Vasily: My cat enjoys going outside if it is not raining and if the la

aditya111

B)If the large feral tabby is nearby, Vasily’s cat will not enjoy going outside.,....see the Fact 1......" My cat enjoys going outside if it is not raining and if the large feral tabby cat that lives in the alley is nowhere nearby".[/color]

the fact may not be true in reverse also...........ie if my cat enjoys going outside when the large tabby is not around....that does not mean....If the large feral tabby is nearby, Vasily’s cat will not enjoy going outside. in any case------The vasily's cat enjoys going outside if it is not raining...........so what if the large tabby is there............




kudos if you please.

o GMAT!
GMAT is driving her students over the hills.
The gruesomeness of GMAT is not the gmat exam itself. It is having to not know when prep centres, in their free goodies", give you off scope questions that might not affect your IMPROVEMENT in the GMAC exam.
Sad!

My 2 cents here:

Vasily: My cat enjoys going outside if it is not raining and if the large feral tabby cat that lives in the alley is nowhere nearby. If it is raining, my cat does not enjoy going outside, save in one circumstance: if the white Siamese cat who lives across the street is around, my cat does enjoy going outside regardless.

First of all, take a look at the first sentence:

My cat enjoys going outside if it is not raining and if the large feral tabby cat that lives in the alley is nowhere nearby.

Any condition can be either necessary, sufficient or both. What type of condition do we see here?
It is clearly a necessary condition - to enjoy going outside we need "not raining" and "no ferral tabby cat". Note that these conditions are not sufficient - in order to enjoy going outside you may need more than just absense of rain and ferral tabby cat. For example, the cat might need proper air temperature, humidity, good health condition, etc. Note that due to the nature of sufficient conditions (i.e. they tend to be very complicated for almost any real life situations) they are rarely used on GMAT.

Going back to the argument, we can wright the following logic formula for the first sentence:

enjoyable walk -> no rain AND no cat

, where "->" means implication: If we have enjoyable walk, there is no rain and no ferral cat. Note that the direction of this arrow is crucial as it seems that in the OE Veritas puts it in reverse.

Now, recall how we apply negation to logic formulas:

A -> B after negation becomes not A <- not B
A AND B after negation becomes not A OR not B
not A after negation becomes A

Using these rules, let's negate our formula

enjoyable walk -> no rain AND no cat

after negation becomes

not enjoyable walk <- rain OR cat

which litteraly reads as "If there is either rain or cat, there is no enjoyable walk".
It is clear that the answer B fits this formula due to "or" condition:

If the large feral tabby is nearby, Vasily’s cat will not enjoy going outside.

It is enough to have a feral tabby cat around to spoil going outside.
Note that OA is D and is also correct.
Therefore, if I haven't missed anything, this question looks malformed and should not be used for practice.

Hope this helps. Any feedback and comments are welcome.

B is not correct. The reason. We know that Vasily's cat won't go out because the large feral tabby is outside. But what if the Siamese is around ? and what if it stops raining. There D is better.

VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL SOLUTION:

Solution: D

Arrange the premises in conditional form: If the tabby is absent AND either the white Siamese is around OR it isn’t raining, Vasily’s cat enjoys going outside. (We could express this as ~T & (S or ~R) => E.) This means that for Vasily’s cat to enjoy going outside, we need 1) the tabby is be somewhere else and 2) the white Siamese OR a lack of rain. While the difficulty in the question lies in thus simplifying the statements, once you do so the correct answer is clear: (D).

Dear VeritasKarishma mikemcgarry

I found this explanation reasonable. Please clarify the mistake in the above explanation and the reason for eliminating option B.

Thank you.

This is an "if" condition. "If" conditions are sufficient conditions, not necessary conditions.

If "not raining" AND "no tabby", Vasily's cat enjoys outside.

If raining, Vasily's cat does not enjoy outside, except if "Siamese is around".

If "Siamese around" and "raining/not raining", Vasily's cat enjoys outside.

These are sufficient conditions. In these 'A implies B' and 'Not B implies not A'.


A. If the Siamese cat is outside, Vasily’s cat will ignore the large feral tabby.

Vasily's cat's reaction is not known.

B. If the large feral tabby is nearby, Vasily’s cat will not enjoy going outside.

Not known. As discussed, these are sufficient conditions, not necessary.
In "if" conditions, A implies B. 'Not A' DOES NOT imply 'not B'.

We know that when it is not raining and the tabby is not around, Vasily's cat enjoys going out.
But what happens when the tabby is around, we do not know.

C. If it is raining and Vasily’s cat is enjoying itself, then the large feral tabby must be nowhere nearby.

If Vasily's cat is enjoying and it is raining, we know that Siamese must be out. But we cannot say anything about tabby.

D. If Vasily’s cat is enjoying going outside and the large feral tabby is nowhere nearby, then either it is not raining or the white Siamese is around.

If Vasily's cat is enjoying outside, then it is not raining. If it is raining, then the white Siamese must be around. So this holds.

E. If Vasily’s cat does not enjoy going outside, then either the large feral tabby is nearby or it is not raining.

Not correct. If Vasily's cat does not enjoy going outside, then either it is raining or the tabby is near or both.

Answer (D)

I ended up deciding between B and D.

B is wrong because it does not include the raining condition as mentioned in the argument.

D is correct because it includes all the conditions that can be inferred from the argument.

This is all about the "and" here:

My cat enjoys going outside if it is not raining and if the large feral tabby cat that lives in the alley is nowhere nearby.

Rain + Tabby = Not enjoy


B) If the large feral tabby is nearby, Vasily’s cat will not enjoy going outside.

Yes, he will, if it is raining and the siamese is nearby.


I missed this and was left between B and D. Would the sentence have been with an "or" instead of an "and", B would have been correct:

My cat enjoys going outside if it is not raining or if the large feral tabby cat that lives in the alley is nowhere nearby.

Now Vasily's cat will never enjoy going outside as long as tabby is nearby. However, this would contradict the statement about the siamese.

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