#6 - John’s literature professor believes that the ability

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[dabaum471]

Hi. I'm curious why letter A is wrong and letter E is correct. Though on the test I did put letter E as my answer, I want to make sure I understand the reasoning behind it, because upon further examination, I'm beginning tithing letter E looks like a Mistaken Negation of the conditional reasoning in the stimulus?

[Jon Denning]

Hi dabaum - thanks for the question! Let me see if I can help you out here

The conditional statements in this stimulus establish a few things for us:

1. If the professor is to be believed, then accurately judging the greatness of literary works requires years
of specialized training: accurately judge training

2. The professor has that training: prof training

3. The vast majority of the reading public does not have that training: public NO training

So we need to be careful about what inferences we attempt to draw! Namely, we can say with certainty that the vast majority of the reading public will not be able to accurately judge the greatness of works of literature, since they lack the required element for doing so: specialized training. And that's precisely what (E) tells us! It's simply a combination of the last sentence and the contrapositive of the first.

Diagrammed you'd have the following:

public NO training NOT accurately judge

(A), on the other hand, is a Mistaken Reversal trap, where just because the professor has the necessary condition satisfied (she has the specialized training) doesn't guarantee that we can go in reverse against the arrow in the first sentence and say that training tells us she can judge accurately! Put another way: meeting the term at the end of an arrow doesn't allow you to go backwards and arrive conclusively at the first, sufficient term.

Diagrammed it would look like this, where the arrows don't flow in a single direction:

accurately judge training professor

Note how we can't get from one end piece to the other without running into the pointy end of an arrow...that means we're stuck! So (A) is trying to get you to commit that classic error, and is therefore incorrect.

I hope that helps!

[rappel2]

Can you please explain why D is wrong? My thinking was that if the reading public doesn't have access to the specialized training but those who become literature professors do (that is how they become those professors) then they cannot be a part of the same group. Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

You're exaggerating what the stimulus said about the reading public, rappel2, and that is the trap of answer D. The stimulus said that the "vast majority" of the reading public does not have access to that kind of training. That's not the same as saying that NONE of the reading public have access to that level of training! It leaves room for a small minority to have the training, and that would include those literature professors that have it. Literature professors can, in fact, be part of the reading public - they are just in the minority who are able to judge the greatness of literature because of their specialized training!

[theamazingrace]

Hi, is answer choice A wrong because it could be true but does not have to be true while, answer choice E must be true? Or is there another reason why answer choice A is incorrect?

Thanks!

[KelseyWoods]

Hi Chizobao!

Yes, answer choice (A) is a statement that simply could be true, but not one that must be true. But answer choice (A) is also a Mistaken Reversal--a classic answer choice trap that it's important to recognize because it's a trick the test often uses to try to lure test takers into choosing an incorrect answer. Be sure to check out Jon's response (quoted below) which describes in detail why the conditional reasoning relationship in answer choice (A) does not follow from the conditional reasoning rules we have in the stimulus.

Hi dabaum - thanks for the question! Let me see if I can help you out here

The conditional statements in this stimulus establish a few things for us:

1. If the professor is to be believed, then accurately judging the greatness of literary works requires years
of specialized training: accurately judge training

2. The professor has that training: prof training

3. The vast majority of the reading public does not have that training: public NO training

So we need to be careful about what inferences we attempt to draw! Namely, we can say with certainty that the vast majority of the reading public will not be able to accurately judge the greatness of works of literature, since they lack the required element for doing so: specialized training. And that's precisely what (E) tells us! It's simply a combination of the last sentence and the contrapositive of the first.

Diagrammed you'd have the following:

public NO training NOT accurately judge

(A), on the other hand, is a Mistaken Reversal trap, where just because the professor has the necessary condition satisfied (she has the specialized training) doesn't guarantee that we can go in reverse against the arrow in the first sentence and say that training tells us she can judge accurately! Put another way: meeting the term at the end of an arrow doesn't allow you to go backwards and arrive conclusively at the first, sufficient term.

Diagrammed it would look like this, where the arrows don't flow in a single direction:

accurately judge training professor

Note how we can't get from one end piece to the other without running into the pointy end of an arrow...that means we're stuck! So (A) is trying to get you to commit that classic error, and is therefore incorrect.

I hope that helps!

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[jdavidwik]

I understand why E is correct and A is incorrect, but I have a question.

If an answer choice read: "A person with years of the specialized training has the ability to judge the greatness of literary works accurately," then that would be incorrect, i.e. not a strict inference which must be true? If so, would it be incorrect just due to the structure of the conditional reasoning here making it a Mistaken Reversal? Is it incorrect because, within the context of the conditional reasoning, the specialized training may not necessarily have resulted in the acquisition of the ability to judge the greatness of literary works accurately? If one thinks of the necessary condition as the specialized training, then any number of sufficient conditions could tell us that the specialized training was present from the conditional reasoning's structure. However, in this case, what else could have indicated to us that the necessary condition is present? Hasn't the author of the question defined the range of sufficient conditions here, i.e. just the the ability to judge the greatness of literary works accurately? These types of questions, i.e. the Mistaken Reversals that seem intuitively correct, are killing me so I am trying to find a way to nail them on a level other than the mere conditional reasoning structure, if that is possible. When time gets tight I may not have time to write down a series of conditional reasoning statements and their contrapositives, but maybe that is the only way to proceed?

[jdavidwik]

Hey guys,
I can see that it does come down to following the mechanics of writing out the conditional logic relationships and their contrapositives, which gives one, as Jon notes, the answer, which is a combination of the stimulus' last sentence and the contrapositive of the first. As Kelsey says, the test writers try to lure one into choosing answers like A, the Mistaken Reversal trap which one is more apt to fall into if not writing these relationships out and in a rush, thinking: professor > training > accurately judge, when it is actually professor > training < accurately judge. There is that extra step. Continued practice and writing out these relationships clarifies the sufficient and necessary conditions as well. I think by trying to avoid writing out these steps, and looking for an alternative, I created more issues for myself.