Chapter 8

Logic and Reasoning

Introduction

You have probably taken an aptitude exam at some point in your school career, be it in grade school, the SAT or ACT, etc. Portions of these exams focus on abstract reasoning by including logic puzzles (e.g., making an inference from a set of conditions) and logical arguments (e.g., drawing a valid conclusion from a list of premises). These logical reasoning problems are distinctly different from more traditional mathematics problems in that they measure your ability to work with unfamiliar information. Indeed, these questions evaluate your ability to critically analyze and formulate/complete arguments as they arise in ordinary language.

Learning Objectives

In this chapter, you will review how to:

• 8.1: Draw logical conclusions related to police scenarios
• 8.2: Select the correct legal definition of a crime
• 8.3: Make sound judgments regarding police scenarios
• 8.4: Determine the best course of action in a police scenario