syllogism help

[goldenbug]

Rumor is spreading quickly that I am a syllogistic genius. O.K. so let me make this perfectly clear. I AM NOT. I explained to someone yesterday some patterns of ways syllogisms work. She said that she was only getting 25% on syllogisms. Now, she is pulling 75-90% on them. In my opinion, most syllogsims are not that difficult. Some are real head scratchers. Also, there are a handfull of syllogisms on Police Prep that I question as to their correctness. However, if you grasp the pattern, you will pass. I have never gotten a perfect score on syllogisms. I even took another test today and only got 11 of 15 correct.

Here are things in my studies that I have noticed about syllogisms:

The first sentence is the major premise and the second sentence is the minor premise. So here is how it would look:

Major Premise: All dogs are canines.
Minor Premise: All canines eat meat.

Based on these two premises, you must come up with a conclusion. Most syllogisms are not hard. If both premises start with "All", your conclusion will start with "All". If one premise has the word "Not" or "No" in it, your conclusion will have a negative statement in it, like "not" or "no". If one premise has the word "Some" in it, your conclusion will have the word "some" in it. If the word "none" or "no" is in one premise and "some" is in the minor premise, they will almost always both be mentioned as in the phrase "Some ________ are not......"

Also, the noun, word, or phrase that repeats itself in the minor premise, like "canines" in our syllogism above WILL ususally NOT be found in our conclusion. So here is the conclusion to the above syllogism:

All dogs eat meat

Now lets try this one:

Major Premise: All dogs are canines
Minor Premise: No canines eat meat.

The conclusion?

No dogs eat meat.

I know, the above syllogism does not make sense. It does not have to, it only has to follow the rules of sound logic.

Here's another:

Major Premise: All dogs are canines.
Minor Premise: Some canines are meat eaters.

Conclusion: Some meat eaters are dogs.

How about this one:

Major Premise: None of the dogs are canines.
Minor Premise: Some canines are cats.

Conclusion?

Some cats are not dogs

Again, it makes no sense, but it follows the rules of logic. Just look for the pattern. Honestly, there is a simply pattern to all this just like math. It is very similar to positive and negatvie integers in math. I hope this helps.

Wendell

[kiss]

goldenbug..........you're my HERO!!!
thank you

[MORGG]

Man, I wish I could have had this post written on my palm today. It's the only part of the PATI that I'm worried about. How does the marking work? Do you have to get a minimum on each section or do you have to get a minimum % on the whole test as well as at least 50% on every section. I really hope that these pissmeoffogisms don't screw up my results. Who knows....maybe I got them right? That's the point...I have no idea how I did.

[Halbiem]

Hope you did well. I 'm writing on Wed. I only have a week to study, since they only called last week to say I passed the interview. What was the exam like. I have been working with policeprep the last few days, but the exams seem to be getting harder or I'm just getting tired of looking at them.

[joebocop]

i went to wikipedia .com and looked it up on there. easy way to do it. werked fer me!

[BWN]

WOW...thats the most simplest way I've ever seen it explianed. Thanks a ton! 8)

[saini]

GOLDENBUG!!! YOU'RE A TRUE GENIUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was having a hard time with the syllogisms and then I came across your post this morning and tried the syllogisms again and now I'm scoring 85%% on the tests.

Thank you soo much

[jono]

That is definitely helpful

[flim flam]

these are from test 5. The theory doesnt always work. My answers are underlined, they were wrong. Bold Italics are apparently right

Question 5

In the company there were no scientists that were technicians.
All technicians the company employed were women who worked on a wide variety of projects.

Some women are not scientists

No scientists are women

Some women are scientists

None of the above

Question 6

No students are volunteers.
All volunteers are award winners.

No students are award winners

All award winners are volunteers

Some award winners are not students

None of the above

Question 7

All water is liquid.
All liquid is wet.

Everything that is wet is a liquid

Everything that is wet is water

Some liquids are wet

Some things that are wet are water.

[goldenbug]

I agree flim flam. I never scored perfectly either. However, I passed with 80% or higher all the time on syllogisms with the system I learned. I wish success to every one here.

[flim flam]

ya its weird, but that system does provide results. some of their answers are questionable anyway

[Billyh]

Major Premise: All dogs are canines.
Minor Premise: Some canines are meat eaters.

Conclusion: Some meat eaters are dogs.[/b]


Hey Wendell,

I have a snag that may account for that small percentage of trickier questions that do not work out using this method. Your method is sound for most but, in the above example, the conclusion is flawed by real life knowledge.

Let's say that wolves, bears and dogs are all "canines". This satisfies the logic that all dogs are canines. Now, let's assume that bears and wolves eat meat, but dogs don't. This still satisfies the minor premise that "some canines are meat eaters" because the bears and wolves are meat eaters. However, dogs in this case are not meat eaters at all. The conclusion that can be drawn is "All meat eaters are not dogs"... or something to that effect. Basically, there is a portion of meat eaters that cannot be accounted for.

What may have happened is that, in the "real world" we know that canines are dogs. So all dogs are canines and all canines are dogs. But, in this question, they do not state that all canines are dogs. Therefore, there are two possibilities, all canines are in fact dogs, or there are other canines that are not dogs. Without more information, no conclusion can be drawn regarding this relationship.

I don't have a tried and tested method to solve these so, if many are passing using your method, Keep Doing It! I'm not trying to throw a wrench into the machine.

Thanks for all of the posts Wendell. You have helped a lot of people, including myself! I just started studying, but I have been doing logic problems for as long as I know... Math & Logic = Fun! haha.

Good luck to all!

[kuma]

Hey guys syllogisms are not that hard. I used a system in a book by "Powerscore", the title was "Logic Reasoning Bible". I was scoring 20/20 on all my tests in the syllogism section. It takes a little practice learning the system but once you do, you spend maybe thiry seconds at the most on each question, and you don't even have to worry about what the topic is, everything becomes a formula. Check the book out you can find it on Amazon, it isn't cheap but it is worth, the only reason I know about this system is when I studied them for law school.

Here is an example. (Oh and forget about major premise and minor premise, it isn't needed and is confusing)

All dogs are canines
All canines eat meat

This gets changed into

D ---> C---->EM

For the answer you travel along the arrow lines (pretend they are solid) and since you can go all the way to meat eaters, you can take out the "C" which is canines, and all you are left with is.

D---->EM
(All Dogs are Meat Eaters)
see that was pretty easy.


Okay for the next one

All dogs are canines
No canines eat meat

This becomes:
D--->C<--l-->EM (The double arrow line with the line thru the middle means "No"

Now all that you need to do is follow the line again like a train traveling, you go from D to C no problem but when try going to EM you are blocked, so when you rewrite this it would look like this

D<--l-->EM (All you are doing here is removing the "C" and the D is taking its place.

Ok next one.

None of the dogs are canines
Some canines are cats

D--->C some ME.

Now for this one the key is travelling backwards down the line.
We know that since some canines are meat eaters that also means that some meat eaters are canines. From here we try to travle backwards towds the "D" which stands for Dogs, the only way you can travel down an "All" arrow line is by using "most" or "some", that is already decided for us because the word some is used, so you travel backwards using some, and you get this.

ME some D The way this would be said is "Some Meat Eaters are Dogs", the reverese is also true "Some Dogs are Meat Eaters"

Next.

None of the dogs are canines
Some canines are cats

D<--l-->C some CA

Here again you travel down the line backwards and it looks like this when you rewrite it.

CA some D (Pretned the underline is a cross through the "D".
This reads as "Some Cats are not Dogs" or vice versa.

As you can see this system is pretty easy to use and you don't have to worry about what they are talking about since everything gets truncated to symbols. Anyway everyone good luck on the syllogisms.

[kuma]

Just wondering if anyone found the system I recommended on syllogisms useful.

[porter8]

How's school treating you? Hope things are well. I'm still prepping for my redo in June. Well hope all is going ok, talk to you later. Porter

[carrazola]

Hi Kuma,

The method that you illustrated.
IE
D ---> C---->EM
D--->C<--l-->EM

What is this method called? Which chapter in the powerscore book is this method covered?

[kuma]

It is chapter 5 if anybody else also wants to know.

[carrazola]

Save your money, don't buy it. You can gather everything you need through wikipedia and through this forum

[carrazola]

Kuma,

The method in the book is sound and works. I find this method of solving syllogisms much easier simply because it turns it into a formula ( others might not like this though ).
The downside is that the book is very expensive and there's only 1 or 2 chapters that you really need. I can't recommend a $45+ dollar book for only 1 or 2 chapters.

[luis]

What book are you refering to? is it the "Canadian Police Officer Exam"?
Kuma, I don't have the book (yet) but I was trying to apply your formulas and I found there is a mistake, I saw an example where the statements are about dogs and cats but you are drawing conclusions about Meat Eaters. How's that?
Thanks for your help!... I am just trying to find a way to solve these freaking syllogisms because they are driving me crazy.... I am gettin 1 out of 6 correct. I already read all the info in wikipedia but it seems too long to memorize those formulas.

[wortman]

"Canadian Police Officer Exam" book is worth every penny!
It is nice when a person simply wants to sit and read OR have on the coffee table, when friends are over!

You can practice ALL the tests; can't hurt! If/when you buy the book, you get a discount for the website! Call it a win/win!

Keep practicing and good luck!

[jono]

What book are you refering to? is it the "Canadian Police Officer Exam"?
Kuma, I don't have the book (yet) but I was trying to apply your formulas and I found there is a mistake, I saw an example where the statements are about dogs and cats but you are drawing conclusions about Meat Eaters. How's that?
Thanks for your help!... I am just trying to find a way to solve these freaking syllogisms because they are driving me crazy.... I am gettin 1 out of 6 correct. I already read all the info in wikipedia but it seems too long to memorize those formulas.

Just follow the method shown by goldenbug in this thread, that should at least increase your chances of getting them correct. It helped for most of us here