PT51 S3 Q19: how to solve it fast enough? Forum

[bilbaosan]

The question deals with formal logic and pretty complex set of rules. So far my breakdown was the following:

30 sec: reading and understanding the question, getting suspicious it would be about formal logic
10 sec: checking the answers and confirming that
10 sec: thinking that if this is from a real manual, how nice it would be if the manual writer ended up being waterboarded in Guantanamo Bay
10 sec: thinking about how to diagram it
120 sec: diagramming it; the diagram took all the space on the page under Q21
30 sec: cross-checking the diagram with the question and fixing an error in it
30 sec: going through the answer and checking D as correct

So while the correct answer was found, but it tool 4 minutes which makes it a Pyrrhic victory. Is there anything I missed which would speed it up significantly?

Correction: S3, sorry.

[clay7676]

I'm not seeing that question in that section of that test with that answer.

[Jeffort]

It shouldn't have taken 2 minutes to diagram the conditional statements in the stimulus.
They are pretty straightforward conditionals since they use the straight up 'if' sufficient indicator word making it so there shouldn't have been any time needed to determine which conditions are sufficient vs necessary like is the case with other less straightforward phrasings.

The only complicated/difficult thing I see in this problem other than the sheer length of the stimulus itself is that the actual conditions in the statements are long winded and could get confusing when you try to make understandable abbreviations.

Personally, I wouldn't have spent much time trying to come up with detailed diagrams since making abbreviations that I would remember w/o having to look back at the stimulus would slow me down and waste time. Instead I would have circled the word 'if' for each of the conditionals and underlined the text that goes with each, quickly inspected for any overlapping elements to see if they chain together, which they don't, then dove into the answers with the conditionals firmly planted in my mind since the correct answer would obviously have to be one that correctly applies one or more of the conditionals. Basically, with the conditions in mind I'd fly through the answers to find ones that trigger one of the sufficient conditions or alternatively be on the lookout for ones that state a negation of a necessary condition in case they apply a contrapositive, which didn't turn out to be the case with this one.

[Jeffort]

I'm not seeing that question in that section of that test with that answer.

Stop using the torrent package that has the June 2007 test misnamed with the filename 51 instead of the real PT51! Zoink!

In the Dec 2006 PT 51, the stimulus starts with "Style Manual:"

[Clearly]

I'm not seeing that question in that section of that test with that answer.

Stop using the torrent package that has the June 2007 test misnamed with the filename 51 instead of the real PT51! Zoink!

In the Dec 2006 PT 51, the stimulus starts with "Style Manual:"

...told you clay

[clay7676]

I would never.

[bilbaosan]

I'm not seeing that question in that section of that test with that answer.

You're right, this is S3, not S4. Corrected it. And yes, that section starts with some city flooding and building a dam.

[bilbaosan]

It shouldn't have taken 2 minutes to diagram the conditional statements in the stimulus.
They are pretty straightforward conditionals since they use the straight up 'if' sufficient indicator word making it so there shouldn't have been any time needed to determine which conditions are sufficient vs necessary like is the case with other less straightforward phrasings.
The only complicated/difficult thing I see in this problem other than the sheer length of the stimulus itself is that the actual conditions in the statements are long winded and could get confusing when you try to make understandable abbreviations.

There seem to be also too many variables. Here's what I ended up with:

Ancient:
if infreq AND not interf. -> preserve
if freq -> modernize with: if similar and modernized more than once -> gen. statement; otherwise note/expl

Modern:
typo errors -> fix no expl

The problem is that it is hard to figure out when to diagram and when not, so usually if I had to read the rules more than twice during answering, I diagram. Cudos if you can keep it all in your head after reading it a few times

[clay7676]

Wait, you are talking about the LR question, right? I thought you were talking about a LG question the whole time. I read this and was able to eliminate A,B, and E fairly easily then moved on. I find it too time consuming to deconstruct LR questions. My personal preference is to eliminate wrong ones that are blatantly wrong that often use words such as MUST and ALWAYS, etc. and then work through the 2 possibilities I've left open by lining it up with the text. But others may think differently.

[Archangel]

Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right B, A, Start...

Seriously though, no need to diagram because D is just the contra of line one. Get in, get out & move on to the next Q. Btw this Q stem should be treated like a "must be true," just fyi.

[Trajectory]

This was just a little on the long side but other than that I wrote out the first conditional statement and remembered the second one. I just started looking for some answers using the sufficient condition or contra of any one conditional...quickly found D