Sufficient & Necessary Questions - - Question 11

Nursing schools cannot attract a greater number of able applicants than they currently do unless the problems of low ...

AnnaC September 29, 2019

Why is "either or" in this statement shown as or and not as a typical "either or" question?

Usually in either or questions the sufficient is negated while the necessary stays the same.

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Irina September 29, 2019

@AnnaC,

If I understand your question correctly, you are referring to the statement "if the pool of applicants...(C), then the profession will have to either lower standards (A) or there will be shortage.(B)" The proper inference from any A v B statement is:

~ A -> B
~B -> A

But in this case, visually it is easier to demonstrate the relationship when it is diagrammed as A v B statement rather than a compound conditional:
C-> A v B

Compared to:
C- > (~A -> B)
C-> (~B->A) or
C.& ~A -> B
C & ~B -> A

Does this make sense?
Let me know if you have any further questions.

AnnaC October 1, 2019

Yes, so does this mean that when presented with compound statements it's ok to break them up into regular s -> n statements as you did above?

Thank you!

shunhe January 6, 2020

If the question is if it means the same thing to break it up as to the statements after "compared to," they do mean the same thing logically. But it's definitely not worth doing on the LSAT. Hope this helps!