- Posts: 14
- Joined: Mar 31, 2020
- Tue Jun 16, 2020 2:55 am
#76245
I tend to struggle with reading too much into things and often times it works against me. I have trouble finding the appropriate balance. Here are a few examples:
1) 64/1/13: The stimulus compares two groups of joggers of equivalent size. One group stretches and the other doesn’t. Since the number of injuries is roughly the same in both groups, the author concludes that stretching doesn’t help to prevent injuries. Does the term “help” in this conclusion imply a partial cause? Does the same thing go for the term ‘contributes’ when found in a causal conclusion? The main problem, however, was that I overthought the answer choices. My preprase was that the group who stretched had more injuries, so even though the number of injuries ended up being the same between both groups, it was not because stretching didn’t help. My overthinking caused me to struggle with answer choices B, C and D for the following reasons:
B) If they had difficulty stretching it means that perhaps they didn’t actually stretch well enough for the stretching to work. So, it’s not that stretching didn’t work, it’s that they were unable to do it properly for it to have an effect on the injuries.
C) If the majority of the injuries were falls/collisions that were not helped by stretching, what about the other injuries that made up the minority, the injuries outside of falls/collision? Just because stretching didn’t affect the majority, it still could have affected other types of injuries and perhaps the group that stretched had more of those injuries, so stretching in fact did help. I see how there are a lot of assumptions and leaps here and how that would be a red flag. Being uncertain with the other two, however, made me skeptical about it. Is the problem with this one the word “flexibility?
D) This was the closest to my paraphrase but the wording felt a tad ambiguous and did not feel entirely synonymous with my paraphrase for me to feel confident with it. Essentially this answer choice says, as I perceived it, ‘if you are prone to injuries then you tend to stretch’. The terms in the answer choices felt too vague with “more prone” and “more likely”. It just didn’t feel strong enough and it felt like I couldn’t conclusively attribute this to the people who stretched in the stimulus. Those who stretched in the stimulus could have very easily not been those people discussed in this answer choice.
2) I know the general rule is that when two negatives are set side by side in a sentence and apply to a single concept they cancel out making the expression positive . For instance, “not unlikely” equates to “likely”. When dealing with something like “not unhappy” , however, does that apply because if you aren’t unhappy it doesn’t necessarily mean you are happy… you could be neutral and unphased. This is another area where I overthink. When is it okay to make the logical opposite of something by adding/removing a negative prefix (opposite of unlikely is likely, opposite of unorganized is organized) vs when you just negate it (opposite of happy is not happy)?
Adding to this, are all “un” words, or any words with negative prefixes, the same as putting “less” in front of that word? I have seen “unlikely” be equivalent to “less likely”. Are all “un” words, or any words with negative prefixes, the same as putting “less” in front of that word? If the logical opposite of “likely” is technically “not likely”, then something that is “less likely” doesn’t necessarily feel like it is entirely accurate. Does this apply just because of the nature of the word “likely”? Would ‘unorganized’ equate to ‘less organized’? The level of certainty between “not” and “less” with regard to the meticulousness of this test is definitely something I would tussle over.
1) 64/1/13: The stimulus compares two groups of joggers of equivalent size. One group stretches and the other doesn’t. Since the number of injuries is roughly the same in both groups, the author concludes that stretching doesn’t help to prevent injuries. Does the term “help” in this conclusion imply a partial cause? Does the same thing go for the term ‘contributes’ when found in a causal conclusion? The main problem, however, was that I overthought the answer choices. My preprase was that the group who stretched had more injuries, so even though the number of injuries ended up being the same between both groups, it was not because stretching didn’t help. My overthinking caused me to struggle with answer choices B, C and D for the following reasons:
B) If they had difficulty stretching it means that perhaps they didn’t actually stretch well enough for the stretching to work. So, it’s not that stretching didn’t work, it’s that they were unable to do it properly for it to have an effect on the injuries.
C) If the majority of the injuries were falls/collisions that were not helped by stretching, what about the other injuries that made up the minority, the injuries outside of falls/collision? Just because stretching didn’t affect the majority, it still could have affected other types of injuries and perhaps the group that stretched had more of those injuries, so stretching in fact did help. I see how there are a lot of assumptions and leaps here and how that would be a red flag. Being uncertain with the other two, however, made me skeptical about it. Is the problem with this one the word “flexibility?
D) This was the closest to my paraphrase but the wording felt a tad ambiguous and did not feel entirely synonymous with my paraphrase for me to feel confident with it. Essentially this answer choice says, as I perceived it, ‘if you are prone to injuries then you tend to stretch’. The terms in the answer choices felt too vague with “more prone” and “more likely”. It just didn’t feel strong enough and it felt like I couldn’t conclusively attribute this to the people who stretched in the stimulus. Those who stretched in the stimulus could have very easily not been those people discussed in this answer choice.
2) I know the general rule is that when two negatives are set side by side in a sentence and apply to a single concept they cancel out making the expression positive . For instance, “not unlikely” equates to “likely”. When dealing with something like “not unhappy” , however, does that apply because if you aren’t unhappy it doesn’t necessarily mean you are happy… you could be neutral and unphased. This is another area where I overthink. When is it okay to make the logical opposite of something by adding/removing a negative prefix (opposite of unlikely is likely, opposite of unorganized is organized) vs when you just negate it (opposite of happy is not happy)?
Adding to this, are all “un” words, or any words with negative prefixes, the same as putting “less” in front of that word? I have seen “unlikely” be equivalent to “less likely”. Are all “un” words, or any words with negative prefixes, the same as putting “less” in front of that word? If the logical opposite of “likely” is technically “not likely”, then something that is “less likely” doesn’t necessarily feel like it is entirely accurate. Does this apply just because of the nature of the word “likely”? Would ‘unorganized’ equate to ‘less organized’? The level of certainty between “not” and “less” with regard to the meticulousness of this test is definitely something I would tussle over.
