The Coffee Shoppe can avoid a decrease in overall profitability only if its coffee sales do not decrease.

josef February 11, 2017

Overall Productivity?

Given the setup, one would assume the answer is "If not coffee sales down, then overall productivity not down." Yet the opposite answer is given, reversing conditional and result. Why is this so?

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Mehran February 20, 2017

@josef "only if" introduces a necessary condition, which means that "coffee sales do not decrease" is our necessary condition here.

The other part of the statement, i.e. "avoid decrease in overall profitability," is our sufficient condition.

So this statement would be diagrammed as follows:

not OPD ==> not CSD
CSD ==> OPD

Hope that helps! For a more in-depth review of these concepts, please watch our video lesson on Sufficient & Necessary.