Logical Reasoning

PT140 · S2 · Q21 Editor: Most of the books

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Editor: Most of the books of fiction we have published were submitted by literary agents for writers they represented; the rest were received directly from fiction writers from whom we requested submissions.

Facts

Most [published fiction] was submitted by agents.

The remainder of [published fiction] was from a requested submission.

Nonfiction manuscript and Not given serious attention ~Renowned Figure → and not published and ~Requested after review

Evaluate

On MBT, we care most about conditionals. The final sentence is a conditional. Do either of the first two facts trigger the rule?

No, because the first sentence is about fiction and the rule is about nonfiction.

Goal

It's hard to know what to predict since the facts didn't interact with each other.

21.

Which one of the following can be properly inferred from the editor's statements?

  1. Most unrequested manuscripts that the

    Unknown Most Group

    One of easiest eliminations on MBT is when an answer is talking about "Most X's", even though the stimulus never talked about "Most X's". The only Most group we know from the stimulus is Most [published books of fiction] This answer is talking about Most [unrequested manuscripts] We can't derive any statement about the majority of unrequested manuscripts. More conversationally, we know that the unrequested nonfiction manuscripts aren't given serious attention, but it could be that unrequested fiction manuscripts are given serious attention, and there could be many more of those.

    13% picked this

  2. Most of the books that

    Unknown Most Group

    The only Most group we know from the stimulus is Most [published books of fiction] This answer is talking about Most [published books by non-renowned authors] We can't derive any statement about a majority of that group. Most of the books that the publishing house publishes that are not by renowned authors could still be nonfiction works by authors whose manuscripts were requested after careful review.

    15% picked this

  3. If a manuscript has received

    Too Strong

    The contrapositive of the final sentence would be saying that "if a nonfiction manuscript got serious attention, then it was from a renowned figure, it was requested after careful review, or both." This answer acts like anything that got serious attention is fiction or from a renowned figure, but it could also be nonfiction by an author whose manuscript was requested after careful review.

    20% picked this

  4. The publishing house is less

    Unsupported Comparison

    There are no "degrees of likelihood" presented in any of the claims. Everything is a yes/no absolute fact. So we'd have no grounds for deriving some claim about comparative likelihood. The part about "submitted by an agent" is in regards to fiction books that were published. We have no information about how likely the publishing house was to give careful consideration to stuff submitted by an agent.

    8% picked this

  5. Correct

    Any unrequested manuscripts not submitted

    Why this is right

    When we have conditional answers, we can pause at the trigger and assess whether we know anything about that trigger. Here, it's saying "If it's unrequested, and not submitted by an agent, and published, then ..." Since all fiction manuscripts were requested or submitted by an agent, then we know that whatever work we're talking about is nonfiction. If we have a published nonfiction work, then we know it was written by a renowned figure or requested after careful review. But the trigger of this sentence is saying that the work was unrequested. So the only option left is that they were from a renowned figure.

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

    44% picked this

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