Unless the residents of Glen Hills band together, the proposal to rezone that city will be approved. If it is the cit...

Skylar March 9, 2020

@Cammy, happy to help!

Here are the steps to take when diagramming the word "unless":
(#1) make the part of the statement directly following the word "unless" into the Necessary condition
(#2) negate the other part of the statement and make it into the Sufficient condition

For example, if we were told "A unless B," our diagram would look like: NOT A -> B.

The first sentence of this passage states, "Unless the residents of Glen Hills band together, the proposal to rezone the city will be approved." Let's follow the steps described above to diagram this:
#1) "the residents of Glen Hills band together" is the Necessary condition
#2) NOT "the proposal to rezone the city will be approved" is the Sufficient condition

This gives us: proposal NOT approved -> residents band together.
The contrapositive is: residents NOT band together -> proposal approved

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

tisha212@yahoo.com May 8, 2020

This is how I diagrammed it, however in the video explanation she makes unless the sufficient condition. I'm confused.

nilbhatt June 3, 2020

I am also confused on the same thing

Jamie-Porto July 3, 2020

I am confused as well. Why is there a discrepancy between how to diagram unless between what Skylar said and what the video states?

Brett-Lindsay July 7, 2020

I think that once you get really good at translating S/N statements, your brain automatically translates between a positive and contrapositive at lightning speed and equates them in your mind. Then, when you're diagramming, you subconsciously choose the most suitable version and write it down.

That's probably what's happening on the video. It's something to aspire to - hopefully, we will all be doing it with enough practice.