How to Approach the Parallel Reasoning Questions Forum

[thatsnotmyname]

I usually do pretty well on the LR section missing 1-3 questions. However, I seem to consistently get the "The logic in this argument is most closely similar to..." or the "The same flawed logic exhibited in the argument is exhibited in..."

I don't really have a method for attacking these type of questions. I try diagramming the logic sometimes but it doesn't really work for me a lot of times. Does anyone have tips or advice when trying to answer these types of questions?

Thanks

[09042014]

I usually do pretty well on the LR section missing 1-3 questions. However, I seem to consistently get the "The logic in this argument is most closely similar to..." or the "The same flawed logic exhibited in the argument is exhibited in..."

I don't really have a method for attacking these type of questions. I try diagramming the logic sometimes but it doesn't really work for me a lot of times. Does anyone have tips or advice when trying to answer these types of questions?

Thanks

The powerscore LR bible actually helped me with this. It was really the only part I used the LR bible for, but that itself was worth the cost of the bible.

[ZombiesAhead]

Did you make use of everything the LRB said on PR? I found some of their more broad tips (match conclusions, certainty/indicator words, etc) great but some of the other points of strategy impossible to internalize and use quickly.

Matching premises seemed like an especially sketchy technique given the major variations and abstractions of reasoning in some AC's...Also, the idea that you would match validity of the AC to the Stimulus seems OK but it requires you to spend a ton of time carefully analyzing each AC for flaws. Seriously?

I dunno I'd love to hear otherwise and give the PS method for PR another try.

[kswiss]

Seems like most of them use conditional statements. If you read enough of them you start to see a common structure.

But main things: matching conclusion sentences (positive conclusion will hardly ever parallel a negative one, even if its the contrapositive)
Amount of subjects: They seem to stay the same, so if the original question is "Mary and Steve never play each other at tennis", the parallel usually won't be "Mel, Stacy, and Tina never eat lunch together."
Type of reasoning: if the reasoning is flawed in the stimulus, it will be flawed in the same way in the answer.


I find that a mixture of mapping the conditional statements and paraphrasing using ambiguous terms works best.

For ex, if the stimulus is "Mel and Stacy always fight. Therefore, a fight is always going on." I would write (if I could) the conditional statements. Then my paraphrase in my head would be "two particular things do something, therefore that something is always happening."

Once you do that, the answer is pretty easy to find.

[rw2264]

i had a lot of trouble with these. i would first determine whether the answer choices were valid or invalid, eliminate those that don't match the example, and then diagram each and pray i did it right.