Human resources director:  While only some recent university graduates consider work environment an important factor ...

Naz January 3, 2014

Let's diagram the set of facts:

"While only some recent university graduates consider work environment an important factor in choosing a job,"

P1: UG-some-WEIF
WEIF-some-UG

"they all consider salary an important factor."

P2: UG ==> SIF
not SIF ==> not UG

"Further, whereas the only workers who consider stress level an important factor in choosing a job are a few veteran employees,"

P3: VE-some-SLIF
SLIF-some-VE

"every recent university graduate considers vacation policy an important factor."

P4: UG ==> VPIF
notVPIF ==> not UG

Remember that we can only combine a Sufficient & Necessary statement and a quantity statement when the sufficient condition of the Sufficient & Necessary statement and the right-hand side variable of the quantity statement are the same. We also know that we cannot combine "some" statements with "some" statements. Thus, the only premises we can combine are P1 with P2, and P1 with P4.

Answer choice (B) is the combination of P1 with P4.

We arrange them like so: WEIF-some-UG ==> VPIF. Thus, we conclude: WEIF-some-VPIF.

Hope that was helpful! Please let us know if you have any more questions.

yababio May 21, 2015

Theres no video

Naz May 21, 2015

Again, I'm sorry about this, but this question is very clearly answered in the thread above. There is no need for a video explanation when it can so easily be depicted with words in the message boards.

Hope that helps!

weepa7 July 29, 2015

Can you help me understand why we can't combine ug=>vpif and ug=>sif to be ug=>vpif&sif? Thanks

Naz August 4, 2015

Well, we can combine them like that, but that doesn't get us to a correct answer.

Hope that clears things up! Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Alex January 5, 2017

So if UG -> SIF and UG ->VPIF, we can also conclude SIF-some-VPIF or VPIF-some-SIF? Thank you.

Mehran January 15, 2017

@Alex assuming the existence of the sufficient condition that would be a correct deduction.

Here is another example:

A ==> B

A ==> C

Assuming the existence of at least one A, we can conclude that "some Bs are Cs" (B-some-C) and that "some Cs are Bs" (C-some-B).

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

dianalazar May 15, 2020

@Melody why is "Further, whereas the only workers who consider stress level an important factor in choosing a job are a few veteran employees,"
diagramed as VE-some-SLIF?
Wouldn't this be a S&N...I'm not understanding where the some is coming from