TPA if-then and if-only if confusion

Question

Hi everyone,

I face one challenge in TPA verbal questions.

Questions which are around selecting if 1 occurs 2 will occur or if 1 occurs only if 2 occurs

I select the right pair of answers, but I tend to reverse the slotting of choices to 1 & 2.

Any help would be helpful here on how to tackle such conditional questions.

Souravi99 · Answer

just can be a little observant

QuantumHawk10 · Answer

Focus on understanding the direction of the condition—whether it's "if 1, then 2" or "only if 2, then 1"—by rephrasing it in simple terms before answering.

suburbandaredevil · Answer

Mathematically,

The first statement, "If 1 occurs, then 2 will occur," can be represented as: 1⟹2
This means that whenever 1 is true, 2 must also be true. In other words, the occurrence of 1 guarantees the occurrence of 2.

The second statement, "1 occurs only if 2 occurs," can be represented as:1⟺2
This means that 1 is true if and only if 2 is true. In other words, 1 and 2 must both be true or both be false - they are logically equivalent.

The key difference is that the first statement (1 implies 2) allows for the possibility that 2 can be true even if 1 is false, whereas the second statement (1 if and only if 2) requires that 1 and 2 must always have the same truth value.

Hope this helps !

yc168 · Answer

Hi,

Can you post the question, or the link to it?

ManifestDreamMBA · Answer

My understanding is

"1  only if  2" is equivalent to "If 1 then 2" i.e 1-> 2
"1  if and only if  2" is equivalent to "If 1 then 2" and "If 2 then 1" i.e. 1 <-> 2

NextstopISB · Answer

Thus is really helpful

GMATinsight · Answer

please share teh question type that you are referring to. A subjective discussion is no good unless we make it more objective.

TPA if-then and if-only if confusion

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