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Daily Drills 4 - Section 4 - Question 2

Select the answer choice that correctly diagrams the following Sufficient & Necessary statement:If Sam were rich,...

jamesio March 27, 2018

Answer E

I figured the correct A/C was A, but i chose E hoping that it would give me some sort of explanation as to why it was incorrect. The stimulus states "if Sam WERE rich", doesn't this imply that he is in fact NOT rich? Maybe I'm just thinking to hard about it (haha) Looking forward to the response! -jb

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Mehran March 28, 2018

@jamesio "if Sam were rich . . . " simply sets forth the sufficient condition. Notice the conditional language.

These drills are testing your ability to extract the conditional language and diagram Sufficient & Necessary statements.

If you are able to correctly diagram and apply the rules of Sufficient & Necessary, you will easily be able to determine what "must be true" for example.

As you will learn in the Sufficient & Necessary video, "if" introduces a sufficient condition, so Sam being rich would be sufficient:

SR ==>

The other part of the sentence, i.e. not vacation in Alaska, is our necessary condition:

SR ==> not VA

Contrapositive, which is created by reversing and negating, is identical in meaning:

VA ==> not SR (i.e. "If Sam vacations in Alaska, he is not rich.")

Hope that helps! Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Harper May 23, 2020

The answer I was looking for was SR=> not VA. That wasn't an option so I chose the correct answer. But can you explain why this would be incorrect please?

Harper May 27, 2020

?

Harper May 30, 2020

Still waiting for an explanation

Tryphena June 7, 2020

Harper I had the same thought as well

Tryphena June 7, 2020

It doesn't make sense why it wasn't an option

Code2200 July 27, 2020

I think I can answer your question.

When I first read it, I also looked for the given answer of R -> not VA. When I noticed that the answer choice was there, I froze a bit and then remembered that a contrapositive means the exact same thing in logic. Thus, I found VA -> not R.

The question seemed to be looking for full understanding of the material rather than testing if you can turn a statement into logic. I chalked it up to demonstrating how the LSAT will attempt to mess with you.