Most of the members of Bargaining Unit Number 17 of the government employees' union are computer programmers. Thus it...

hoshman on August 11, 2021

Premise: X --most--> Y
Conclusion: Z -- some--> Y

Important: whenever we have a situation where "a--most-->b" AND "a --most-->c", that means we have "b--some--c", because there has to be some overlap; they have given us everything except the "a--most-->c" part

Here, X is the bargaining unit 17, so we need a "most in bargaining unit work in Hanson building (the Z variable), which is answer choice D

Ashe on September 20, 2021

What made me understand that question was remember the basic quantifiers rules.

Remember that we cannot do a valid inference with 2 "MOST", but we can have a valid inference with 2 "SOME". Look:

X - most - B If we consider the opposite: (B - some - X)
X - most - A If we consider the opposite: (A - some - X)
___________
B some A or A- some - B (when we have the same conditional in the same side "X" and the quantifier SOME we can conclude that B - some - A or A - some - B).

The questions is working with quantifiers, than let diagramming:
1) Premise:

Unit 17 - MOST - programmers (programmers - SOME - Unite 17)

2) Premise (here is the gap we must to complete to make the conclusion logical).


3) Conclusion:
Hanson Building - SOME - Programmers (Programmers - SOME - Hanson Building).

We can see that we have MOST in the same premisse and SOME in the conclusion, therefore we can conclude that the premise will have other MOST:

Unit 17 - MOST - Hanson Building (Hanson Building - SOME - Unite 17).

Therefore the entire diagraming will be:


P: Unit 17 - MOST - programmers (programmers - SOME - Unite 17)
P: Unit 17 - MOST - Hanson Building (Hanson Building - SOME - Unite 17)
C:Hanson Building - SOME - Programmers (Programmers - SOME - Hanson Building)

Now we just have to find the correct answer choice (similar our conclusion).

Any instructor can confirm if my logical is correct?

Thanks. ;).

MayaM on August 24, 2022

Still not sure how the missing premise that you've filled in connects the given premise to the conclusion.

Emil-Kunkin on September 25, 2022

I would probably try to approach this without diagraming. We know that most members are programmers, and we are trying to prove that at least one programmer works in this building. Lets imagine that there are 100 members, and 51 of them are programmers. How could we guarantee that there is at least one programmer in the building?

We could say that all or most (so between 51-100) of the members work in that building. that guarantees that at least one person who is a programmer works in the building