"If the forest continues to disappear at its present pace, the koala will approach extinction," said...
Does this mean that the Koala will not become extinct, forest will not disappear?
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I think you are aiming at the contrapositive — the statement is:
If the forest continues to disappear at its present pace, the koala will approach extinction.
We need to be precise when we apply the contrapositive. It would be:
If the koala is NOT approaching extinction, the forest must NOT be continuing to disappear at its present pace.
I hope that helps! Did you have trouble with finding the answer itself, or just understanding the conditional statement?
jsmart3211November 16, 2018
Got it! Thank you.
MarianaFebruary 13, 2019
I am curious why when you set up the logic for the politician's statement, "stopping deforestation" is the sufficient and not the necessary. When I initially set this up, I had the koala does not approach extinction as the sufficient, since in the prompt, the language surrounding the koala comes prior to information about deforestation.
RaviFebruary 14, 2019
@Mariana,
Happy to help. You're right, the language surrounding the koala comes prior to deforestation. However, just because the language surrounding the koala comes first doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be in the sufficient condition. We have to make sure we have a full grasp of what's going on between the koala and deforestation. Let's take a look. This sentence is tricky.
The sentence starts with "So all," and we know that "all" introduce the sufficient condition. However, "all" is not referring to the koala; it's referring to "stop deforestation," which is the referent at the end of the sentence. We know this because we can substitute "stop deforestation" for "all," and no meaning is lost.
From this, we know that "stop deforestation" is in the sufficient condition, and save the koala is in the necessary condition.
stop deforestation - >save koala
Does this make sense? The key is to know that "all that is needed" isn't referring to "the koala," it's referring to "stop deforestation," which is at the end of the sentence. Let us know if you have any questions!
