Sufficient and Necessary Conditions

[chelsealit]

I'm not sure if this is too general of an inquiry, but I'm finding that I often get confused when it comes to determining (for ex. in a Method of Reasoning Q) if the stimulus engaged in conditional reasoning. In particular, I've noticed that I get confused, in the midst of a random LR stimulus, what the "sufficient" and "necessary" conditions are. For example, one of the answer choices might be: "confuses what is sufficient for what is necessary". But I always find it very difficult to work out exactly what that means in relation to the stimulus. Are there any general tips (besides indicator words) I can use to break down these types of answers choices and distinguish which is the sufficient condition and which is the necessary condition?

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Chelsea,

Thanks for the questions! This is a topic that has come up a lot on our forum and blog, and so I'm going to start by referring you to a set of articles to read that I believe will help quite a bit. Then, if you have questions afterwards, just add them here and we'll help you out with them.

For further discussions of conditional reasoning, including an analysis of intuition vs technical knowledge, I'm going to refer you to a variety of resources here that you may find helpful:

• Avoid Real World Interpretations and Follow the Language: http://forum.powerscore.com/lsat/viewto ... p=216#p216
  
  One More Look on what Sufficient and Necessary Means (this is key so that when indicators aren't present, we know what we're doing): http://forum.powerscore.com/lsat/viewto ... 6166#p6166
  
  LSAT Conditional Reasoning: When To Diagram: http://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/bid/333 ... To-Diagram
  
  The PowerScore LSAT Blog, Conditional Reasoning articles - http://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/topic/l ... -reasoning. We write often about this concept, and there are over 20 articles here discussions all sorts of interesting conditional language and arrow relationships.
  
  My posts on this Forum, all searchable: lsat/search.php?author_id=63&sr=posts

This is just a small selection of the items we've published on this topic, so I encourage you to go beyond these and explore even more. I frequently write about conditional reasoning since it's so prevalent on the LSAT, so if you search my posts you can find me talking about it quite a bit.

Please let me know if that helps. Thanks!