Q23 - Book Review: When I read

[YLAGUNAS]

I was down to B and E, and am having a difficult time understanding why B is incorrect.

Can someone please enlighten me?

[timmydoeslsat]

This is a must be true question stem, as that is what a proper inference truly is.

This is a long stimulus with a lot of conditional relationships.

From the entire stimulus you could diagram it in this manner:

Read novel set in city know well AND Take writer seriously ---> Novelist knows the city at least as well as I

Writer Faking ---> ~ Trust Writer

This next sentence about demonstrating required knowledge is already being talked about previously in the stimulus, so I can tack it on with my first conditional about the novelist knowing the city at least as well as I.

So, now we have this:


Read novel set in city know well AND Take writer seriously ---> Novelist knows the city at least as well as I ---> Trust storyteller ---> Trust tale ---> Increases enjoyment of novel

Writer Faking ---> ~ Trust Writer

We have to be careful about equating terms, but in this case I would not have a problem with having writer and storyteller be interchangeable in this stimulus.


The stimulus just continues to build on the conditional relationships to form a long chain. We can expect an easy time with the answer choices with a strong grasp of how to read these chains. We also know that both of Peter Lee's novels passed the tests and the second novel was set in San Fran.

Answer choices:

A) We know that trusting the writer will lead to increased enjoyment, but that does not mean the reviewer will actually enjoy the novels. Increased enjoyment does not equal enjoyment. Not a proper inference.

B) So, let us find this condition as the sufficient condition in our chain: Trust storyteller cannot lead us to the idea of knowing cities.

The idea of trusting the storyteller is the necessary condition of knowing cities. This gives us reversed logic.

C) We know the second one was, not necessarily the first.

D) This has no support and the idea is not even discussed in the stimulus.

We have information about reading a novel set in a city I know well, but we have nothing about simply not knowing a city well.

E) Is a valid inference. We know that Peter Lee's second novel was set in San Fran and that it passed the test. To be able to pass the test, the novelist must know the city at least as well as the reviewer. So there is no way that the reviewer feels that he/she knows the city better than Peter Lee. If it were true that he/she believed that, then they could not have passed this test.

[maryadkins]

Fantastic explanation. Please re-post if you have any lingering questions.

[BackoftheEnvelope]

A) We know that trusting the writer will lead to increased enjoyment, but that does not mean the reviewer will actually enjoy the novels. Increased enjoyment does not equal enjoyment. Not a proper inference.

I see what you're saying about increased enjoyment =/= actually enjoying. I'm enjoying X more does not mean you're enjoying X. Perhaps you dreaded it before, and now it's only slightly more tolerable. But I think this AC is primarily wrong because it says the book reviewer would enjoy virtually "any" novel written by a novelist they trust, whereas she says trusting the storyteller "increases my enjoyment of a good novel." any novel =/= good novel.

Any thoughts? I know this is splitting hairs, but I'd really like to know that I eliminated this AC for the correct reason.

[courtney_chrusch]

Can someone further break down the conditional logic? This still isn't making sense to me.

[ohthatpatrick]

At your service (hopefully).

There are a bunch of conditional triggers here: I see at least 2 "when's" and 2 "if's".

There are also some logical and causal connectors: "so" and "increases", respectively.

Is it really a good idea to diagram this whole paragraph? Our task here is Inference, so we know that we are expected to combine facts in order to derive the correct answer.

Given that we have a bunch of conditional statements, but not all of them will necessarily be useful, I would lean towards looking at the particular facts towards the end and seeing if I can apply any of the rules to them.

We know that Lee's first and second novels "pass her test". None of the specific rules are identified as "her test", but I would assume we should interpret the first sentence primarily as the test.

If this reader knows a city well, she tests whether the writer is faking or sufficiently knowledgeable by measuring whether the writer knows the city at least as well as she does.

Since Lee passes her test when it comes to SF, the author must think that Lee is sufficiently knowledgeable about SF, and that Lee knows SF at least as well as she does.

That is essentially all (E) is saying.

Even though conditional words are offered here, it would be pretty rough to think your way through this one conditionally, especially given the fact that "passes my test" is not a trigger for anything! It's highly conversational/contextual, so we need to really just think about "How does this author test a novelist?"

The only thing that sounds like that is "I must see that the writer knows the city at least as well as I do".

Sorry if my answer seems like an evasion from the conditional logic breakdown you requested, but I personally (despite love for and comfort with conditional logic) wouldn't approach this one that way.

[LauraS737]

I'm a little confused by the wording of "the writer knows the city at least as well as I do."

Does this mean that (1): the BOOK REVIEWER knows either the same amount or more about the city than the WRITER?

OR

Does this mean that (2) the WRITER knows either the same amount or more about the city than the BOOK REVIEWER?