Q6 - A first term board member

[jungers220]

I take "unless" to mean "if not." So, if I diagram this question, it's

~accountant or ~unanimous --> ~ finance committee

The Manhattan LR book says that OR in the sufficient condition means that either will trigger the necessary. So why isn't A correct?

Many thanks!

[abematsui]

I am not sure that converting "unless" to "if not" is a great idea.

To me, unless introduces the necessary condition, and then I just negate the other part of the sentence which composes the sufficient.

So this question would go like this:

First term board member on Finance Committee ---> Accountant OR Supported by all members

The contrapositive is thus

~Accountant AND ~ Supported by all members ---> ~First term board member on finance committee

**Remember when an OR switches places over the arrow, it is replaced by an AND & vice versa


A) All the members could support Simkins, therefore fulfilling a necessary requirement of being on the committee
B)Third term board member is irrelevant-- maybe a whole different system applies to them
C)we don't know if he is a first year board member, so this may all not apply to him
D) Correct answer. A first term board member cannot be on the Finance committee unless he is an accountant or is supported by all the members of the board
E) We don't know if Mabry is a First year member, so irrelevant

I hope this helps, and I hope I am right!

[maryadkins]

~accountant or ~unanimous --> ~ finance committee

The Manhattan LR book says that OR in the sufficient condition means that either will trigger the necessary. So why isn't A correct?

"Unless" is translated to "if not," but if you have a plural, you have to obey the rules for translating a plural conditional statement into its contrapositive. So we have to add to the "if not" strategy: also change "ors" to "ands" and "ands" to "ors."

Think about it. An "or" doesn't work in the statement you wrote above; that's not what the question is saying. You can be an accountant and still be on the finance committee if you get a unanimous vote, just like you can be on the committee if you are an accountant but don't get a unanimous vote.

[samiraa180]

~A AND ~ unanimous ---> 1st time BM ~ Finance Comm

And the reason why said statement would not be translated as "or" is because when words such as "unless" "except" "until" and "without" are followed by a compound statement then you negate both parts of the clause which combine into an "AND", right?

I get stuck when I move on to answer choices because I'm not sure if I should be moving from left to right. For example, answer choice A begins with Simkins being a first- term board member, okay that works, but he's not an accountant, so then I'm thinking, "ugghhh what do I do next...?" because those two terms appear on different sides of the arrow. And then I stare at the answer choices hoping for an epiphany that never emerges. So, a few things:

1. Should I translate each answer choice into a formal logic statement or read the statement and see if it fits the principle.
2. If it's the latter, then how do I proceed, can you break down the argument and how each answer choice breaks the rule?
3. Answer Choice B: third term board member, out of scope?

Thanks in advance!

[maryadkins]

I would first eliminate answer choices you know are wrong without translating them into formal logic. There's no reason to do that for answers that you can eliminate because they're out of scope (like (B)).

In this case, we have:

~Accountant AND ~Unanimous support --> ~On FC

Contrapositive:

FC --> Accountant OR Unanimous support

(A) is wrong because he could still be on the board if he gets unanimous support. In order to conclude that he should not be on the committee, in other words, we need to ALSO know that he didn't get unanimous support.

(B) is out of scope because we're only talking about first-term board members.

(C) is also out of scope because we don't know if he's a first term member.

(D) tells us K is not an accountant. Then it adds a hypothetical: if K does NOT have unanimous support"”so that would mean ~Accountant and ~Unanimous support"”then he shouldn't be on the committee. Yes! It matches. This is one you should translate in your head if not on paper.

(E) is like (C)"”is she first-term? We don't know.

[contropositive]

~accountant or ~unanimous --> ~ finance committee

The Manhattan LR book says that OR in the sufficient condition means that either will trigger the necessary. So why isn't A correct?

"Unless" is translated to "if not," but if you have a plural, you have to obey the rules for translating a plural conditional statement into its contrapositive. So we have to add to the "if not" strategy: also change "ors" to "ands" and "ands" to "ors."

Think about it. An "or" doesn't work in the statement you wrote above; that's not what the question is saying. You can be an accountant and still be on the finance committee if you get a unanimous vote, just like you can be on the committee if you are an accountant but don't get a unanimous vote.

I was actually always confused about this as well. It be great if Manhattan added this information to that chapter about "unless"

[tommywallach]

We'll look into it!