27-06-2012, 03:51 PM
Preparing For Logical Reasoning Questions
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Logical Reasoning
Reasoning is the single most important competency for successful performance in the Intelligence Research Specialist job. Correct reasoning is useful for decision-making and problem solving, activities that prevail on the job. In this part, you will read some useful information about reasoning correctly.
The questions in this examination are designed to test your ability to understand complicated written material and to derive correct conclusions from it. The kind of reading that these questions ask you to do is different from ordinary reading in which you just follow the general meaning of a series of sentences to see what the writer thinks about a topic. It is the kind of reading you have to do with complex material when you intend to take some action or draw some conclusion based on that material.
The test asks you to make logical conclusions based on facts you are given in various paragraphs. These conclusions need to be based only on the facts in the paragraph. Therefore, answering requires careful reading and focused thought about what information is given and what information is not given.
The following information will give you some suggestions about how to approach the questions and some information about how you can develop your reasoning skills.
Reading the Paragraph
Every reading paragraph in the test is drawn from some kind of written material relating to Intelligence Research Specialist work or Government work. There may be facts in a paragraph that do not actually apply to every part of the Federal Government or that may not always be true everywhere. In answering the questions, it is important that you accept every fact in the paragraph as true. Remember that you are not being judged on your knowledge of facts, but rather on your ability to read and reason on the basis of given facts.
Not all information is of the same type. There can be information about events and there can be information about groups (or categories) of things. Information can also be positive or negative. Usually, information is positive (for example, “these tire tracks are several days old”), but knowledge that something is not the case is also useful information (for example, “these tire tracks are not from a truck”).
Reasoning From “None” and “Not” Statements
Information that something is NOT true is useful information. For example, you may learn that one group of things is NOT part of another group of things. This is the same as saying that there is no overlap at all between the two groups of things. Here, you can draw conclusions about either group as it relates to the other since you can count on the fact that the two groups have no members in common. If you can say that none of the stolen cars recovered from the rail yards were cars stolen from Canada, you can also say that none of the cars stolen from Canada were recovered from the rail yards because you know that the first statement means that there is no overlap between the two groups. In the test, you will see phrases or terms such as “It is not the case that” or “Not all of” or words that begin with the prefix “non-.” All of these are ways to say that a negative fact has been established.
Reasoning About “If-Then” Statements
As was said before, there can be information about events or situations, and there can be information about individuals and groups. Previously, we discussed how to deal with information about groups. Next, we discuss how to deal with information about the relationship between events or situations.
We are all familiar with the idea of a cause and effect in which one thing leads to another thing, which in turn leads to a third thing, and so on. For example, “if a financial institution suspects that a deposit of funds stems from criminal activity, the institution is required to report the deposit transaction to the authorities.” In this example, a suspicious deposit is a cause and the institution reporting the deposit is the effect.