Logical Reasoning

PT107 · S1 · Q18 Some planning committee members

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Some planning committee members—those representing the construction industry—have significant financial interests in the committee’s decisions.

Statements

conditional (no one)

on Planning → don't live in Committee suburbs

quantified claims

Some planning committee members (who represent the construction industry) have significant financial interests in committee's decisions.

Many planning committee members work in the suburbs.

Evaluate

When we read Must Be True, we're primarily scanning for Conditional / Quantitative / Causal wording.

When see quantifiers (all, some, few, many, most), we start thinking about Trait Overlap inferences. Unless it's a "Most + Most" inference, all Trait Overlap inferences need some conditional claim like All or No to get anywhere.

We have one conditional. What are its triggers? planning committee → don't live in suburbs do live in suburbs → not on planning committee

So do we have any facts about people who are on the planning committee or about people who do live in the suburbs?

We have the first, not the second. So we can predict some possible inferences by thinking about the facts we know about "on planning committee".

Some ppl who rep are on planning committee constr indust

Some ppl who have are on planning committee signif $ interests

Many ppl who work are on planning committee in the suburbs

Goal

Since being on the planning committee guarantees that one is does not live in the suburbs, we can make these three inferences ...

Some ppl who rep don't live in suburbs constr indust

Some ppl who have don't live in suburbs signif $ interests

Many ppl who work don't live in suburbs in the suburbs

18.

If the statements above are true, which one of the following must also be true?

  1. No persons with significant financial

    Too Strong

    Too Strong: no one w/ financial interest This paragraph tells us about some people who have significant financial interests in the committee's decisions, but it doesn't tell us anything about everyone who has significant financial interests. This answer is trying to derive a conditional significant financial → in construction interests in PC's decisions industry We can't derive this strong conditional relationship. It would be like if I told you, "Some people on that basketball team wear watches", and then you acted like we know "No who wears a watch doesn't play basketball".

    2% picked this

  2. No person who has significant

    Too Strong

    Too Strong: no one w/ financial interest This paragraph tells us about some people who have significant financial interests in the committee's decisions, but it doesn't tell us anything about everyone who has significant financial interests. This answer is trying to derive a conditional significant financial → don't live in interests in PC's decisions suburbs Since we don't know anything about "all people who have significant financial interests", it would be impossible for us to know whether they all live outside the suburbs or whether some of them live there. We know some of them don't live there, but this answer is saying all of them don't live there.

    16% picked this

  3. Some persons with significant financial

    Unknown Relationship

    This is lovably weak, thus very provable. But what do we know about people who work in the suburbs? We know many planning committee people work in the suburbs. Okay, do we know that those many planning committee people have significant financial interests in the PC's decisions? Nope. The first sentence tells us that some planning committee members have significant financial interests, but we have no way to prove that the "many members who work in the suburbs" must overlap with the "some members who have significant financial interests". Stephen Colbert, the TV host, is the youngest of like 14 siblings. We could say "Some Colbert children are rich TV hosts. Many Colbert children have unrecognizable faces." Does that allow us to prove that "Some rich TV hosts have unrecognizable faces"? Of course not. The SOME group and the MANY group don't have any forced overlap.

    15% picked this

  4. Some planning committee members who

    Out of Scope

    Out of Scope: Don't Work in Suburbs This one is also lovably weak, but it's not as tempting since we have literally zero information about people who don't work in the suburbs. The paragraph has only told us about people who do work in the suburbs.

    11% picked this

  5. Correct

    Some persons with significant financial

    Why this is right

    We know Some ppl w/ significant are PC members financial interests And we know All PC members do not live in suburbs So chaining that together, we can derive Some ppl w/ significant do not live in suburbs financial interests FORMAL NOTATION Some SFI are on PC + on PC → ~live in suburbs --------------------------------------- Some SFI ~live in suburbs EVEN MORE NERDY SFI <--s--> PC PC → ~Live in Burbs SFI <----s-------> ~Live in Burbs

    Skill tested: Must be True · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    55% picked this

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