Very general concern about global questions.

[ambarfe]

This is a very general question, so I suppose I am mainly interested in tips or knowing what y'all do (but all help is appreciated!).

Thanks to the bibles I've improved tremendously on LG, getting -2 on my last 3 PTs, and my timing has been improving as well. However, as I was reviewing my performance report I noticed that in each PT those 2 questions I've gotten wrong have been global questions. As encouraging as it is that I'm getting the more difficult questions right, I feel really silly missing some of the global questions.

Is this just carelessness? I've noticed that lately in drills when I resist splitting and work off one main board for global questions I'm finishing quicker and with better accuracy. Does this mean I am likely to be ignoring possible scenarios though? How do y'all approach this, and what tips would you suggest?

(First-time poster, so I hope this post makes sense!)

- Ambar

[Malila Robinson]

Hi Ambar,
What specific types of Global Questions are you getting wrong vs. right? So, for example are you ok with Global Main Point but not as successful with Global Must Be True? There are different approaches to the various types of Global questions, so your issue may not be with Global questions in general but rather with a subset of them. If you can check your data and then respond we can try to delve deeper into the issue!
-Malila

[ambarfe]

Hi Malila, thanks for responding!

I looked into it, and they were classified as: Global, global list, global list, global justify, global rule substitution.

I know the last one is difficult/time consuming/intimidating, so I’m planning to focus on it next. However, I’ve also gotten the other types of questions right in other games, so I don’t think I’m completely off on the theory (although there are obviously issues!). What would you suggest I do to avoid these pitfalls, and what do you think might be the reasons for it?

Thank you!

[Jon Denning]

Hi Ambar - jumping in here to continue the discussion (and hopefully provide some clarity)!

All a "Global" question means is that you aren't provided with any additional, up-front information in the question itself from which to work (those are Local questions), so that instead of reacting to a hypothetical prompt like "If A is third what must be true?," you're working from the main set of rules/inferences, as in "Which of the following must be true?" (i.e. is always true under any circumstances).

But with that serving as the only distinction of what makes a question Global it's hard to list a single, or even limited set of, strategies that are the key to these questions: each of the further designators you list—List, Justify, Rule Substitution—is going to be more central to solving the question than the fact that no new information is involved.

That said, the one strategy that does at least apply to Global questions universally is that you either already have the answer/solution from the rules, inferences, and your main setup, or there's something you're missing within those that the correct answer hinges on (and can potentially teach you). It also means that if anything in your setup is mistaken/inaccurate, a Global question is often quite a bit more challenging than a Local question! So I suspect that at times that may be what's causing trouble: because of the more open-ended nature of Global, errors in your setup are less self-evident and more likely to lead to misses than in a Local question where you're often following a more apparent step-by-step path to the correct answer.

Because of that last bit one thing that may help would be attempting the Global questions last, with the exception of Global List questions asking for a working arrangement of the variables—most games start with one of these, and they can be attacked by simply using the rules to remove four answers in violation of them; they also provide a working hypothetical for further use, so doing them early is recommended. But if you see a Global Justify, or Rule Sub, or even just a very general "Which of the following could be true?" then consider how confident you feel about your setup and understanding of the game before choosing to do those questions prior to the Local options. If you're feeling rock solid you can do any of the questions, including Global, whenever you want, of course. But if not then Local may prove the better choice early on.

In short, Local are often more accessible and can both help you confirm that your work to that point is accurate (key for Global questions) and occasionally reveal new info/inferences (also key for Global questions). So if you're feeling a little shaky dive into some Local questions asap and see how they go.

Hope that helps!