Unit 12 · Multi-Step Conditional Reasoning
Fire Alarm — What Can We Conclude?
Lesson 4 of 16
About this lesson
Two people look at the same information and each draw a different conclusion. Your job is to decide which of them — if either — is reasoning correctly. This question introduces one of the most important logical ideas in OC TS: the difference between what an alarm going off TELLS you and what an alarm staying SILENT tells you. These are two very different things.
Chapters
Question
When the fire alarm goes off, it could either be a real fire, or it could be a fire drill. Fire drills can be scheduled for any day of the week, but they always happen at exactly 2 o’clock in the afternoon.
Yuri says: “If the fire alarm goes off during the morning, you know it must be a real fire!”
Bindi says: “Even if the fire alarm is not going off, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a fire.”
If the information in the box is true, whose reasoning is correct?
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