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June 12, 2013

Syllogism Shortcuts - Lesson 1

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In almost all competitive exams, there will be a few questions on "Syllogism". In these type of questions they will give two or more statements followed by two or more conclusions. You have to choose which conclusion logically fits the given statements. The answer has to be chosen from the five given choices. Often these statements are funny and seem to be at variance of commonly known facts, but you should take them as they are True. 

It sounds very easier, but unfortunately most of the people tend to choose wrong answers by assuming them correct. In this post we shall discuss some shortcut techniques to perform well in syllogism section of competitive exams. Generally these questions can be answered by representing the given statements by Venn Diagrams. However, here we shall discuss another simple shortcut techniques to solve Syllogism problems in easy manner. 

Before going into details, lets look at some basic terms used in the rules and understand what they mean.

The two statements is given in the question are called "Premises" and the answer, the "Conclusion".
shortcut techniques for syllogism
Eg :
All Dogs are Cats  ----------(1)
All Cats are Pigs  ------------(2)

The above two statements are called "Premises".

From above two statements, we can draw the Conclusion : All Dogs are Pigs.

The premises normally start with the words All, No, Some, Many , Some -- not, Many -- not. These words are referred to as qualifiers.

A premise consists of a subject and a predicate wherein the first term [eg. "Dogs" in statement (1)] is the subject and the second term [eg. "Cats" in statement (1)] the predicate. Similarly, in statement (2) "Cats" is called the subject and "Pigs" is called the predicate.

The word that occurs in both the premises is known as the "Middle Term". ("Cat" in the example above). The answer or "Conclusion" should consist of the other two words (dogs and pigs in the example above) and the middle term should not appear in the answer

The premises can be divided into
  1. Universal Statements 
  2. Particular Statements
This classification of the premises into the above categories is dependent on the qualifier used in the premise. For example, statements where "All" is used are called Universal statements and statements where "some" is used are called Particular Statements.

Premises can also be divided into
  1. Positive (affirmative) statements and
  2. Negative statements
If there is a negative term like "not" or "no" in the statement, it is called a negative premise. Otherwise it is called a positive premise or an affirmative statement.

The combination of the two different categories of classifications leads to four different premises as given in the below table.

Table I :


Affirmative
Negative
Universal
All
A
No
E
Particular
Some;
 many
I
Some not;
 many not
O

 The subject or the predicate can either distributed or not distributed in the given premise.

The Subject and predicate are either distributed () or not distributed ()depending on what kind of a statement it is (particular affirmative, etc.). Below table shows the distribution pattern of the subject and predicate. 

Table II :


Subject
Predicate
Universal Affirmative
Universal Negative 
Particular Affirmative
Particular Negative



Note :
✔  Indicates Distributed.
☓  Indicates Undistributed.  

24 comments:

  1. From yesterday onwards i am trying to post comment in comment box,but it is not publish.may i know the reason?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We are lil busy with updates Gayu. Getting no time to respond comments. Please dont mind for that.

      Delete
  2. Replies
    1. Don't be worried Smitha. WOrking on a video lesson of syllogism. Hope that will help you in clearing your doubts. Good Day :)

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  3. WOW VIDEO LESSONS WILL BE THE BEST & ULTIMATE THING $ YOUR AWESOME SITE>GOD BLESS U ALL !!

    ReplyDelete
  4. newbie to all bank po n rbi exams.. thot this site is the bessttttt!!! keep it up

    ReplyDelete
  5. Your site is amazing for me. I am now giving an exams for IBPS. It is mostly helping me to improve myself and my knowledge..............

    ReplyDelete
  6. Nowdays i am preparing for Bank Exam, So your site is amazing to prepare for the same........

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  7. Syllogism explanation is awesome.. I could not find this anywhere except your site.. can you post examples of 3 premises and bit difficult statements as asked in bank exams..

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi frns its simple.. there are som basic rules followed..
    Some+ some= some
    Some+all=some
    Some+Not=Some...not

    All +som =no conclusion
    All +all =all
    All+ not =some...not
    Not +some =some...not
    Not+ all =some...not
    Not+not=not

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. if all + some = no conclusion then as explained here

      All cats are dogs
      Some cats are pigs

      The answer should be no conclusion but here it is given
      SOme dogs are pigs or some pigs are dogs.

      Please explain. I have followed many tutorials but cannot find a perfect one. May be i am wrong but please make me clear. I am getting irritated from this topic now

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    2. here som+some. we cannot draw any conclusion

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  9. mam expecting the video lesson to be 3g format, bcoz my net connection very slow..

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  10. can you please post examples of 3 premise.. In bank exams they ask 3 premise only

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  11. what about if started with only eg " only cats are animals. no historian is an animal "

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  12. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  13. IN THESE TYPE OF QUESTIONS ALWAYS READ THE CONCLUSION FIRST THEN GO TO YOUR STATEMENTS.
    CONDITION 1:-some +some= no conclusion when there is no middle term e.g.
    1. some doctors are surgeons.
    2. some teacher are intelligent.
    so as you see there is no relation b/w surgeons and teacher or intelligent or doctor.
    from this we can relate only doctors and surgeons or teachers and intelligent.
    so we can draw that some surgeons are doctors.
    CONDITION 2 :-some+some = some (when middle term is given)e.g.
    1. some magazine are books.
    2. some books are papers.
    see here middle term is book so we can draw possible conclusion b/w 1st and 2nd statement
    i.e.some papers can be magazine and 2nd possibility is that no paper is magazine, so naturally only one will follow.
    in one line statement:-
    all = some
    some = some
    no = no

    ReplyDelete
  14. mam i am preparing for indraprastha university CET (mba) .can you provide the previous year question papers ,if you don't have previous years papers please tell me the standard of the examination .

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  15. with these shortcut whether it possible to get answer "atleast" type of questions

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  16. pls, can anyone of you give the explanation abt table 2... cant get..

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  17. All + All = All
    All + No = No
    No + All = Some not
    No + Some = Some not
    Some + All = Some
    Some + No = Some not

    For remaining combinations, no conclusion follows

    ReplyDelete

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