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 Naminyar
  • Posts: 15
  • Joined: Jun 28, 2018
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#47118
I Chose Answer choice B
Can anyone help me understand why is it incorrect?

Thanks
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 Dave Killoran
PowerScore Staff
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  • Joined: Mar 25, 2011
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#47132
Naminyar wrote:I Chose Answer choice B
Can anyone help me understand why is it incorrect?

Thanks
Hi Naminyar,

As mentioned above, this answer is incorrect because it is the Mistaken Negation of the first sentence. Alternatively, this is also the Mistaken Reversal of the third sentence. So, either way you see, this answer does not have to be true.
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 ericsilvagomez
  • Posts: 49
  • Joined: Oct 16, 2023
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#104260
Hello,

I understand that for this question, you must find the contrapositive of the first sentence and repeat the third sentence, but the diagram you put confused me a little. When I think of the contrapositive, I think of a diagram where you switch the necessary and sufficient conditions and then put a line through them. And then the repeat is just a reiteration of both conditions. Can you elaborate on how answer choice E contains a repeat of sentence three? Also, for some reason, I could not quite picture the mistaken negation and mistaken reversal diagrams when going through the other answer choices. When I think of mistaken negation, I think of the sufficient and necessary conditions crossed out. The mistaken reversal is when you switch the conditions to the opposite places. Thanks, and sorry if this got confusing!
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 Jeff Wren
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#104287
Hi Eric,

To be clear, when you diagram a contrapositive, you reverse the terms and negate the terms. To negate a term, if the term is originally positive, then you make it negative (by adding a slash to it in your diagram). However, if a term is originally negative, you negate it by making it positive (by removing the slash in your diagram).

For example, the first sentence of the stimulus is basically saying "if people have serious financial problems, then they cannot be happy."

This can be diagrammed:

SFP -> not H (which would be diagrammed "H" with a slash through it)

When taking the contrapositive, you reverse and negate, so the opposite of "not happy" is "happy" and the opposite of "SFP" is "not SFP."

H -> not SFP (which would be diagrammed SFP with a slash through it)

This contrapositive is Answer E.

You don't really need the third statement in the stimulus to get the answer, but it's worth examining.

The third sentence of the stimulus is basically saying "if people can be happy, then their financial problems are solved."

In this case, having one's "financial problems solved" is just another way of saying that one doesn't have financial problems (anymore). In other words, once a problem is solved it is no longer a problem.

As such, the third sentence could also be diagrammed:

H -> not FP (which would be diagrammed "FP" with a slash through it)

You may notice that this statement mentioned "financial problems" in general rather than specifically "serious financial problems," but that is not a problem. Since financial problems include serious financial problems, if all your financial problems are solved, then so are your serious ones.
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 ericsilvagomez
  • Posts: 49
  • Joined: Oct 16, 2023
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#104375
Hi,

Thank you for the explanation! Rereading the stimulus and answer choice E with that in mind helped.

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