a lot of superfluous details, and the reasons why I eliminated the answer choices and ultimately chose the correct one were different than those given in the question explanation and were based on those superfluous details that the question explanation did not mention. Any tips/tricks?

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi AZ,

For this question (and many other questions) you'll find your speed improves a lot with a good prephrase. Must Be True questions are often overlooked questions for prephrasing because they don't always have that natural argument to help/hurt/analyze. But that doesn't mean we can't predict what we expect to see and work with the facts that we have. And we should!

I always start by reading through a stimulus and trying to make connections as I go. In this one, I read through the whole stimulus, then worked my way back from the end. We know that Lee's novel passed with flying colors. The novel was about San Francisco. We do know based on this stimulus that Lee must know it at least as well as the reviewer in order for Lee's book to pass the test. Passing the test means that the review can trust the storyteller and the tale.

In this case, since there are so many conditionals, I may draw out a chain.

Take writer seriously Writer knows city at least as well as I do Trust storyteller Increase enjoyment

The chain should keep me from making any mistaken reversals/negations as I work though the answer choices.

Let's look at the choices you considered. The big problem with answer choice (A) is that the stimulus only says that his enjoyment is increased if it is a GOOD book that he trusts. Not virtually any book, but a good book. It's true that the stimulus talks about "good books" but the answer choice says virtually any novel, so we aren't limited to only good books here. That's way too broad, and we can knock it out.

Answer choice (B) tries to use a mistaken reversal from trusting the storyteller to the writer knowing the city well. We can eliminate this one quickly. We don't need to analyze it very long once we see it's a mistaken reversal.

Answer choice (D) can be crossed off because we don't have this knowledge. We only know about books that take place in cities the reviewer DOES know well. We can't try to draw a must be true based on books that take place in other cities. Without information in the stimulus we can point to that supports the conclusion, it's wrong.

Answer choice (E) is correct---we must know that Lee knows San Francisco at least as well as the reviewer for it to pass the test.

It sounds like you are doing a good job analyzing your answer choices, but you aren't feeling confident moving eliminating the choices. Feel confident in your analysis, and move quickly. Once an answer choice is wrong for any reason, it's wrong.

Hope that helps!
Rachael

[az305203]

Hi AZ,

For this question (and many other questions) you'll find your speed improves a lot with a good prephrase. Must Be True questions are often overlooked questions for prephrasing because they don't always have that natural argument to help/hurt/analyze. But that doesn't mean we can't predict what we expect to see and work with the facts that we have. And we should!

I always start by reading through a stimulus and trying to make connections as I go. In this one, I read through the whole stimulus, then worked my way back from the end. We know that Lee's novel passed with flying colors. The novel was about San Francisco. We do know based on this stimulus that Lee must know it at least as well as the reviewer in order for Lee's book to pass the test. Passing the test means that the review can trust the storyteller and the tale.

In this case, since there are so many conditionals, I may draw out a chain.

Take writer seriously Writer knows city at least as well as I do Trust storyteller Increase enjoyment

The chain should keep me from making any mistaken reversals/negations as I work though the answer choices.

Let's look at the choices you considered. The big problem with answer choice (A) is that the stimulus only says that his enjoyment is increased if it is a GOOD book that he trusts. Not virtually any book, but a good book. It's true that the stimulus talks about "good books" but the answer choice says virtually any novel, so we aren't limited to only good books here. That's way too broad, and we can knock it out.

Answer choice (B) tries to use a mistaken reversal from trusting the storyteller to the writer knowing the city well. We can eliminate this one quickly. We don't need to analyze it very long once we see it's a mistaken reversal.

Answer choice (D) can be crossed off because we don't have this knowledge. We only know about books that take place in cities the reviewer DOES know well. We can't try to draw a must be true based on books that take place in other cities. Without information in the stimulus we can point to that supports the conclusion, it's wrong.

Answer choice (E) is correct---we must know that Lee knows San Francisco at least as well as the reviewer for it to pass the test.

It sounds like you are doing a good job analyzing your answer choices, but you aren't feeling confident moving eliminating the choices. Feel confident in your analysis, and move quickly. Once an answer choice is wrong for any reason, it's wrong.

Hope that helps!
Rachael

That was extremely helpful, thank you!!

[Rosepose24]

Hi
I managed to get the right answer but along the conditional reasoning chain I could not tell if the link between

"writer must know city well -> trust storyteller"

was a double arrow (if and only if) or single arrow (if --> then). Normally I would consider it a single arrow because if the writer knows the city well = novelist demonstrating the required knowledge" THEN --> reviewer trusts the story teller (necessary condition).

What messed me up was reading the reasoning thread to a previous question in the training type : #9 - A scientific theory is a good theory if it satisfies ..."
In the explanation for this question #9 on the forum the moderator says that a double arrow "if and only if" occurs because of a line that goes "X is good if it satisfies two requirements". Since IF is sufficient but the word requirement literally means necessary it became double arrowed.

This question #23 here, has the line " if/when X demonstrates the REQUIRED knowledge --> trust storyteller" in the stimulus. I wrote my reasoning out for both scenarios (whether it was if and ONLY if and also if it was not!) because it made B attractive as the former. Answer E stood out to me clearly as the correct answer anyways. However if not for E, this language would have fooled because of the similarity to the previous question above (#9). Similarity being that it appears to start with a sufficient indicator but has the literal word for necessary in it just like the other question. So why isn't it also a double arrow relationship then?

I know the two premises are different and that #9 is a double arrow for some reason and #23's conditional chain is not. Yet I can't explain why or how they differ or how to differentiate the next time something similar comes up. Could someone please see both that discussion and this stimulus and explain where I am making the mistake?

Sorry if this is written in a confusing way, I can clarify if required. Thank you in advance!

[tryingmyverybest]

How do we get "better" from "as least as well as"? I almost chose E, but this tripped me up. I didn't think that I could infer that they knew the city "better."