You should make sure that you understand these different ways of expressing a co

Question

You should make sure that you understand these different ways of expressing a conditional sentence in words well enough so that you will not have difficulty remembering them. Joe, Sandra, Peter, and Cathy are sitting at a table in a restaurant. Each of them has a glass of some beverage in front of them. Your job is to check whether or not they are legally entitled to be consuming the beverages that you see on the table in front of them. The drinking age is 21. Joe is drinking beer. Sandra is clearly over 21. Peter is drinking milk. Cathy is obviously under 21. Whose ages or beverages would you have to check? Explain your answer. Four cards are lying on a table. Each card has a single letter on one side and a single number on the other side. The sides that are up show the following letters and numbers. A 2 X 3 Your job is to check whether or not the following rule holds: Whenever there is a vowel on one side of a card, then there must be an even number on the other side. Which cards would you have to turn over to be sure that the rule holds? Explain your answer. Most people find part (a) easier than part (b). Explain how part (b) is really just a disguised form of part (a). Each of parts (a) and (b) in Exercise 5 is an example of what is called a Wason selection k. These types of tasks, which are famous in the psychology of reasoning, were devised in 1966 by Peter Wason. Studies consistently show^5 that about 65% of people get the right answer in examples like but only about 25% of people get the right answer in examples like part (b).

Explanation / Answer

(a) Given:

Name                             Age                 Beverage

Joe                                                            beer

Sandra                           > 21

Peter                                                  milk

Cathy                               < 21

From the table above, it is clear that Joe, Sandra and Peter have no problem.

Only Cathy is under 21.

So, the beverage of Cathy alnoe needd to be checked.

(b)

Condition: If there is a vowel on one side, the other side shold be even.

So,

Card 1: One side is A., i.e., vowel. .

So, Card 1 is to be checked whether the other side is even.

Card 2: One side is 2.i.e, even.

So, Card 2 is to be checked whether the other side is vowel.

Card 3: One side is : X. not a vowel. So, this need not be checked.

Card 4: One side is: 3. This is odd. So, this need not be checked.

(c) In Part (a), there are two variables having dichotomous values:

Variable 1: age: less than 21 OR age: more than 21.

Variable 2: beverage: soft drink OR wine.

In Part (b), there are two variables having dichotomous values:

Variable 1: vowel OR not a vowel

Variable 2: even number OR odd number

Since the situations in these two cases are exactly same, (b) is really a disguised form of (a)

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