Setup and Rule Diagrams

[Adam Tyson]

Generally speaking, frk, when templates are the right decision they will save you time in the game overall. If doing it with templates takes longer than doing it without, then templates were the wrong choice from the beginning! Here, I think templates are worth it - they save time and improve accuracy if done correctly.

Also, I respectfully disagree with what you said here:

that question requires a complete list of possibilities, which as we know is pretty much impossible with templates

Actually, doing the templates makes it much easier to see all the possibilities, because they will all fit within those templates! Question 18 can be answered in just seconds by simply looking at the two templates in which T has one building and seeing which ones it could be.

When time is short, choose the game with more questions and focus on accuracy, whatever strategy will provide that. Never take shortcuts or rush the process! Accuracy is more important than speed, always.

[frk215]

Generally speaking, frk, when templates are the right decision they will save you time in the game overall. If doing it with templates takes longer than doing it without, then templates were the wrong choice from the beginning! Here, I think templates are worth it - they save time and improve accuracy if done correctly.

Also, I respectfully disagree with what you said here:

that question requires a complete list of possibilities, which as we know is pretty much impossible with templates

Actually, doing the templates makes it much easier to see all the possibilities, because they will all fit within those templates! Question 18 can be answered in just seconds by simply looking at the two templates in which T has one building and seeing which ones it could be.

When time is short, choose the game with more questions and focus on accuracy, whatever strategy will provide that. Never take shortcuts or rush the process! Accuracy is more important than speed, always.

Thank you so much! That was actually a typo— i meant to say that a complete list of possibilities is practically impossible to do without templates, because you'd have to individually check every option while with templates you just check them off super easily.

That advice is extremely helpful by the way and I'll be sure to follow it from now on re. when running out of time choose the game with more questions and focus on accuracy over speed. (Of course the goal is to do all games, in time, all correctly but it's nice to have the strategy as a plan B!) Y'all are the best!!

[bshrib]

Hello there,

I have read several explanations but am still really struggling with understanding how to interpret Rule #3. Why is it not written out like this:

If the Trents own S, then the Yandells do not own I.

In other words, I guess what I'm asking is, in this case, how do you know which is the sufficient term and which is the necessary?

Thanks,
Beverly

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Beverly,

The rule you gave is a fundamentally different relationship than the one in this game. Let's take a step back, and think about the different possible conditional relationships. Conditional relationships at minimum have two terms, a sufficient term and a necessary term. Each of those terms can be either positive or negative, triggered by either the occurrence of a thing or the absence of that thing. Here's what each of them looks like

A B. Both the sufficient and necessary are positive. If you have A, you must have B. It's talking about knowing the presence of a necessary condition, by the presence of the sufficient condition. This is not what we have in this game. It doesn't say that If T owns the stable, then Y owns the inn. T owning the stable doesn't trigger anything. Y owning the inn also doesn't trigger anything.

A B Both the sufficient and necessary are negative. If you don't have A, you don't have B. In this case, the absence of A triggers the absence of B. This is not the situation here either. Our rule does not say if T doesn't own the stable than Y cannot own the inn.

A B Here, only the necessary condition is negated. It would mean that if something occurs, something else cannot occur. The presence of A triggers the absence of B. This is your suggestion. The rule would mean that if T owns the stable, Y cannot own the inn. But that's not the situation described by the rule either. The rule is all about knowing that T DOES own the stable or Y DOES own the inn. It never suggests that they absolutely cannot do so.

A B. This one means that if A doesn't occur, B has to occur. This is the relationship we have here! If you need to have either A or B, that means that if one of those is absent, the other has to be present. You know something based on the absence of an occurrence. If T doesn't own the stable, Y has to own the inn. If Y doesn't own the inn, T has to own the stable. That is the only way that we can write a rule that indicates that one of those two situations is required. One of those two ownerships is necessary in this game. That's why we put Y owning the inn in the necessary condition in the rule. The sufficient or the trigger is knowing that T doesn't own the stable.

You might wonder about the "or both" language. But note because our conditional doesn't have any necessary conditions from knowing that T owns stable/Y owns inn, we can have both. The ability for both conditions to occur is allowed by the structure of our conditional here.

Hope that helps!