1. General Logic

Although the College Board lists logic as only 10% of the total test it is at least 10% and some people have reported it has being more. This is not a section you should skip.

Aren’t I Already Logical?

Perhaps your thinking why do I need to study logic, after all aren’t we all logical? Well in some ways you’re right as you may be ready to answer some of the logical problems. What you are probably not familiar with is how you turn logical sentences such as: ”If it’s raining then I wear my raincoat” into a mathematical form.

Conditional Statements

A conditional statement will usually follow the following form although you may see other forms as well.

“If A happens then B happens”

Conditional statements can be broken down into variables. Variables are usually a letter that represents an action or proposition in a logical sentence.

Example of using variables:
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“If it is raining then I wear my raincoat”

This conditional statement could be written as:

If A then B

Where

A = It Is raining
B = I wear my raincoat
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By giving variables to conditional statements we can easily manipulate the data and treat it like a math equation.

All variables have either 2 states being True or False. So in the previous example we could say.

When (A = true) then (B = True)

Hypothesis and Conclusion

If we take our conditional statement of “If A then B” we can break it down into 2 pieces the hypothesis and the conclusion. The hypothesis is the first condition that needs to be fulfilled or whatever comes after the “If” in this case it is A. The conclusion is what happens after the “then” and in this case is “B”. So in the statement “If it is raining then I wear my raincoat” the hypothesis is “it is raining” and the conclusion is “I wear my raincoat”.

User comments:

Posted by pamkaturi, Friday, Apr. 20th, 2007

MAKES SENSE

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