Food labeling regulation: Food of a type that does not ordinarily contain fat cannot be labeled "nonfat" unless most...

Lily on August 13, 2013

Forgot to write my diagram for correction :

L-> pmof -> [focnf -> L]

Naz on August 14, 2013

Alright so in situations when a food does not ordinarily contain fat, we know that if a food is labeled "nonfat" then most people mistakenly believe the food ordinarily contains fat.

NF ==> MBF

Not MBF ==> not NF

Furthermore, in situations when the label also states that the food ordinarily contains no fat, we know if most people mistakenly believe the food ordinarily contains fat, then it can be labeled "nonfat."

MBF ==> NF

Not NF ==> not MBF

(A) is incorrect because it does not violate the regulation. If most people know that bran flakes do not normally contain fat, then most people do not mistakenly believe the food ordinarily contains fat. So we have our variable "not MBF." Therefore: Not MBF ==> not NF. (A) is a valid application of the contrapositive of the first principle.

(B) is incorrect because it does not violate the regulation. Like (A), we have most people are aware that lasagna ordinarily contains fat, so: not MBF. Not MBF ==> not NF. This does not violate the stimulus.

(C) is incorrect because we do not know what happens when a food does contain fat. Therefore, since we have no regulations for or against it, this answer choice does not violate the stimulus.

(D) is CORRECT because it violates the regulations. Most people are aware that applesauce does not ordinarily contain fat means "not MBF." We know that not MBF ==> not NF. However, the applesauce is labeled NF. Therefore, the regulations are being violated.

(E) is incorrect because it does not violate the regulations. We have the condition that it is labeled saying the product does not ordinarily contain fat. Therefore: under that condition, the salsa may be labeled nonfat.

Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any other questions!

Lily on August 14, 2013

Wow thanx so much!! I got it right because I diagramed the first part right ... ~pmof -> ~L

But now I get why the other answers were wrong ... I diagramed the deck d part incorrectly because I got the general condition presented to me later in the sentence instead of the beginning of the sentence (the way the first one had it)!

Thanxx!!!!!

joryjes on September 21, 2018

Why is it ok to diagram these statements as S and N as opposed to "most" statements?

Mehran on September 25, 2018

@joryjes because doing so would completely ignore the conditional statements, i.e. the S & N keyword indicators.

Remember, you can have a sufficient condition or a necessary condition with the word "most" in it, so don't overlook that possibility moving forward.