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During my studies, I have come upon some some tricks in formal logic that weren't mentioned in the books I were studying. Have you discovered any formal logic "magic" tricks that make life in formal logic ville a little easier? Share them, now!

Journey180 wrote:During my studies, I have come upon some some tricks in formal logic that weren't mentioned in the books I were studying. Have you discovered any formal logic "magic" tricks that make life in formal logic ville a little easier? Share them, now!

I'm curious about what 'magic tricks' you think you have found that are not mentioned in the prep books since when students think they have discovered a different/new way to supposedly make things magically easier, they are usually making some sort of logical mistake or just notating something in a slightly different but logically equivalent diagrammatic way.

Jeffort wrote:

Journey180 wrote:During my studies, I have come upon some some tricks in formal logic that weren't mentioned in the books I were studying. Have you discovered any formal logic "magic" tricks that make life in formal logic ville a little easier? Share them, now!

I'm curious about what 'magic tricks' you think you have found that are not mentioned in the prep books since when students think they have discovered something different to supposedly make things magically easier, they are usually making some sort of logical mistake or just notating something in a slightly different but logically equivalent diagrammatic way.

I am not limiting the question to logical notations, or logical deductions/inferences, but I was hoping to open up discussion on what general tricks people use to make formal logic easier. For example, one trick I know ( and I don't claim I am the inventor of this. I only claim I didn't see it in LGB) is, in certain games, a long logical chain can yield strong inferences if controposited ( is that a word?) lol. Anyway, when you find the contrapositive of a long chain of logic, you get major deductions/inferences.

Journey180 wrote:

Jeffort wrote:

Journey180 wrote:During my studies, I have come upon some some tricks in formal logic that weren't mentioned in the books I were studying. Have you discovered any formal logic "magic" tricks that make life in formal logic ville a little easier? Share them, now!

I'm curious about what 'magic tricks' you think you have found that are not mentioned in the prep books since when students think they have discovered something different to supposedly make things magically easier, they are usually making some sort of logical mistake or just notating something in a slightly different but logically equivalent diagrammatic way.

I am not limiting the question to logical notations, or logical deductions/inferences, but I was hoping to open up discussion on what general tricks people use to make formal logic easier. For example, one trick I know ( and I don't claim I am the inventor of this. I only claim I didn't see it in LGB) is, in pure selection games, a long logical chain can yield strong inferences if controposited ( is that a word?) lol. Anyway, when you find the contrapositive of a long chain of logic, you get major deductions/inferences.

i never used LGB so i can't say that for sure. but that is something i learned from lsatblog, which is a free tool, so i would imagine that it has to be in some of the paid books.

all of my studying was done with:

casebriefs (free but for the most part i found it fairly useless)
lsatblogs
LSAT prep-tests

therefore, i can't really say what is or isn't included in any of the books people may generally use for studying. lsatblogs is tight for trying to work through LG though

Journey180 wrote: a long logical chain can yield strong inferences if controposited ( is that a word?) lol. Anyway, when you find the contrapositive of a long chain of logic, you get major deductions/inferences.

I am fairly certain that is in the PS LGB. Or, at least, the idea that contrapositives in of themselves can be a necessary part of the inference.

mojangles wrote:

Journey180 wrote:

Jeffort wrote:

Journey180 wrote:During my studies, I have come upon some some tricks in formal logic that weren't mentioned in the books I were studying. Have you discovered any formal logic "magic" tricks that make life in formal logic ville a little easier? Share them, now!

I'm curious about what 'magic tricks' you think you have found that are not mentioned in the prep books since when students think they have discovered something different to supposedly make things magically easier, they are usually making some sort of logical mistake or just notating something in a slightly different but logically equivalent diagrammatic way.

I am not limiting the question to logical notations, or logical deductions/inferences, but I was hoping to open up discussion on what general tricks people use to make formal logic easier. For example, one trick I know ( and I don't claim I am the inventor of this. I only claim I didn't see it in LGB) is, in pure selection games, a long logical chain can yield strong inferences if controposited ( is that a word?) lol. Anyway, when you find the contrapositive of a long chain of logic, you get major deductions/inferences.

i never used LGB so i can't say that for sure. but that is something i learned from lsatblog, which is a free tool, so i would imagine that it has to be in some of the paid books.

all of my studying was done with:

casebriefs (free but for the most part i found it fairly useless)
lsatblogs
LSAT prep-tests

therefore, i can't really say what is or isn't included in any of the books people may generally use for studying. lsatblogs is tight for trying to work through LG though

One more thing is the LGB did explain the seperation principle pretty well; I just added my own spin to it: For example,with 3 boys that can't sit next to each other would look like "B_B_B" right? I noticed that the formula would be where (boys -1= number of needed spaces between each boy. In this example, 3 boys-1= 2 spaces. ) and ( spaces + boys= number of total spaces needed if only boys and girls or any other two variable combination is played). So, for our example...3 boys would need atleast 2 seats without boys and necessitate at least 5 total chairs.

magickware wrote:

Journey180 wrote: a long logical chain can yield strong inferences if controposited ( is that a word?) lol. Anyway, when you find the contrapositive of a long chain of logic, you get major deductions/inferences.

I am fairly certain that is in the PS LGB. Or, at least, the idea that contrapositives in of themselves can be a necessary part of the inference.

Yea, it discusses contropositives but not to the extent where they can be used for long and even complex chains. Atleast I didn't see it. If you have, please cite page number and year of publication. Thanks.

Ha! A magician never reveals their tricks.

Well, I don't know if counts as a magic trick, but I do sacrifice a young turtle dove before every logic games section as an offering to the lord of conditional reasoning, Ellis Ay-Cee. Let me tell you, the reaction I got on test day was not pleasant!

TheMostDangerousLG wrote:Well, I don't know if counts as a magic trick, but I do sacrifice a young turtle dove before every logic games section as an offering to the lord of conditional reasoning, Ellis Ay-Cee. Let me tell you, the reaction I got on test day was not pleasant!

+1 I usually use a small goat.

jcb5329 wrote:

TheMostDangerousLG wrote:Well, I don't know if counts as a magic trick, but I do sacrifice a young turtle dove before every logic games section as an offering to the lord of conditional reasoning, Ellis Ay-Cee. Let me tell you, the reaction I got on test day was not pleasant!

+1 I usually use a small goat.

Rookie mistake. You have to make sure your offering fits in a gallon-sized ziploc bag (with room left over for your pencils and timer, of course).

They might teach this in one of the prep books, but I'm not sure. Say you have A => B. You want to write the contrapositive, but instead of writing ~B => ~A next to it, you can instead just turn A => B into A <=|> ~B

This covers both the original and the contrapositive. The "|" just means 'not.' This saves a lot of time if you have a lot of conditionals and don't want to spend a ton of time to write down all of their contrapositives. In other words, all of:

A => B
~B => ~A

C => D
~D => ~C

E => F
~F => ~E

becomes

A <=|> ~B
C <=|> ~D
E <=|> ~F

I find this extremely useful.

sighsigh wrote:They might teach this in one of the prep books, but I'm not sure. Say you have A => B. You want to write the contrapositive, but instead of writing ~B => ~A next to it, you can instead just turn A => B into A <=|> ~B

This is exactly what I did for all of them, and always have about 5 minutes to spare per section. It saves tons of time.

And LG, dang, I never thought of that, it's the perfect solution (and much easier than trying to fit a Kid into my ziploc bag)

TheMostDangerousLG wrote:

jcb5329 wrote:

TheMostDangerousLG wrote:Well, I don't know if counts as a magic trick, but I do sacrifice a young turtle dove before every logic games section as an offering to the lord of conditional reasoning, Ellis Ay-Cee. Let me tell you, the reaction I got on test day was not pleasant!

+1 I usually use a small goat.

Rookie mistake. You have to make sure your offering fits in a gallon-sized ziploc bag (with room left over for your pencils and timer, of course).

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