All German philosphers_How to crack?

[mitzi]

All German philosophers, except for Marx, are idealists.

 

From which of the following can be the statement above be most properly inferred?

 

a) Except for Marx, if someone is an idealist philosopher, then he or she is German.

b) Marx is the only non-German philosopher who is an idealist.

c) If a German is an idealist, then he or she is a philosopher, as long as he or she is not Marx.

d) Marx is not an idealist German philosopher.

e) Aside from the philosopher Marx, if someone is a German philosopher, then he or she is an idealist.

 

OA :

E

 

 

I am curious to know how to crack this type of question. I picked wrong ones twice(test and review). Is there any tactics to kill this type of question?

 

I look forward to hearing your advice and logic underlying. Thank you very much!

[hardikrs]

Mitzi,

 

my 2 cents

 

break down the sentence to see how each parts relate to other and use arrows to see the direction of relation because the opposite is not necessarily true.

 

All german phillosophers --> are idealist

except Marx

 

A.) wrong, becuase sentence says all german phil are ideallist, that doesnt mean the opposite, use of arrow direction.

B.) sentence doesn't mention that Marx is non-german

C.) again use of realtion and their direction -- sentence is all germa phil are idealist not all all idealist are phil (opposite to the arrow)

D.) sentence meantions about germanl phil being idealist, not about idealist german phil

E.) maintains the correct relationship, which is asside marx, all german phil are idealist.

 

i hope this helps.

[mitzi]

Wow... hardikrs. Thank a lot!

 

I used the arrow, but I was not aware of 'opposite is not necessarily true' part. where can I learn this stuff? PowerCR bible?

 

Thanks.

[finsisher]

I always treat critical reasoning question with critically, try to negate all the inferences using ONLY the given fact, don't assume anything and you would end up finally chosing E.

[hardikrs]

mitzi,

 

suprisingly it is none of the popual books. when i started my prep in Jan and i was just browsing books and read nova little bit and that's how i am stuck with some of the tricks or ways to look at the sentence. I wills start the CR bible soon, but I did read that a little bit and it goes into too much depth and sometimes i feel you dont have time to berakdown a sentence to that detail so just practice and simillar to SC look for some obvious things. BTW you are very good at SC so you should be able to pick this up fairly quickly

[mitzi]

Hi hardikrs,

 

Thanks for your encouragement! I started RC after SC. With ups an downs in RC, I found that RC helps tremendously CR. my speed to read passages has improved and I found myself trying to focus on questions.

 

So far I have been enjoyed CR, actually I like it.

 

Glad to have buddies like you on my journey to GMAT. Thanks a lot!

[abhasjha]

Mitzi ,

 

Another approach to solve this problem .....

 

The question stem asks you to pick the choice from which the statement can be derived, and that's (E). If, as (E) says, anyone who is German is an idealist except for Marx, then all Germans except for Marx are idealists. That being the case, it would certainly be true that, as the stimulus says, with the exception of Marx, all German philosopher—being a subset of all Germans—are idealists. While this may sound absurd, we're concerned with strict logic here, not content.

 

Now coming to your question of" what is the underlying logic in these questions"?

 

Surprisingly enough these types of questions apply the fundamentals of Venn diagram . Yes this is the same Venn diagram that you might have studied in Mathematics under the chapter Set Theory . Just draw the venn diagram and see how easily you can find the answer . I do not know how to put the figure in the post but if you have worked on Venn diagrams you can get the answer in a flash.