#5 - Elena: While I was at the dog show, every dog that

[Dave Killoran]

Hi D,

Thanks for the question! Some thoughts here:

How do we know that this is not true: "All the white dogs that Elena saw growled at her"?

We don't that it's not true, but we also don't know that it is undeniably true, and since that's the standard of the question stem, this answer is wrong. In other words, this answer could be true since maybe she only saw white poodles, but we're asked for what must be true, so this doesn't meet that standard since there could have been other white non-poodles that she saw.

Note that the problem with (D) is the phrase "white dogs;" we know that the white poodles growled at Elena, but we don't know about all the white dogs she saw.

Thanks!

[g_lawyered]

Hello,
While I got the correct answer choice. My conditional reasoning match the correct answer it allowed me to infer the only white poodles (not about white dogs in general nor gray dogs). Can anyone explain where I went wrong in my analysis because the explanations above indicate that my 2nd conditional reasoning statement is incorrect. Here is how I diagrammed it:

1: Dog growled --> white poodle
~ white poodle --> ~ dog growled

2: White poodle she saw --> growled
~ growled ---> ~ white poodle she saw

I made chain relationship of:
~ white poodle --> ~ growl --> ~ white poodle she saw

From this relationship I used process of elimination and found that only answer choice C is correct. Can anyone point me in the direction so I can make better use of my conditional reasoning.

Thanks in advance,
Gabriela

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Gabriela,

Your conditional diagrams were actually quite good. But notice something about the conditional chain you drew:

white poodle growl white poodle

That conditional chain starts and ends in the same place. That means there's a bi-conditional relationship between the two conditional statements. In other words, it's a two-way arrow in both the original and the contrapositive, like this:

white poodle growl
white poodle growl

Both your conditional chain, and the more-powerful double arrow diagram that the explanation shows, validate answer choice C. If it's not a white poodle (e.g., if it's a gray poodle) then it did not growl at her.

Let me know if this helps!

[MountainGirl234]

Hi PowerScore,

I got this question right, but I wanted to ask a very nitpicky question:

I diagrammed this as:

dog that growled --> white poodle
white poodle I SAW --> growled at me

Based on this, I didn't think it was accurate to combine and create a bi-conditional because the necessary condition of the first diagram and the sufficient condition of the second sentence was similar, but not identical. Couldn't it be the case that a dog that growled at her was still a white poodle, but she didn't see it? As in, it could have been out of sight but still a white poodle that growled?

We've been taught to not make any assumptions (or at least non-common sense assumptions), so I refrained from chaining this together even though it is so similar. I still got the question right because I relied on these two separate diagrams and saw that NOT white poodle --> NOT dog that growled, and I saw that as enough to chose C.

Am I thinking about this correctly?

[KelseyWoods]

Hi MountainGirl!

It's good to be reading closely! But sometimes when we start reading closely we end up overthinking it a bit. Here, it's safe to assume that there's not much difference between "white poodle" and "white poodle I saw." How would she know the dogs growling at her were white poodles if they were out of sight?

Oftentimes with conditional reasoning in logical reasoning questions, the same condition might be worded slightly differently in different sentences. Sometimes the differences in wording is significant and they're not actually the same condition. But we need to be able to recognize when the statements are actually equivalent so that we can make inferences by combining multiple conditional statements. In this case, the difference between the conditions is not significant because it's reasonable to assume that if she knows the dogs that growled at her were white poodles, then she must have seen them.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[cgleeson]

Hi,

I got this one correct but I want to make sure my reasoning is correct. Answer choice C states no gray dogs, the stimulus doesn't mention anything about gray dogs.
A - I have no idea how many types of white dogs were at the dog show
B - There is no mention of gray poodles
D - This was hard to get past but my reasoning was I have no idea about any other type of white dog at the dog show, I only know about the white poodles that growled
E - I don't see gray poodles being mentioned in the stimulus so this answer choice (seemed to me) that it wanted me to make an assumption. This is a MBT question, I can only make valid deductions from the stimulus above.

Does this reasoning make sense?
Many thanks in advance.

[Adam Tyson]

While the stimulus says nothing explicit about grey dogs, Chris, and nothing about dogs other than poodles, you CAN make some inferences about those dogs. Since every dog that growled at Elena was a white poodle, then any dog that was NOT white or NOT a poodle did NOT growl at her. That's the contrapositive! Grey dogs, brown dogs, green dogs - none of them growled at her because they are not white. German Shepherds, Dachshunds, Labs - none of those growled at her either, because they are not poodles.

We can't say anything about what she saw or did not see at the dog show - that's based on outside information. But when it comes to growling, we know everything!

[cgleeson]

Excellent, thank you Adam

While the stimulus says nothing explicit about grey dogs, Chris, and nothing about dogs other than poodles, you CAN make some inferences about those dogs. Since every dog that growled at Elena was a white poodle, then any dog that was NOT white or NOT a poodle did NOT growl at her. That's the contrapositive! Grey dogs, brown dogs, green dogs - none of them growled at her because they are not white. German Shepherds, Dachshunds, Labs - none of those growled at her either, because they are not poodles.

We can't say anything about what she saw or did not see at the dog show - that's based on outside information. But when it comes to growling, we know everything!