This is a continuation of the Simple Guide on Must Be True and Must Be False Questions. Make sure you are familiar with the concepts discussed there before moving on. This guide is dedicated to the strategies involved in solving the hardest Must Be True questions. Everything here also applies to Must Be False questions; I will use MBT for brevity.
Many students without STEM backgrounds are frustrated by MBT. If you are willing to put in the effort, you will learn to appreciate that you can always check your work and reach 100% certainty. With practice, this is one of the question types you can perfect.
Table of Contents:
This is a very formulaic question type, most similar to a math problem. There aren’t many curveballs, but I will outline a couple of tricks that throw students off guard. The hardest questions are almost always hard just because they force us to work through convoluted formal logic with perfect attention to detail. I recommend checking out the guide on Sufficient Assumption Questions, as the first two sections are highly applicable here.
The hardest MBT questions generally do not have any traps or strategy differentiating them from the easiest ones. They generally give us this tradeoff: “Ok, you can brute force me, but I’m going to make it much harder to follow along.”
The Simple Guide is comprehensive and generally has all you need to solve the hardest questions. With that being said, I will try to provide insight you haven’t heard before based on the nuances I have encountered in the hardest MBT questions.
I see significant variance in how students like to solve MBT questions, so try it, and take it or leave it.
1) Process of Elimination?
2) Time Allocation: Stimulus vs ACs
3) Generic, but Important
Many of the hardest MBT questions feel like a logic game/math problem. Here are some relevant study tips and one important concept to practice. Also, I covered many of the relevant conditional logic points in the Sufficient Assumption guide.
Try: PT 135 S1 Q25
When blind reviewing MBT, if you are not certain when you select an AC, you are doing it wrong. You are done when you are certain of the right answer.
Yes, people advise this across question types. 100% certainty is an exaggeration, although for MBT questions, you really should be close to that. In, say, Reading Comp and strengthen/weaken questions, it is much harder to prove beyond all doubt.
This is how you hone the thought process that leads to quick execution on test day. Otherwise, you will be vaguely fumbling around in your head, trying to keep the variables together, and end up guessing an AC that seems probable.
Back when Logic Games were around, we called this “foolproofing”: redoing every logic game until it was perfect. There are many similarities between the old LG section and MBT questions, and the same method applies.
Math-y questions:
There is something that strikes me as logic-gamey that most need to practice in these quantitative questions: determining what can be deduced when combining “some,” “many,” and “most” (and all/none) relationships.
We are not tested on this too often in other question types. Questions involving this distinction can trip you up if you are unfamiliar with this kind of thinking.
Do not make the mistake of assuming many = most, many does not guarantee more than 50%..
In case you needed a refresher:
Try: PT 135 S1 Q25
Question: What can we conclude about the relationship between white cats and chasing birds, if we know:
Most white cats go outside. Most cats that go outside chase birds.
a) Most white cats chase birds
b) Some white cats chase birds
c) Not enough information
Answer & explanation at the end of the article. If you are hesitant and have to think about it for a bit, that is a sign you need to practice these. This is good; you just found out you have extra points left on the table. If you find yourself getting tripped up on these more math-y questions, get comfortable doing them untimed first. Spend as much time as you need to get the process down.
Your aptitude at formal logic is the main thing, along with attention to detail, that will determine your success with the hardest MBT questions. There are a few ways we can go about improving on this. I will keep this brief, tailored to MBT; more formal logic advice is in the first two sections of the Sufficient Assumption Guide.
Try these, take as much time as needed to be certain of the right AC. Take a note of what works for you: what makes it easier to link the information together, keep it in your head, etc.
There are many great resources for a broad overview of formal logic. I am going to mention two specific mistakes that I see advanced students make, rather than providing introductory information better found elsewhere.
1) The Inclusive “Or”.
2) If you want to read more: “affirming a disjunct”.
3) Conditionals That Aren’t Triggered
If you got this wrong or it took you a while, I recommend writing it out.
