Diagram This... Forum

[Ocean64]

Diagram this...

Unless Marion takes the train instead of driving, she can get to work on time only by leaving at least 45 minutes early.

That Q is a tricky one. I don't think diagramming will help you much there.

If on time -> 45min early OR train
(inclusive OR, obviously)

the diagram that I like is this...

(not)[on time ==> leaves 45 min early] =======> Train

meaning that if she decided to forgo the "on time by leaving 45 min early" process, then she will have necessarily taken the train, assuming that she does show up to work on time.

CP: (not)T =======> [on time ==> leaves 45 min early]

meaning that if she does not use the train and does in fact show up to work on time, then she must have gone through the "on time by leaving 45 min early" process.

thoughts?

[Ocean64]

How about:

The fact that citizens must own property in order to vote is enough to declare either that voting is not a free activity or that the only true citizens are property owners.

prerequisite of property ownership ========> [declare voting not free] or [declare only true citizens are property owners]

[suspicious android]

How about:
prerequisite of property ownership ========> [declare voting not free] or [declare only true citizens are property owners]

But you left out all the interesting conditional elements! And there's a bit of a problem with the true citizens part.

[Ocean64]

How about:
prerequisite of property ownership ========> [declare voting not free] or [declare only true citizens are property owners]

But you left out all the interesting conditional elements! And there's a bit of a problem with the true citizens part.

actually, the reason i did it this way is because of the world "declare", so you either declare or you don't, what is within the declaration can be diagrammed but will not have an effect on the overall diagram.

thoughts?

[suspicious android]

actually, the reason i did it this way is because of the world "declare", so you either declare or you don't, what is within the declaration can be diagrammed but will not have an effect on the overall diagram.

thoughts?

yeah, it's a choice how to diagram it, you want it to be as useful for you as possible, and in most LSAT situations you needn't wring out every conditional element to get at the key relationship. But I obviously wrote it to try to make it harder to diagram than that, so I think you're cheating. /jk

[itookashot]

I thought I'd start a thread for people to post any interesting LR diagrams or to ask diagramming questions for others to answer.

I'll begin by something I came across today:

If it is not the case that the park contains both laurels and oaks, then it contains firs and spruces.

Diagram:
(not)L or (not)O ===> F & S
(or neither)

~ (L + O) -----> (F+ S)
~ F or S ------> L or O

[itookashot]

Voting is not a free activity, OR The only true citizens are property owners ------> (requirement that) citizens must own property in order to vote.

[Ocean64]

I thought I'd start a thread for people to post any interesting LR diagrams or to ask diagramming questions for others to answer.

I'll begin by something I came across today:

If it is not the case that the park contains both laurels and oaks, then it contains firs and spruces.

Diagram:
(not)L or (not)O ===> F & S
(or neither)

~ (L + O) -----> (F+ S)
~ F or S ------> L or O

No.

[Ocean64]

Statement: on a line A and B are two spaces apart.

Question: how many people sit between A and B?

[suspicious android]

Statement: on a line A and B are two spaces apart.

Question: how many people sit between A and B?

No one necessarily.

[KevinP]

(l & o) or (f & s)

Seems simplest to me

This also seems the simplest for me.

Also, in logic OR is necessarily inclusive unless an additional constraint ("e.g. but not both") or a logical impossibility arises if both of its operands are true.

[Ocean64]

Statement: on a line A and B are two spaces apart.

Question: how many people sit between A and B?

i'm not trying to be tricky, i got a book by Nova and it's confusing the crap out of me. the way i thought was "apart" meant separated by x many spaces between them, but this book is telling me that there could only be one person between A and B when reading a statement like that.

LG bible covers
-spaces behind/after
-spaces between/separated by

so could someone please explain what "apart" means in LG?

[suspicious android]

i'm not trying to be tricky, i got a book by Nova and it's confusing the crap out of me. the way i thought was "apart" meant separated by x many spaces between them, but this book is telling me that there could only be one person between A and B when reading a statement like that.

LG bible covers
-spaces behind/after
-spaces between/separated by

so could someone please explain what "apart" means in LG?

Oh, I thought you were, since the whole rest of the thread, and I was like "oh, I'm not falling for this one", and well. . . nevermind.

I'm with you, if A and B are' two spaces apart, there should be two spaces between them. It wouldn't make sense to say they were one space apart if they were right next to each other, there'd have to be.. one space. Don't know what NOVA's talking about here.

AB = A and B are zero spaces apart
A_B = A and B are one space apart
A_._B = A and B are two spaces apart

The tricky thing comes when the rule is something like "B is exactly two spaces after A" which people very frequently misdiagram as "A_._B" but should be "A_B". But you mentioned that already, so not sure what this "apart" thing is all about.

[Ocean64]

i'm not trying to be tricky, i got a book by Nova and it's confusing the crap out of me. the way i thought was "apart" meant separated by x many spaces between them, but this book is telling me that there could only be one person between A and B when reading a statement like that.

LG bible covers
-spaces behind/after
-spaces between/separated by

so could someone please explain what "apart" means in LG?

Oh, I thought you were, since the whole rest of the thread, and I was like "oh, I'm not falling for this one", and well. . . nevermind.

I'm with you, if A and B are' two spaces apart, there should be two spaces between them. It wouldn't make sense to say they were one space apart if they were right next to each other, there'd have to be.. one space. Don't know what NOVA's talking about here.

AB = A and B are zero spaces apart
A_B = A and B are one space apart
A_._B = A and B are two spaces apart

The tricky thing comes when the rule is something like "B is exactly two spaces after A" which people very frequently misdiagram as "A_._B" but should be "A_B". But you mentioned that already, so not sure what this "apart" thing is all about.

I thought so too, but maybe we ought to reconsider?
--ImageRemoved--

[soj]

Is it just me or has there never been "A and B are two spaces apart" in any of the released LGs? It's always been much clearer (e.g. "there are at least two spaces between A and B") IIRC.

[suspicious android]

I thought so too, but maybe we ought to reconsider?

Interesting. I'm gonna stand my ground here, I don't see how that phrase means what Nova is asserting it to mean. I'm open to counterarguments, but the one in that image doesn't really do it for me. They assert it would be proper to say that two adjacent elements in a game could be said to be "one space apart" from each other. I don't think that makes any sense from a natural language perspective, and I definitely don't remember any LG that has used such phrasing, as soj points out. More like "A and B can be how far apart" as part of a question.

This thread is turning into one of my favorites of recent times.

[suspicious android]

The more I think about it, the more ridiculous is the claim in the book. Think of it this way:

A and B are two milesapart.

What is the distance between A and B? According to the reasoning in the book there should only be one mile separating the two points. That's... ridiculous.

[Ocean64]

The more I think about it, the more ridiculous is the claim in the book. Think of it this way:

A and B are two milesapart.

What is the distance between A and B? According to the reasoning in the book there should only be one mile separating the two points. That's... ridiculous.

putting it that way i would agree with you, and i hope it's true that no LG uses "apart", but just for the fun of it here is the dictionary definition:

Definition of APART
1
a : at a little distance <tried to keep apart from the family squabbles>
b : away from one another in space or time <towns 20 miles apart>

according to definition b, i can see how A and B can be said to be "2 spaces apart" since at 0 spaces apart they would be occupying the same space. it's just a matter of including vs. excluding the new space which is occupied by the variable that is moved away from another variable/space. an example (to counter yours) would be if i were to say that my brother and i are a year a part, which means that one of us was born one year before/after the other (i.e. we were not born in the same year, but the 2 years in which we were born are consecutive)

so to summerize:

-spaces behind/after (inclusive)
-spaces between/separated by (exclusive)
-spaces apart (can be both inclusive/exclusive depending on usage [ex. space/time vs. distance])

which is probably why LSAC doesn't use "apart", since they go by the literal meaning of words for LGs, and this one can go either way.

thoughts?

[KevinP]

thoughts?

I've taken a lot of the tests and I'm pretty sure LSAC never used a word such as apart without elaborating on what they meant.

[suspicious android]

The example with time changes things a bit, since time is usually used objectively on the LSAT (e.g., 1995) whereas space can be measured subjectively (e.g., 2 spaces to the left).

So for the brothers born in consecutive years, you could say they were born in 1990 and 1991 for example. They would be in adjacent years (objectively) with no space between the years. But there would still be one year between them, that is to say, they were born exactly one year apart.



For two items on a line with marked spaces:


_A_ _B_ _C_ __ __
1 2 3 4 5

We've here got an objective measurement of space (1-5), but it would still make absolutely no sense to say that A and B are one space apart. There's no space between them, but that just means they're adjacent. You can say the brothers were born in adjacent years, but not in adjacent time, because they were born in one point within the year, nnot for the whole year. But for A, B, and C we can say they are all adjacent, there's zero space between them. That's not to say they are occupying the same space, just like the fact that my ass and my chair have zero space between them doesn't mean they occupy the same space.

So A is one space apart from C, zero spaces apart from B. However, if we imagine that 1-5 were mile markers on a bike path or something, you could say that A and B were one mile apart, while A and C were 2 miles apart.

I think the LSAT will always make the relationship between the elements pretty clear in the stimulus. The vast majority of the time it will treat the spaces as subjective rather than objective, I can't really remember any situation like the bike path example.

Interesting..

[Jeffort]

The LSAT writers have never used the word apart in any LG rule and probably never will due to context related ambiguity of meaning.

That Nova book is old and is crap. Get rid of it and get a good modern LSAT prep book that uses real LSAT questions. The Nova book was originally written in the early 90's. The only changes that have been made to it since then is cover art with each new printing of it and updating the copyright date to the year of the printing of the new batch.

[EarlCat]

I don't recall ever seeing "spaces apart" in any games clue.

If I did, my first reaction would be to think it meant how many spaces are in between them (just like "two miles apart" would mean two miles between them). On the other hand, sometimes games allow elements to occupy the exact same space, so their being next door neighbors might be expressed as "one space apart." For instance, if we had a game ordering kids by age, if two kids were born "one year apart," I would think their ages would be x and x+1. (To add to the confusion, a spacially-oriented game might say, "There are no spaces between J and K," and we wouldn't know if J and K were in adjacent spaces or in the same space. Yuck.)

But even in an ordering game with miles, if two people were "two miles apart," one might be at mile marker 4 and the other at mile marker 6. That would leave one mile marker (i.e. one "space") between them. X _ Y.

Fortunately, LSAC is usually pretty good about making their clues very straightforward. A good thing to keep in mind, though, is that when a clue appears ambiguous, the wrong interpretation will usually result in questions that appear to have either two or zero right answers. In that case, don't argue with the test makers, just construe the rule differently.

Edit: I didn't realize I just rewrote Suspicious Android's post (I really should read the whole thread before posting)... sorry 'bout that.

[suspicious android]

But even in an ordering game with miles, if two people were "two miles apart," one might be at mile marker 4 and the other at mile marker 6. That would leave one mile marker (i.e. one "space") between them. X _ Y.

I'm now convinced this will appear on a future LSAT game. It'd be a great change of pace, could be medium-easy difficulty but still throw off people who don't read the rules carefully.

[Jeffort]

But even in an ordering game with miles, if two people were "two miles apart," one might be at mile marker 4 and the other at mile marker 6. That would leave one mile marker (i.e. one "space") between them. X _ Y.

I'm now convinced this will appear on a future LSAT game. It'd be a great change of pace, could be medium-easy difficulty but still throw off people who don't read the rules carefully.

Sure, if it got administered it would end up being the first time in history that an entire logic game was removed from scoring after the fact.

[EarlCat]

The LSAT writers have never used the word apart in any LG rule and probably never will due to context related ambiguity of meaning.

They used "apart" once in a specific question (where the question adds a rule) but not in a way where either interpretation made any difference. (PT 19 Sec 1 Q 6)

If the inspection of G and of H are scheduled, not necessarily in that order, for days as far apart as possible, which one of the following is a complete and accurate list of the factories any one of which could be scheduled for inspection for day 1?