Amy McConnell is considering running for election against the incumbent, Gregory Lutz. If Lutz has a large campaign f...

Skylar on March 7, 2020

@yckim2180, happy to help.

First, let's break down the passage.

The second sentence states: "If Lutz has a large campaign fund, then he is already far ahead, and McConnell will not run against him."

We can diagram this as: LCF -> not MR.
The contrapositive of this is: MR -> not LCF.

The rest of the passage states: "If Lutz does not have a large campaign fund, McConnell will scrutinize Lutz's record for any hints of scandal that she could use against him. Anything of a scandalous nature would increase McConnell's chances of winning, and she would campaign for election. If Lutz has a clean record, however, McConnell will not run against him."

This tells us: not LCF -> MSR. It then presents us with two routes- either McConnell finds scandal and runs, or McConnell does not find scandal and does not run.

These routes can be diagrammed as:
S -> MR (contrapositive: not MR -> not S)
not S -> not MR (contrapositive: MR -> S)

Now, let's look to (D).

(D) states: "Lutz's record contains nothing that would increase McConnell's chances of winning, and she runs against him."

We are told in the passage that "anything of a scandalous nature would increase McConnell's chances of winning," so (D) is saying that Lutz's record contains no scandals.

So now we have "no scandals" as our Sufficient Condition, and we should remember the following diagram we made from the passage: not S -> not MR. In other words, the passage tells us that if there are no scandals found, McConnell will not run. It says that "If Lutz has a clean record, however, McConnell will not run against him."

This contradicts (D), which says that there are no scandals but McConnell still runs. Therefore, (D) must be false.

Does that make sense? Let us know if you have any other questions!

yckim2180 on June 13, 2020

Why is C not the right answer when it also contradicts a statement from the passage? C contradicts the statement S --> MR.

yckim2180 on June 19, 2020

Hi, just wanted to follow up on my last question.

akinyiwilliams on August 13, 2020

To the student with the question, there is a deep dive of this specific question in the Cannot Be True Course in the lesson plan > Cannot Be True Video. I believe it is Example #2, followed by a discussion on the presenter's explanation in the message board below the video. Hopefully you get the explanation you need there.