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

Montero November 15, 2013

Having problems With the diagram

For the second sentence "if the pool of able applicants to the nursing school does not increase beyond the current level, EITHER the profession will have to lower its entrance standards or lower it's entrance standards or there will be an acute shortage of nurses." I thought for either/ or statements you picked one variable made it the necessary condition and make the other part of the statement the sufficient condition and negate it? The last sentence does it also. I'm confused do you apply the compound statement rule or the either/ or rule. I've really been having problems with diagraming and know what rule to use when. Thank you.

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Mehran November 18, 2013

You are overlooking the "if" part of the sentence. Here is the sentence in question:

"If the pool of able applicants to nursing school does not increase beyond the current level, either the profession will have to lower its entrance standards, or there will be soon be an acute shortage of nurses."

We know that "if" introduces the sufficient condition so we would diagram the first part of the sentence as follows:

not IANA ===>

IANA stands for "increase able nursing applicants."

Now, the rest of our sentence will be our necessary condition, which we would diagram as follows:

===> LES or ASN

LES stands for "lower entrance standards."

ASN stands for "acute shortage of nurses."

Remember that either/or means if one variable is not present, the other variable must be present so there are three possibilities here:

(1) not LES, ASN
(2) not ASN, LES
(3) ASN, LES

Notice that "LES or ASN" actually captures all three of these possibilities because it is basically saying at least one of LES or ASN must be present if "the pool of able applicants to nursing school does not increase beyond the current level."

So the complete diagram would be as follows:

not IANA ===> LES or ASN
not LES & not ASN ===> IANA

Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Montero November 18, 2013

Thank you...it seems that I need some extra attention on this section. I'm really having difficulties diagramming passages. Thank you very much.

Mehran November 19, 2013

My pleasure! If I confused you more, just remember the following:

(1) Either A or B

not A ===> B
not B ===> A

(2) If C, then either A or B

C ===> A or B
not A & not B ===> not C

Hope this helps! Let us know if you have any other questions.

Montero November 21, 2013

Thanks you..it's coming together.

esther November 4, 2017

So I had the same question as Andres.
I saw the 'if' and the 'either/or'
So is it because 'if' comes 1st in the sentence that we follow that ruling and then just use 'either/or' to diagram as far as changing 'or' to 'and' and vice versa?
So we would not need to negate the sufficient part at all in regards to the 'either/or' rule correct?

andrewoconnor59 November 11, 2017

agreed, when does one indicator word take precedent over another?

Mehran November 12, 2017

Thanks for your posts. This is not about which indicator takes precedence. When a sentence reads: If C, then either A or B, the correct way to diagram that sentence is:
C ==> A or B
contrapositive: not A and not B ==> not C

Hope that helps!

esther June 26, 2018

I do not understand these missing premise flashcards

Mehran June 27, 2018

Hi @esther, thanks for your posts. Which flash cards are you referring to?