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Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 9:35 am
by ltowns1
Taking too long on could be true questions where no hypo is stated. "Which of the following could be true" does anyone have any advice on these questions? I don't know whether to do a diagram for each possible answer choice or not. I know the LG Bible says you won't have to draw a diagram if you figure the inferences, but I don't know.

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 12:53 pm
by BlindGuyMcSqueezy
You can definitely start off by applying the rules to each one. Usually you can use that to narrow it down to two or even one.

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 2:06 pm
by ltowns1
bgoldgrab wrote:You can definitely start off by applying the rules to each one. Usually you can use that to narrow it down to two or even one.

Ok thanks!

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 2:07 pm
by Clearly
What order are you doing the question in? You should be able to answer 85% of these without so much as moving your pencil if you are doing the questions in the right order.

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 2:07 pm
by Clearly
bgoldgrab wrote:You can definitely start off by applying the rules to each one. Usually you can use that to narrow it down to two or even one.
This is inefficient and a time waster.

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 2:15 pm
by ltowns1
Clearly wrote:What order are you doing the question in? You should be able to answer 85% of these without so much as moving your pencil if you are doing the questions in the right order.
Not doin the questions in any particular order. Just going from 1-23/24

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 2:16 pm
by Clearly
Thats your problem. You need a much better system. I'll explain later, I'm currently taking a final, but check back tonight and I'll step your LG game up instantly.

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 2:17 pm
by BlindGuyMcSqueezy
Clearly wrote:
bgoldgrab wrote:You can definitely start off by applying the rules to each one. Usually you can use that to narrow it down to two or even one.
This is inefficient and a time waster.
Enlighten me then.

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 2:19 pm
by ltowns1
Clearly wrote:Thats your problem. You need a much better system. I'll explain later, I'm currently taking a final, but check back tonight and I'll step your LG game up instantly.
I'm down with whatever works lol. Thanks!

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 2:22 pm
by Clearly
bgoldgrab wrote:
Clearly wrote:
bgoldgrab wrote:You can definitely start off by applying the rules to each one. Usually you can use that to narrow it down to two or even one.
This is inefficient and a time waster.
Enlighten me then.
What order do you do the questions in?

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 2:26 pm
by BlindGuyMcSqueezy
Clearly wrote:
bgoldgrab wrote:
Clearly wrote:
bgoldgrab wrote:You can definitely start off by applying the rules to each one. Usually you can use that to narrow it down to two or even one.
This is inefficient and a time waster.
Enlighten me then.
What order do you do the questions in?
Same as OP. First to last. If you have a better method I'd love to hear it, but you can get back to your final first.

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 2:27 pm
by ltowns1
Clearly wrote:Thats your problem. You need a much better system. I'll explain later, I'm currently taking a final, but check back tonight and I'll step your LG game up instantly.

BTW Good luck on your final! Lol

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 2:32 pm
by Clearly
Great, at some point after 5 I'll post a mini-tutorial on approaching games efficiently, how to cut down on busy work like this significantly. It's nothing particularly original, but it was the stuff that got me finishing games sections with time to spare, accurately. Thanks for the luck, I'm gonna need it.

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 8:31 pm
by Clearly
Alright, time for my brief primer on general LG setups and how to organize your work and answer questions. I'd like to point out first that I'm not the originator of nearly all of the techniques I'm going to use, so don't credit me with anything besides explaining my experience to you and explaining why it really matters.

1) Never ever get rid of your work, and never draw a million diagrams all over the page, it takes time, and it makes using your work effectively nearly impossible. Rather, build one expandable master diagram on the bottom of your page. On the top line, put your rules and inferences. As you try new things for the questions, keep building down your chart so all of your work stays organized. It's very important to realize that you are going to try things that don't work, and that with this method it's imperative that you cross that work off, lest it will pollute your whole chart and defeat the purpose. The goal is that each time you are answering a question or even trying to answer a question, you are building a bank of valid permutations that allow you answer the other questions without working.

2) Do the questions in this order and this order only:
1) Applicability question- If there is one at all, it will be question one. This is the type that asks which of the following follows all the rules. Simply take a rule and run it across each answer choice till you cross off four answers and circle the remaining answer. Then, take the time to COPY THAT ANSWER into your chart as a valid answer, you'd be surprised how often it will answer another question later.
2) Questions that start with If... If you have multiple "if" questions, start with the one that is the most concrete in what it gives you to work with (ie take If R is in 3, over If R is after W). Follow your inferences and attempt to be smart about finding an answer. We start with these questions because they give you a starting point, and because they are more specific than other questions so the answer to them will answer other question types, but other question type answers are unlikely to solve these questions.
3) General questions. These are the questions this thread is asking about. Must be true and Could be true questions. They apply universally. You look at your chart which by now will have 2-3 valid permutations from the acceptability+If questions. If the question is could be true, if any of the answer choices have happened in any of your answers, that is your correct answer choice. If they DON'T happen, remembered you CAN'T cross them off, after all all it means is that it hasn't happened in your 3 examples, but that doesn't mean its impossible. Odds are, you will already have the right answer on your page. If its a must be true question, look at the answer choices and find the one that ALWAYS happens in all of your answer choices. If it's an easy question, it'll say something like "L is in slot 3". When you look at your chart, you'll see a column of Ls running down slot 3 and have a pretty great idea that that is your answer. Here, the inverse is true, just because its always happened, doesn't mean is MUST happen, and so you should be skeptical of selecting an answer before ruling out the others. Remember, because its must be true, that means if the choice is "L is in slot 3" and in any of your permutations L isn't in slot 3, that you can cross that answer off. These could be true/must be true almost always have answered themselves, or have at the least narrowed themselves to two options, without you having to do ANY WORK.
4) Rule Change/Rule Substitution Questions. It is ABSURDLY IMPORTANT that you do these questions last. Remember, we're using our chart to include only proper answers. Answering one of these questions, even correctly, will pollute your chart, thus it should be the last question you do always.

Lets play along!

First, Open PT PT 34-4-1

Draw your chart and rules like so:Image

Lets note some things. Whenever you can build a rule right into a diagram, do so. You see that K in 2? It's always got to be there, so put it there. I put the ~M above 1, because it can't occupy space IN the chart, seeing as it just tells us something doesn't go in slot one. The rest of the rule are for the time being off to the side. There is absolutely no reason to continue past this point. It drives me insane when students just start randomly trying things. You followed the road, you hit the end. Move on, nothing to see here, and certainly no reason to start messing around with hypos you don't even need.

No acceptability question so go to 5 first, its an If question.

Hmm if L is as far apart as we can get them... Lets think. We can't do one and 9 because she can only go in ONE of the end aisles, so that would just break the rule. So we're looking for the next best option, which is 2-9 or 1-8... 2 and 9 won't work because as our diagram indicates, 2 is already occupied by K. Nothing left to do but try what we have reason to believe is our best bet. If this doesn't work, we're in a pickle, because the next best option would give us more possibilities.

Image

Hey not bad! You might note that there's more than one way you could have done this. Feel free to write one out if you need to (esp if you don't hit anything good with the answer choices), at this stage of the game more work isn't bad, because you're just generating more data to help later. The goal isn't to cover ALL the possibilities, just to get a slightly wider sample size if you happen to spot something interchangeable. When you get good, you can develop a system like this to represent possibilities faster:
Image
You'll see that rather than redrawing the things we know, we can just use slashes to indicate we can flip guys around. In this case I needed to use brackets, to indicate that you can switch the WHOLE GROUP of MKM with J. Basically just move MKM over one, and shift J into that open slot.

Lets peep those answer choices. DON'T look to cross anything off. It's a could be true question. We have 2 separate permutations. It's overwhelmingly likely one of the choices will have appeared in our diagram by now. No need to waste time checking other answers until you get through and still have nothing.
a) Hey! Look at that! Circle It. Nothing else matters. We know J can stock aisle 6. Have faith in your work. You won't find a truer answer.

Next up Question 6, the next If question. Alrighty if J stocks 3. Pump the breaks, our slash already indicates this is possible. Unfortunately, with a can't be true, the best we can do is cross off answers that COULD be true based on what we have. The goal is NOT to test answers at this phase. Feel free to copy your old answer onto a new line to make it easier to read without the slashs. We can get rid of D because that can be true. We can get rid of A because that can be true. We're gonna have to play with another hypo (recall, this is but our first attempt at this question, we knocked off two answer choices with our last answer!). In an effort to mix things up, I'm gonna move J up to one, and see what falls:
Image

Now, ABCD have all happened in the course of these 2 possibilities. We can safely pick E. I concede that was an abnormally difficult question, still it only required one additional hypo, but because we again nailed a slash, we in effect got two more hypos out of it. NOW FOR THE MAGIC.

We're out of If questions. Lets start from the top. This is a joke question. No diagram needed. J explicitly can't go twice in a row. K has the MKM thing, L who knows, M has the MKM thing, and there's literally only one O. Gotta be C.

Question two could take a lot of work and hypos to work out if you didn't have the work already done from the other questions. Who are two people who can NEVER stock aisle 5? Lets peep our diagram. We can cross off any answer choice that has even one person thats ever been in 5. According to my diagram, we've had M J K and
J and M
K and O
L and M
K and M
L and O

The answer has to be E, no work required.

Question 3. Everyone who can stock 3, no biggy, TO THE CHART. Rather than risk assuming that we have covered all possibilities (which we prob haven't), it's safer to cross off answers that DON'T have someone we know can go there. J is in all of them so forget him.
Image
We have M, J, L that we know can be in there, so we can cross off A, C, E. We're left with B and D. Then we would look at the difference between them. In this case, it's the inclusion of K. so we have to ask, can K be in 3? No he can't because then where would MKM go. The upside to this approach is if you do find yourself having to do this cursory work late in the game, by now you'll have the rules memorized.

Question 4. Everywhere Manny can go. Shouldn't be a problem.
Image

D it is!

See how we just did literally 4 questions without moving our pencil, because we did 5 and 6 up front, and generated the data to answer the rest?

Now we just have to take care of the rule changeroo, as far as rule changers go, not a big deal just add the new rule right in your chart, we don't need it, because we've already done the rest of the questions.
Image
Heres two quick sketches, that collectively should just about cover all the possibilities including the slash. You can technically get all 3 in the first chart, but it gets a little messy for instructionals.

Regardless, bam A, C, D and E are all in the chart, so it's gotta be B. I'm not gonna waste the time checking it, because I'm positive the other four are possible (remember, use. your. work!.)


And that's how you do any random game with minimal waste, and no wasted time. We answered the MAJORITY of questions with 0 work at all, and even the first 2 didn't require too much work to get.

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 9:18 pm
by BlindGuyMcSqueezy
Thanks! I'll definitely try this out, looks like it could save quite a bit of time.

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 9:20 pm
by Clearly
bgoldgrab wrote:Looks like this could be incredibly helpful, thanks a lot, but, and this is towards what I was originally saying, I don't see a difference between an "acceptibily" question and a "could be"question.
Just pull up the question and work through it the way I did and you'll see. It's infinitely more efficient, at least a few of these would need you to test answers to prove with that method, and the weird stuff like could be false is gonna get tricky, with this, you're just treating them all the same and not even working to answer them most of the time.

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 9:23 pm
by BlindGuyMcSqueezy
Clearly wrote:
bgoldgrab wrote:Looks like this could be incredibly helpful, thanks a lot, but, and this is towards what I was originally saying, I don't see a difference between an "acceptibily" question and a "could be"question.
Just pull up the question and work through it the way I did and you'll see. It's infinitely more efficient, at least a few of these would need you to test answers to prove with that method, and the weird stuff like could be false is gonna get tricky, with this, you're just treating them all the same and not even working to answer them most of the time.
I think I get the difference now. The acceptibility/applicability question will always be answered just by running them by the rules, as opposed to the "could be" questions.

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 9:25 pm
by Clearly
Right, the idea is that you don't even need the rules most of the time, just doing the other questions first and keeping close track of your work and you end up with most of the things "that could be true" already written on your board. I did 4 questions of that game in legit 10 seconds each.

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 9:26 pm
by ltowns1
This is awesome, thanks! One question though, how would I set up an In/out game, double layer sequence game, or grouping game with more than two categories with the diagram/chart you described??

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 9:37 pm
by Clearly
It applies to all types of games, it requires some modification based on the intuitive layout of the same. You can easily put 2 or more characters in the chart vertically for each line. hang on I'll show you

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 9:43 pm
by ltowns1
Clearly wrote:It applies to all types of games, it requires some modification based on the intuitive layout of the same. You can easily put 2 or more characters in the chart vertically for each line. hang on I'll show you
I was hoping you wouldn't have to do more work, you've done a lot already but thanks again!

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 9:50 pm
by Clearly
Image

Prep test 36 sec 4 game 2. Three seperate fields, put in order. The first chart itself covers all possible permutations. Still its easier to just rewrite instead of trying to flip in your head, so you'd just go below and keep building down. Theres no rule that you have to only remain one character tall.

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 10:19 pm
by 179orBust
Awesome post, really appreciate you writing all that out. Will this approach also work for the games on recent practice tests?

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 10:23 pm
by ltowns1
I guess since I've been doin the games without charts, it seems a little confusing to interpret how to diagram and interpret the rules, but I will def. apply what you said to see how it works for me..this was really insightful.

Re: Could be true questions on LG

Posted: Mon May 11, 2015 10:24 pm
by ltowns1
179orBust wrote:Awesome post, really appreciate you writing all that out. Will this approach also work for the games on recent practice tests?

It should work on all games!