GAMSAT Reasoning - What is it?
Welcome back to Wednesday Wisdom - your weekly dose of GAMSAT study tips and advice.
I've been busy working on the new Reasoning Bootcamp program for next February and thought what a great opportunity to give you some tips on improving this vital skill.
What do I mean by reasoning?
You've probably heard people talk about reasoning a lot, but I think not many people really know what it means.
Or at least if they do, they can't describe it well to others.
For me, it is your ability to draw conclusions and make accurate assumptions from unfamilar information.
Here are the three main reasoning processes I see in the GAMSAT:
Inductive Reasoning - where we need to gather clues to assess the probability or likelihood of a set of conclusions being correct. Very relevant in Section 1 problems.
Deductive Reasoning - when we have a series of rules or related information, and we follow logical chains to connect the dots and reach a conclusion.
Spatial Reasoning - where we need to imagine objects from other perspectives. Usually when we need to determine if molecules are the same as others or not.
There are of course many other reasoning types (abstract, causal, mechanistic) but I see these as extensions of these core three.
Try see if you can find examples of these in ACER practice questions!
Jim
