#8 - Most people invest in the stock market without doing

[David Boyle]

Hello powerscore,
A quick question with diagraming this one.

Normally the word "without " indicates a necessary condition in which the sufficient condition gets negated .
Here we're not doing that . Is it because it's a "most " statement and that some and most don't get negation or contrapositives,?

Ppl invest -<MOST -> ~ research

Vs
Ppl do not invest <MOST> research


Thanks
John

Hello John,

It is hard to do contrapositives with just "some" or most". If I say, "If I'm happy I eat ice cream", you know for sure that if you didn't eat ice cream, you're not happy. But if there are some possible exceptions, as with "some" or most", then that makes it harder to state firmly that if if you didn't eat ice cream, you're not happy.
As for your diagram, are you trying to do some sort of Mistaken Negation or something? Is that what you meant by "that some and most don't get negation"? Or are you talking about "the sufficient condition gets negated" vis-a-vis "without"-type questions? Clarification could be useful. Thanks!

Hope this helps,
David

[gmosquera42]

Invest in stock market do no research of their own

and

Invest in stock market make a profit

The first Sentence says:

"Most people invest in the stock market WITHOUT doing any research of their own."

Wouldn't that be diagrammed according to the "Unless Equation" as the below?

Not Invested in stock market----> Do research of their own

[Francis O'Rourke]

Hi mosquera,

It is easiest to understand this usage of the word "without" in this sentence as "with no" or "lacking." This is where we can get the statement that stock market investors mostly do no research on their own, or:

Invest in stock market do no research of their own

If you were to apply the Unless Equation to this statement, then you should come up with a slightly different statement than the one you provided. The negation of "most people who invest in the stock market" is "not most people who invest" or "less than the majority of people who invest." This is a valid rephrasing: 'less than the majority of people who invest in the stock market do research on their own' is equivalent to what was provided above. It looks like you provided a polar opposite to "most people who invest" or you overlooked the term "most."

Statements that use "most" or "some" are easy to misinterpret when you stick too closely to the rules of conditional logic. Try to focus on understanding the meaning of the sentence even if you use indicator words like "unless" or "without" to guide your work.

Let me know if this helps!

[disraelyan]

Prep Test 33 December 2000
Q8 - Most people invest in the stock

So general question that arose from this problem that would have caused havoc to me if it was during the real test. I have been under the impression that anytime I see "without" in a conditional statement or premise it acts like a "IF NOT" sufficient statement. So for example the question's first sentence reads..

"Most people invest in the stock market without doing any research of their own."

I would diagrammed this as;

NOT R --MOST-> SM

however the proper way according to a video tutorial is;

SM --MOST-> NOT R

When does "without" act like "unless" or "until" and when are there exceptions like the apparent one above.

[disraelyan]

nevermind was answered had a question about the "without" necessary condition