LR: Reviewing Questions - How to Breakthrough?

[s.atrmachin3]

I'm hoping to get some advice for one or two questions that I've struggled with grasping that I can apply more generally to other questions I've struggled with.

As is often recommended, after taking a PT, I'll review questions I found difficult (or easy/medium questions that I think I can gain insight from) before looking at the answer. The problem I want to address here is that sometimes when reviewing tough questions I get stuck. My "stuckness" may stem from: trouble fully grasping the core, assessing the gap, understanding answer choice wording, and/or classifying wrong answer choices. But it's not that uncommon that I spend upwards of 25 minutes grappling with a problem. If I can't figure it out within ~45 minutes, I'll move on.

But my question is: When I "hit the wall" like this while reviewing a question, what can I do to breakthrough and "complete" my review of that question?

Here's an example from this morning's review:

PT52, S3, Q13

I wrote the core above the question:

[P] Lives could be saved from instituting air/ground transportation system to specialized trauma centers for seriously injured people.

[P] Earnings from these people would increase GNP and augment government revenues via taxes

Therefore,

[C] Economics dictate that Country X should institute this nationwide system.

I assessed the gaps best I could:

A: Country's infrastructure can support increased population from saved lives

A: System itself does not create huge economic deficit

A: Increased medical care/expenses will not create economic deficit

That didn't take too long, but I spent quite a bit of time wrestling with and eliminating (and verbalizing reasons for doing so) answer choices. This is what I could come up with:

(A) Per-capita income as compared to Country Y is irrelevant. In fact, the "as country Y has done" in the question stem serves as a distraction, as it adds nothing to the argument. Confident elimination.

(B) This is the opposite of what I want. If it said, "there ARE specialized trauma centers..." then this would be a correct answer, be cause the argument is assuming that there are specialized trauma centers to which the air/ground transportation system can convey injured persons. Confident elimination.

(C) Chose this one as the correct answer, even though it seems that even if treatment at trauma centers is more costly than elsewhere, it could still be true that those people's survival and resulting contribution to GNP and government revenue could make up for that.

(D) Fourth elimination. Conducted the negation test and concluded that the negation could be true without destroying the argument. It doesn't seem that there needs to be a net increase in employment for the conclusion to hold (although as I type this, I think I'm changing my mind). This was a shaky elimination.

(E) Requires that I assume that people seriously injured in automobile accidents make up a significant percentage of seriously injured people (i.e. If "most people seriously injured in auto accidents" only constitute 3 out of 5 people total and the population of seriously injured people is 10,000, then this choice fails. Shaky elimination.

To conclude, I don't feel that I understand this question. I don't feel that I've penetrated it, taken what there is to take, and learned something that will help me on future Necessary Assumption questions.

So any advice on where to go from here and how to get "unstuck" (i.e. without heading over to the explanation section of the forum ), on this particular question and in general, along with any thoughts on my assessment of the core and how I've analyzed the answer choices, would be greatly appreciated.

Lance

[ohthatpatrick]

I want to commend you first on your cogent analysis of that problem and second on your commitment to studying the right way. You're a teacher's dream.

Where you stopped is exactly when you should probably look at the correct answer. You've reviewed your thoughts and perhaps even re-assessed some of them (or reinforced the justification you initially perceived) ... time to see if you were correct.

You're not going to truly be able to assess takeaways and such until you know what the correct answer is, because a large part of those takeaways is
1. why the correct answer is right
and
2. why the other four are wrong

Clearly, if you're picking the wrong answer (as you are here), you're not yet grasping what C and D can teach us for the future.

So don't think that the pre-review (before you check answers) is supposed to lead you to certainty. We just want you to give your brain time to marinate and ruminate a little more on the material before you switch over to "justifying the correct answer" mode.

In this case, when you find out (D) is the correct answer, I hope that you would cement this takeaway:

On Necessary Assumption, THE NEGATION TEST IS VERY IMPORTANT. You don't always have to use it, but you need to make it a comfortable tool you can employ on tough questions.

When we negate C, we get the idea that trauma centers are more expensive, which is definitely a drain on the GNP. But, when authors are discussing offsetting pluses and minuses, we really care about the net effect. Negating C doesn't give me a way to clearly quantify that we spend more money in trauma center medical bills than we get back in taxable earnings.

Meanwhile, negating D will TOTALLY remove the plus side of the author's equation. If we don't save any jobs by saving lives, then we won't be saving taxable income that otherwise would go away. If new people just fill the job vacancies, then those jobs still produce the same taxable income.

Note: If you're thinking, "aren't we saving money on these new-hires ... weren't they previously receiving unemployment? So isn't getting unemployed people to replace employed people still a net gain for the economy?" No, because the conclusion is specifically about increased GNP (just the money made) and increased tax revenue (just the money coming in)

So negating D means that our country will have the same number of jobs whether we spend money to save lives or not, so we'll presumably have the same revenue and same GNP either way.

Obviously there's no way to extrapolate from this one problem a formula for reviewing all problems, but in general I think your impasse was that you were determined to figure out EVERYTHING for yourself, prior to looking at answers or explanations.

I think you'd be well served with 3-8 mins of thinking about it yourself and then go check out the answer/explanation. Once you've read those, you'll probably need another 3-8 mins to figure out what you want to takeaway from this problem.

[s.atrmachin3]

My man. Thank you for your thoughtful explanation. You're right, I was determined to figure it all out on my own (perhaps I thought it a more noble pursuit). But, I will most likely follow your time suggestion from this point forward; pre-review a problem for 10 minutes, at most, and then think about it just a little while longer once I have looked at the answer/explanation.

Thanks again for your help, Pat. This will certainly increase my reviewing efficiency.

Lance