Top Law Schools

I am reviewing Sufficient and Necessary questions for LR. For those familiar with the Negate test (negating the answer choice to see if it invalidates the conclusion of the stimulus), i am curious what the negation of this question choice would look like: "At least one of the eminent scientists trained by JJ Thompson was not a creative researcher before coming to study with him."

I am curious which terms i negate.

Would it look like this? "[None] of the eminent scientists trained by JJ was not a creative researcher before coming to study with him"?

Do i also go on to negate "was not a creative researcher" in order to form "was a creative researcher"?

Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think there is a sufficient and necessary condition here.

bias1 wrote:I am reviewing Sufficient and Necessary questions for LR. For those familiar with the Negate test (negating the answer choice to see if it invalidates the conclusion of the stimulus), i am curious what the negation of this question choice would look like: "At least one of the eminent scientists trained by JJ Thompson was not a creative researcher before coming to study with him."

I am curious which terms i negate.

Would it look like this? "[None] of the eminent scientists trained by JJ was not a creative researcher before coming to study with him"?

Do i also go on to negate "was not a creative researcher" in order to form "was a creative researcher"?

You're overthinking this. If I say, "At least one of Justin Bieber's fans is not a teenage girl" and you say, "Nuh-uh," what are you contending? That all of his fans are teenage girls. Same thing here. The sentence you offered is correct, but then you should cancel out the double negative. It then becomes "All of the eminent...were creative researchers before...."

whymeohgodno wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think there is a sufficient and necessary condition here.

There isn't -- he's referring to Necessary and Sufficient Assumption questions (negation test works for necessary assumption questions).

bias1 wrote:"At least one of the eminent scientists trained by JJ Thompson was not a creative researcher before coming to study with him."

I am curious which terms i negate.

Would it look like this? "[None] of the eminent scientists trained by JJ was not a creative researcher before coming to study with him"?

Yes -- you wouldn't negate the latter part. It essentially becomes a matter of "Was at least one of the eminent something X?", and while the stem says "Yes, at least one of the eminent scientists was X", your negation becomes, "No, none of the eminent scientists was ..."

In this case, it turns into:

"None of the eminent scientists trained by JJ Thompson was not a creative researcher before coming to study with him."

And if *none* of them *wasn't* a creative researcher, that can be rewritten as:

"All of the eminent scientists trained by JJ Thompson were a creative researcher before coming to study with him."

"At least one of the eminent scientists trained by JJ Thompson was not a creative researcher before coming to study with him."

I am curious which terms i negate.

Would it look like this? "[None] of the eminent scientists trained by JJ was not a creative researcher before coming to study with him"?

Do i also go on to negate "was not a creative researcher" in order to form "was a creative researcher"?

None of the eminent scientists trained by JJ Thompson weren't creative researchers before coming to study with him.

or

All of the eminent scientists trained by JJ Thompson were creative researchers before coming to study with him. (assuming that if you are not not a creative researcher then you are a creative researcher).

A simple way to look at this:

In the first sentence, we are told that "At least one...was not...," which is logically equivalent to "Some...were not..." The logical opposite of some is none. Therefore, the negation would be 'None...were not...,' which is equivalent in meaning to "All...were...," so either construction is good, although the all construction is more intuitive and will better help you see whether the answer choice is, in fact, an assumed necessary condition of the argument.

I found that isolating the terms that require negation, as above, was helpful in negating.

HTH.