This lesson was very discouraging and from the looks of it, it was for others as well. It should have been made VERY clear in the introductory portion of the lesson that sufficient and necessary and quantifiers would not be diagrammed for these questions. Rather, it took being confused and missing the first couple of questions to realize that this was the case. But to just add to the confusion, there were a couple of questions where sufficient and necessary was used in the video explanations. Now I am unsure of when I need to diagram a question or when I am simply supposed to read and deduce which one I think is correct.
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I agree with this as well, and the reply time for anything is horrible. Why does it take so long to reply?
Jay-Etteron January 24, 2022
Hi everyone, our apologies for the delayed response. There was recently a new team of tutors assigned to the message boards so you should get responses much quicker now. Generally, diagramming is a good tool for questions when you need a crystal clear understanding of the argument structure (like parallel questions), and when you have clear necessary/sufficient conditions and the argument is using conditional logic. Any kind of if/then, only if, cannot be without, must, required, unless, etc. are good candidates for diagramming. Remember that diagramming is a tool to help you understand what's going on in the question! If you feel you understand completely the conditions in the question without diagramming then you can try it. However, when you're still learning, for complicated questions, or for questions with multiple statements it's often a good idea to diagram - even the most experienced students (and indeed tutors) will benefit from diagramming in these cases. Hope this helps, feel free to follow up.
DevinFulleron August 1, 2022
I had this same question and am grateful for the response. Ive had to go over this section MANY times just to understand when/when not to diagram and still feel frustrated. Which means I just need more practice. Practice has helped immensely and I am grateful for the MANY questions provided on this section.
