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

kens August 1, 2020

Sufficient & Necessary Questions Q11

Nursing schools cannot attract a greater number of able applicants than they currently do unless the problems of low wages and high-stress working conditions in the nursing profession are solved. Is the diagram for this statement written as /AGNA---> low wage and high stress? Would it be correct to write the problems as necessary since they follow the word unless? I feel like it's written in reverse on the answer explanation--please help! Thanks in advance!

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shunhe August 4, 2020

Hi @kenken,

Thanks for the question! So I wouldn’t quite diagram the statement that way. First, we’re told that nursing schools can’t attract a greater number of able applicants, which you wrote as ~AGNA. I think that’s good. Then, the next part is about “the problems of low wages and high-stress working conditions in the nursing profession” being solved. So what’s key here is more the problems being solved as opposed to the low wages and high stress, so I’d probably just write like PS for problems solved or maybe LWHSPS (low wage and high-stress problems solved). Since the main subject of this sentence is the “problems” and the main verb is “solved.”

Now as to the diagram, we can think of “unless” as “if not.” So this would actually be diagrammed

~LWHSPS —> ~AGNA

Or, the contrapositive, which is

AGNA —> LWHSPS

So you shouldn’t have the “not” in the front of your AGNA in your diagram.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.