Strengthen with Sufficient Premise (Advanced) with Mika

Oh, God, it's so much better. Are you aware? Hey, Moira.

How are you doing today?

I've been a long week. think I've worked a crazy man this week. But it's good. have all tomorrow off.

You get to go roller skating in the morning. Well, I'm pretty stoked. Alright, let's get the iPad locked in too.

Hey, Elena. Hey, 15. Huh? Oh my. Hey. Thanks for joining on Friday evening. Okay, um, yeah, Friday evenings were always like this, but thank you all for coming for the advanced sufficient premise class.

I'm pretty sure all of you have been to a conditional logic class with me before. So, I'll just go over a little bit of background on these questions, then we'll dive in.

We'll start exploring what makes a sufficient assumption question and advanced sufficient assumption question, right? What sets these apart? What sort of tactics and traps are they using?

So, that's going to be the main focus today, is what sort of things do they do to bump the difficulty on these ones?

Yeah. So, I'm sure you all know, sufficient assumptions are not a common question type, they're not an uncommon question type.

I think they are the most common conditional logic heavy question type. Let's see, like the fourth, like the sixth or seventh most common.

So, definitely something you want to get really, really good at, and also the skills for this must be true really over that part, as well as principal strength in.

So, becoming. I'm going to advance practitioner in this particular question type reverberates to quite a few others. What else to say about sufficient assumptions?

Yeah, let me pull out my document and I guess I'll do a quick share. Let me get this share going for just a little bit and then we'll jump onto my iPad and work on some questions together.

Okay, cool. So you guys have seen me do this before. You guys have seen me do this before. We may reopen this.

Y'all have seen before. We may reopen. Open this and talk about the types of relationships reducible to conditional logic a bit, especially because five-star essays throw some really weirdly like stated conditional logic and it can be quite difficult to like grab onto it.

But a big thing I just wanna point out, right? You can think of sufficient assumptions as solving towards the middle, right?

We are looking for a missing chunk in the middle of the equation. Whereas must be true, obviously we're solving towards the output, right?

And so I wanna emphasize this idea of solving towards the middle because what I'm gonna advocate to you might not be something you're already doing.

I am going to very, very strongly advocate a specific set of steps for sufficient assumptions. And the important one is that you do the conclusion first and solve towards the middle, right?

I identify and dive in the conclusion I traced. the end and then I trace the start and that leads me to whatever is missing in the middle, right?

Most people tend to go into a sufficient assumption and translate it line by line by line. It's just like each sentence, you do it in an order.

That is not optimal. This is optimal. And so hopefully I'll be able to convince you of that after we do a couple of questions.

And yeah, we may jump back to this later, but let's go ahead, stop sharing here, and start sharing on my idea.

All right, we'll start with this one. So I'm going to read it for the first. It feels like the first

These few lines are the conclusion I see of because here, So premise, inclusion, let's keep reading. Traditional classroom is ineffective because education in such an environment is not truly a social process.

And only social processes can develop students insight. In the traditional classroom, the teacher acts from outside the group. And interactions between teachers and students are rigid and artificial.

OK, so I think I was correct about that conclusion. So I'm going to translate that first. And I'll just say traditional classroom is not effective.

OK, so now I'm going to look for effective or ineffective, right? I need a match for this. Do I see effective anywhere else?

I don't. I just don't see effective anywhere else. And you know what that tells me? Tells me that ineffective is part of what's missing.

Just by default, this is in the conclusion. It has to be an apprentice. It can't not be an apprentice.

So I know that that piece is missing. Now I'm going to trace traditional classroom. I see that education in such an environment, I think that's a referential statement referring back to traditional classroom.

So traditional classroom is not social. This is a fake and great. This is not an and with an and a thing.

It's a second entire statement. So only social processes can develop students' insights. So if I want to develop students' insights.

then I need a social process. Right. finally, I have this one last statement about the traditional classroom in traditional classroom, right?

The teacher is outside and the interactions are rigid and artificial. Okay. So, what I am now seeing here is kind of an interesting set up.

Let me, let me grab this now and we're going to space it a little bit more. Right. So, the question obviously is what goes here, right?

I already know that it needs to lead to that effect. And I know it needs to start, the chain needs to start from TC.

But you know what, I am noticing. I actually They kind of have two different ways to get there. So first I see that not social and social are on the same side, which means if I take the contra positive of this, I can get not social on the other side.

So I'm going to go ahead and do a contra positive. And this says that if the teaching process is not social, then it will not develop students insights.

And so this seems like one path, right? If it doesn't develop students insights, then it's not effective. Therefore traditional classroom is not effective.

But I also could get there here, right? I have another independent start to this chain. So I could also have an answer here that says out.

or RA then not effective because that would still tell me that the traditional classroom is not effective. So that's kind of a cool question, right?

many sufficient assumptions have two completely valid answers? So now we go and look for one of the for either of them, knowing that obviously one of them is not going to be here, right?

So development in the inside only takes place if genuine education occurs. I don't even lose genuine education, right? That's a new idea here.

That doesn't match anything we've got going on yet. So A is out. It's just introducing a new term entirely.

Oh, hey, blue. Classroom if the interaction is not rigid and not artificial. But... That doesn't tell us that if it's rigid and artificial, then it is ineffective, right?

So this is hitting. This is meant to be a very tempting but wrong version of this answer, right? So similar, but doing it in the wrong direction, right?

All social processes involve interaction that is not artificial or rigid. That doesn't get us to the conclusion, right? That would be like connecting these two chains together, but we don't care about connecting those two chains together because that doesn't justify our conclusion.

So see that? The education is not effective unless it leads to the development of insight. So if there is not development of insight, then education is not effective.

So there we go, and E, the teacher does not act from outside the group in a nontraditional class. Classroom, no, we're trying to justify the conclusion that traditional classrooms are ineffective.

This is more of like a strength and weaken type answer where we're trying to prove that non-traditional classrooms are better, but that's not our goal here.

And there we go. I said we're bordering on five, I think. Obviously they had this really, really cool thing going on where there's technically two correct answers to the sufficient assumption that's relatively rare, definitely a five-star type thing.

And then of course they set up a classic trap which is something that sounds very, very close to the one of the right answers but isn't quite that.

And that made this a five-star. So takeaways, keep in mind that on the truly advanced essay questions there might actually be too independent.

can they correct answers and that you need to check for both. I know I've talked to all of you at some point about that and the must be true context, where there's obviously a lot more than one must be true output.

But it does occasionally happen here. OK. All right. So I'm going to add a bit more therapy problem. All right.

Thank you, Ms. Levira, for a interactive one. know we have a small class, so no, you know, your answer to the group chat or to me directly, you feel like it, no pressure otherwise.

But let's take maybe four minutes, come back, and we'll talk about this one. You All right, we've got one answer in.

Thanks, Blue. You Give it one more minute. Between A and E, okay, let's dive in. So we'll start with that conclusion.

The There's two of them, right? So if Franklin then bears commendation, if Ken then not bears commendation. Go back up, if exemplary, eligible, if not exemplary, then not eligible.

If an axe saved a light, and it exceeded expectations, so just put RE, and they must be eligible, then they should get a D award.

And I'm just going to change this now to award. Okay. So somebody was between A and E, blue light E.

Let's look at A first. So let's see, in saving a drowning, child from drowning, they both went beyond what was reasonably expected.

So we've satisfied that. They saved the child from drowning. That's definitely saving a life. And are they eligible? Franklin is eligible for the award, is not eligible for Then are E and save.

and eligible, therefore, award, that's looking pretty good, and pen is just not eligible, and therefore cannot get the award, hmm, alright, let's just take a look at B, both of them have simply records, so they're both eligible, um, Franklin, I'll just say each of them saved a child, Franklin went beyond what was recently expected, pen did not, now that's also very, very interesting, right?

So, both of them are eligible, both of them saved a lie, Franklin went above and beyond duty, Franklin's now done all of this, pen did not go above and beyond the duty.

Alright, we'll keep going, But I think y'all can already see maybe what the problem with B is, right? Do we know that this is the only way an officer that's eligible for the award can get the award?

No, right? is the right hand side, not the left hand side. So there might be other ways to get the award.

So knowing that PIN did not satisfy this line doesn't tell us whether not PIN should get an award. We really kind of need PIN to not be eligible, right?

We'll go jump down to E because both we have two people checking out E. Both of them having simply records, they're both eligible for any phrase and several occasions to save people's life.

Many occasions he's reason gone beyond that. So let's think about this line. I think this line should be considered joint requirements, right?

It needs to be one particular thing this year in which the officer both exceeded what was reasonably expected and saved someone's life, right?

Because if the act saves someone's life. So I think that we need to be very specifically focused on one event.

And so he doesn't work because it's not telling us that on the occasions that Franklin saved people's lives, he also exceeded what could be expected, right?

It just says that over the course of the year he did do both, but it doesn't tell us if there was one specific event where he did both at the same time.

So that's why he is out. Yeah. Let's take a look at D and C real quick because this is a hard hard question.

D at least once this year, Franklin has saved a person's life. D just doesn't omits any discussion of whether either of them is eligible.

And neither Franklin nor Penn has an exemplary record, but in saving the life of an external benefit, Franklin went beyond.

No, but they don't have exemplary records. Why do I care? And so the answer is A. Well, Carolina, good, good look from everybody, right?

This is a very subtle issue, right? The problem with E is very subtle, right? It has to be one event where all of the things happen rather than both things over the course of the year.

Yeah. And ultimately, A works because Penn is simply ineligible, right? And I think we can assume that, that if you're not eligible for the award, it doesn't matter if there are other routes to achieve it, right?

period, you have to have been eligible, um, yeah. All right, really tough one, right? can see how I always kind of tell people that a lot of five stars can be thought of as like a bespoke good, right?

They're not mass produced. There's a lot of love and care and thought that goes into every single five star, especially what I would call like ultra five stars.

Um, I hate that question. Okay. Yeah, this one can be good. I get that out of the way in the upper left, there we go.

All right, um, let's take another four minutes.

a great, it's a great question, honestly. So it is different for different question types, but I often tell people that the true last step to mastery in this test is not to know why things are right, but to know why they're wrong, right, because when you can instantly tell an answer is wrong that gives you a lot more time to ponder the hard stuff.

So I wouldn't necessarily say that I have like a speed code in terms of contemplating two answers, like between two answers.

And I'll talk about them in a second, but I would say the biggest thing is just eliminating the wrong answers fast and buying more buying yourself more time to contemplate.

But as like on a more specific basis, right, directly comparing the two answer choices and asking what they do differently is a really good thought process, especially in a conditional logic question like this.

So you're stuck between A and E and instead of just thinking about whether they both seem right, very specifically just ask what are they doing differently and why would that matter, right?

So you're sort of taking the answer choices as a whole off the table and you're narrowly focusing on the difference between the two.

So like let's look at A and E here, right? think if we were looking at A and E here, the big thing that would stick out is number one.

And only one person is eligible here, is eligible, is not eligible. Here, both of them are eligible. So that's one clear difference that could matter, right?

And then we talked about the other big difference before. This is about a single event, whereas here it's about Franklin doing many things over the course of the year.

And so I look at those two distinctions very specifically and ask, does it matter, right? Whether they both have exemplary records or just Franklin?

And then I ask, does it matter that it's one event versus multiple events? So I would say that works across question types, but especially well, I would say on conditional logic, right?

Because obviously it's a bit more formulaic and you can visually see the difference if you die a fan. Um, any other thoughts about how to handle the final two answer choices?

Definitely have rules of thumb across multiple question types too. So for instance, if I'm truly, truly stuck and I'm most strongly supported, I will choose the answer that is phrased more weekly, because an answer choice that is weekly phrased is just easier to justify than an answer choice that is strongly phrased, right?

So that's a good sort of rule of thumb to tie a grape on MS-S. On a sufficient assumption, what would be a good rule of thumb for a tie-free fell?

I will continue to think about that and maybe if I come up with something by the end of class, I will definitely bring it back up.

So that's a good question. What is the rule of thumb there? Yeah, I'll continue to think about that before we visit it.

Okay, so what I can also tell you is sometimes a five stars, a five star, not because the conditional logic is necessarily difficult, but because it has like 18 commas What is the side clause, all that sort of stuff.

So this is a great example of that. mean, just a ton of commas, a ton of like sort of like hypothetical language, which people's brains also often struggle with, just humans in general.

So dive in, we'll take four or five minutes, five, 35, 36. Okay, by all means, take it back, okay, workers got the, let's get one more minute, maybe, or they have.

All right, let's jump in, got to see, okay, now this one's just all over the place. So what even is the conclusion, right, well I see this for, right, that's a because.

So from here on to here, these are premises, I see a thus here, so this phrase to promote it is the conclusion.

So if important and well written, then promote it. Okay, so let's see, the dean will surely promote it if when recommends it.

So we've got rec to promote. Now let's trace important and well-written. That's missing. That is a missing piece, it looks like.

So I'm going to go ahead and put important and well-written, write something like this. So now let's step back and just trace the rest of this, right?

Or switch to just going over here, that's kind of what I'll do. The dean will promote it if she recommends it, if it's published, then when will recommend the promotion.

So we could just do, yeah, that seems pretty direct, right? I-W to publish, if it's important and well-written, then it will be published.

for a result when recommending him, and that will result in the dean promoting him. Yeah. Cool. Let's just look at this other part though.

When will certainly keep her promise? Great, I don't even like, that's just a distraction statement I think. It's not necessary to reach the conclusion here, right?

any way, shape or form. I think it is just reaffirming something we already knew. It's basically just saying, this part is actually true.

Just kind of like a weird thing to do. But yeah, so I think we're looking for something along the lines of if Skip's book is important and well written, then it will be published.

So, can anybody, tell me why he is wrong, unfortunately. It's backwards, right? If it's published, then it needs to be important and well-written.

It doesn't tell us that that's enough to get it published, right? So in fact, A is the answer, and I want you to think of this as the idea of overkill, right?

All we care about is that Skip's book gets published. I know I wrote I and W here, right? But this also works.

This is sufficient to lead us to this conclusion, right? Because therefore, the well-written doesn't matter, right? If it's important, it'll get published.

If it's published, it'll get recommended. If it's recommended, Skip will get promoted. Therefore, if the book has a... is as important and well-written as skip claims, then he will get promoted, right?

The well-written doesn't matter, and that's totally cool, right? This is still sufficient, yeah. Kind of a weird one, right?

It's a little bit goofy. So they do this on occasion, especially on these advanced questions where an and will suddenly drop one of the components.

And just keep in mind that in most situations, that's totally fine, right? Like if I say A is B and C and B leads to D, then A still leads to D no matter what, right?

Let's look at the other way, right? If I say A and B leads to C. And I give you the premise that A leads to C, that's accurate, right?

If A alone leads to C, then A and B leads C, right? That works, right? this is still sufficient for A and B to cause C, right?

B just doesn't need it. So that's the trick they did here. Be on the lookout for it in the future.

Definitely a four and five star thing. They definitely like to use this. But you are not playing against this.

I think that's good. that's OK. Sorry. I lose, sorry, didn't even hang out much with you. I didn't even know.

Look at our tips. My time. OK. OK. Sorry, guys. All right. Let's jump to the next one. Unless you all have any questions about

of this one before we move by. Okay. Let's take another four or five minutes to answer this one. You So this is what I would call an ultra detail question, right?

the answer choices are really testing whether you're paying attention to each and every little requirement behind the principle. Right, but let's just take a look at that right so if you have More than one from the library at the same time.

And, some of them are not children's, and you must have had the previous find, right? Then, you must be fined, you might not make space there, okay, right?

Kessler has three books, three of them are overdue, so we know that Kessler meets the greater than one category immediately, right?

But, we don't know anything about the child's book category and the previous fine category, right? So, we need to have an answer choice that fulfills those two, so let's go to B, we had two votes for it.

One of the overdue books is a novel for adults, so that fulfills the sum of these books. overdue books are not children's

trans books. And Kessler has previously been fine. That looks good. Yeah, excellent job y'all. Let's just look at the tricks and traps they laid here, So this just tells us that some of the books that Kessler has out are not children's books.

It doesn't confirm to us that one of the overdue books is not a children's book. And we very specifically need that that one of the overdue books is not a children's book.

So A goes out. C, none of the books that Kessler has is a children's book, and in previous years Kessler has returned books very slightly.

That doesn't tell us that Kessler's ever been fine, right? just tells us that Kessler may have been fine for being late.

We don't know. So C is out. D, we've got previous finds. And then it talks about none of the overdue books that the previous finds apply to.

So that's out. E, Cusser's never been fine for overdue books, doesn't matter, right? We're dying. Previous find. So yeah, this is one of those questions where you just have to really check off each little detail one by one.

Well done. Excellent job, y'all. All right. We've got a few more here. So maybe the last one we have time to do.

So I want to choose a good one. Ooh, that one's fine. Okay, I'm not going to spoil this at all or prime you in any way.

Just dive in. We'll come back and forth five minutes. I am good. Lower my desk. You Okay, I want to answer and.

You You Okay Tell you all I can't, which is that this is also a detail oriented question. You If it builds it, they will come.

If they build it, they'll have, what is it, National Professional Organization Conference. And if several large conventions are held in the city, then the number of visitors will increase.

Did you all see what I just did there? Tax revenues will certainly increase if the number of visitors increases, thus building

is E. If they hold their conventions, those conventions will be large. Right? How unfair is this question? It's like a, this is the sort of thing you would expect like in a necessary assumption question where you're having to reconnect things.

Very random and fun one for a sufficient assumption. But yeah, who says that because they're national that they're going to be large?

I don't know. It could be a national convention of I'm trying to think of something really, really niche that isn't going to piss me off that I can't.

Yeah, but oh, I went to a national conference for broad examiners. When I was a clerk, my judge was speaking there, so they caught me everything

of the place. Yeah, I had like 90 people ahead, you know, maybe 150, definitely not more than 150. It's hard to tell because there's like lots of small events.

And so you can't, you don't really get a feel for everyone at once. But that's not a big conference.

It's not So it goes to show, right, some of these five-star sufficient assumptions involve very complex sufficient assumptions, right, where the diagram itself and figuring out what's going on is quite distant.

Like this one, right, with the two separate potentially correct answers and relatively hard to translate. Oh, which one was that?

This one? If the number of visitors, so that's just kind of like a negation of what we already have.

Right. So what I would say is a feels more like a necessary assumption, but not a sufficient one. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

don't think that this is like the sufficient assumption here really just is drawing an equal sign between the national organization conferences and large conventions.

Yeah. Really good be what, but yeah, so, so saying. You can get what I mean when I say that these are a bit bespoke, right?

We had one and that was just really complex to diagram and it ended up involving two potential sufficient assumptions.

And then we get one like this where it's just, again, pretty detail oriented, but also just to some degree.

Like you really have to read, read, read. And then we get one that's just messing with our heads with 18 different commas in it.

Just really sort of hard to translate into the diagram at all. And then we had a couple of ones that are really just messing with us about detail oriented stuff, right?

Like we have to very much check every little detail. So unfortunately, hard sufficient assumptions aren't hard in one way.

They're hard in a whole bunch of different ways, sometimes not even in overlapping ways. So the detail orientedness really applies here and

a lot of questions. So that's just sort of a skill that you can continue building. Everyone can continue building.

Even if I miss an LR question, it's almost always because I just didn't pick up on a really important detail, right?

So the detail oriented is in itself a skill to focus on building consciously, right? As you practice tonight over the weekend, really push yourself to consider every little detail and untied practice.

Obviously, in time practice, you have to make sacrifice, but that would be my biggest thing to take away from today and expect unexpected stuff on five stars, right?

You just have to sort of be flexible on your feet for every single one of them because they're all different, really different in a way that two stars, for example, aren't.

All right. Well, thank you all for coming today. Am I coming back now? next week. I will be back on Wednesday the 25th, it looks like.

Um, yeah. Remember my office hours to psych, so they not mark them out. All right, well, thank you all for coming so much.

Really appreciate coming out on a Friday night. Hope you all have a really awesome weekend and I'll see you again soon.

Bye. Bye Elena. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.