Game # 4 June 1999 test Forum

[roballen]

I just did this game in the LGB and set it up differently then they did. I put the researchers as the base bc I thought it was easier to see, however they put the languages as the bases. Is it bad that I made the researchers the base?

Basically I did this

-- -- -- --
-- -- -- --
-- -- -- --
L P G-->H
-/->
----/-->

I got all the questions right on this game except question 9 which if anyone could please explain I would appreciate.

[AverageTutoring]

I just did this game in the LGB and set it up differently then they did. I put the researchers as the base bc I thought it was easier to see, however they put the languages as the bases. Is it bad that I made the researchers the base?

Basically I did this

-- -- -- --
-- -- -- --
-- -- -- --
L P G-->H
-/->
----/-->

I got all the questions right on this game except question 9 which if anyone could please explain I would appreciate.

Whatever gets you the correct answer is the way to go. Having said that, this game is most definitely more efficient to diagram with the languages as the base. If we look at the rules we see a multitude of spatial relationships with respect to languages

"Exactly 1 Rundi"
"Exactly two Swahaili"
...etc

If we put the languages on top, this allows us to use placeholders/underscores in our diagram which is a very powerful visual representation of the rules. We know there is exactly 1 R, bam done we place an underscore in the R category and we know 1 person goes there! If we had the researchers as the base, well...we have to write that rule to the side because there's really no way to diagram it well with that diagram.

Question 9 should be explained in the LGB no?

In any event, we know L, P and H all need to learn Yorba and that G cannot learn Yorba.

From out initial inferences we should have deduced that the GH block must go in either S or T. So if the GH block is on S then out of those that learn Yorba, H can be the only person that also learns Swahili. Therefore A is out.

We go further with this deduction: if the GH block is not on S, that means it must be on T. So we need a combination of two people to go on S.

Since there are only 4 researchers and 3 are on Yorba, if we have ONLY 1 researcher from those 3 that doubles in Y and S that researcher has to go with G (to fill the remaining spot in Swahili group). But the only person that can go with G, is H. If we take a look at answer choice B, that means G must go with P in Swahili. But this cannot work! If we have G we need H which breaks a lot of rules.

Therefore B is the answer.

[fosterp]

It seems a lot more intuitive to use languages as the base because of the rule that limits the number of researchers learning languages. Having one spot for a language, two spots for another, etc, seems a lot easier to track than making sure you have the right # of variables on the board.

[gdane]

Ahh the Rundi and Swahili game. So fun! Once you make that deduction that the last guys can only learn a certain amount of languages this game goes by very quickly.