How to diagram efficiently?

[cfu422]

I'm struggling on improving my LG speed, and I think my diagramming strategy was wrong.
My problem is, after finishing the original diagram, most of time the diagram itself is correct, that is to say I can translate my notations back to the rules. But drawing a new diagram on every single question is too time consuming and sometimes I would forget something after I copy the diagram. But if I don't create a new diagram, it is impossible for me to answer the specific question.
Is this a normal way to diagram or just because I am not that familiar with the LG? Any advice would be appreciated.

[tommywallach]

Hey CFU,

Yeah, that is the standard difficulty of LG. You're not alone. Things speed up as you get better, and you also get a better of sense of when you'll need to make a whole new diagram. But in general, you DO need to make a whole new one, because otherwise you mess up your original diagram. So no, you're not doing anything wrong. Just keep practicing!

-t

[racdavidson]

I'm having the same problem. I had a private tutor who taught me to make a grid for most LG sets (1 2 3 4 5 6 etc along the top, then fill in the grid below for each new combination/attempt you make), so that I could use that rather than drawing out 6 little dashes and numbers below each dash for each scenario.

What do you think about the grid method? In the Manhattan books I'm trying to draw out the little dashes all the time, but when you also need to bring certain variables over every time it seems like a time suck...

[tommywallach]

The dashes usually result in a grid situation, only without the tiresome and time-confusing drawing of gridlines! once you have dashes, you can always just write new combinations directly below them. That said, I wouldn't like a grid, because I do so much note taking outside of the actual lines. Also, a lot of question types don't break down in a way that fits a grid particularly well. So I think a grid could certainly be fine in certain places, but I would still support the fact that we don't use them. Why draw a bunch of lines you don't need?

-t