Logical Reasoning

PT137 · S3 · Q17 Any food that is not sterilized

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Any food that is not sterilized and sealed can contain disease-causing bacteria.

Facts

conditionals (any, once/no, each)

~Sterilized or ~Sealed → could have bad bacteria

Sterilized + Properly Sealed → no bacteria

Acceptable food → Sterilize-and-Seal preserve tech or Slow Bad Bacteria

Quantified Facts

Some Acceptable food-preservation techniques may destroy enzymes that cause food to spoil or discolor quickly.

Evaluate

In two of these claims, "sterilize and seal" are acting as one compound idea. The first sentence is saying, So we can write the conditional as saying, if you're failed to Sterilize, Seal, or both, then it could have bacteria.

Formally, it looks like ~ (Sterilized and Sealed) which distributes into ~Sterilized or ~Sealed.

The last sentence talks about two different methods of acceptable food preservation. One method is the combo of Sterilize & Seal, the other is to Slow Growth of Bad Bacteria.

We check to see whether our conditionals chain together (they don't), and we check to see whether any facts talk about the trigger of these conditionals (the last sentence talks about the trigger of the 3rd conditional.

We could make an Overlap Inference with the last two ideas: at least one technique that involves either sterilizing and sealing or Slowing Bad Bacteria also has the potential to make food spoil or discolor less quickly.

Goal

With so many facts on our plate, we should just check out the answers, wary of overly strong answers and backwards/opposite answers, And we'll research the contenders to see if they seem provable.

17.

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

  1. All food preserved by an

    Too Strong: all

    We know that all acceptably preserved food has either been Sterilized and Sealed (in which case no bacteria) or it slows the growth of bad bacteria. That latter possibility would not be free of disease-causing bacteria, so not all acceptably preserved foods are totally free of bad bacteria.

    6% picked this

  2. Preservation methods that destroy enzymes

    Too Strong

    There's no way to establish some certain, conditional connection that says Method destroys enzymes → doesn't sterilize We don't have any info that lets us say something universal about all preservation methods that destroy food-spoiling enzymes.

    4% picked this

  3. Food preserved by a sterilization

    Unsupported Comparison

    We know that certain food-preservation methods sterilize and some of them slow down the discoloration process. We have no idea if those two things overlap at all, and we certainly couldn't compare likelihood of of discoloring quickly to all non-sterilization preservation methods.

    4% picked this

  4. Correct

    Any nonsterilized food preserved by

    Why this is right

    This answer is pretty much a boring repetition of the first sentence, only it adds in "acceptable" from the 3rd sentence for no reason, other than to complicate people's thinking. The first sentence said that if a food is not sterilized, then it can contain disease-causing bacteria. That holds for any food, whether it's been preserved by an acceptable or unacceptable method.

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

    69% picked this

  5. If a food contains no

    Backwards

    This gives us this conditional: No bacteria → acceptable method We know "sterilized and sealed → no bacteria". We only know "no bacteria" as a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. And we know "acceptable method → sterilized and sealed or Slow Bac" We only know "acceptable method" as a sufficient condition, not a necessary one.

    17% picked this

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