Drawing Conclusions from Statements — Practice

Practice bank for UCAT Decision Making questions where you must determine what can be safely concluded from a set of given statements.

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Quick-Reference: Drawing Safe Conclusions

The Golden Rule

A safe conclusion must follow from the statements alone. It cannot:

• Go beyond what the statements say
• Require additional assumptions
• Be merely "possible" — it must be necessary

Types of Conclusions

Type	Description	Safe?
Deductive	Logically guaranteed by the premises	Yes
Inductive	Probable but not certain	No — too far
Speculative	Possible but unsupported	No

Step-by-Step Approach

1. Read all statements carefully
2. Identify what is explicitly stated
3. Identify what necessarily follows (deduction)
4. Reject anything that might be true but is not guaranteed
5. Check each option against the statements

Key Distinctions

• "Must be true" vs "Could be true" — UCAT asks for "must"
• "All" vs "Some" — do not upgrade "some" to "all"
• "Is" vs "Might be" — do not add uncertainty to certain statements
• Numerical claims — verify exact numbers, do not estimate

Common Traps

• A conclusion that is probably true but not guaranteed
• A conclusion that requires outside knowledge to support
• A conclusion that reverses the direction of a conditional
• A conclusion that overgeneralises from specific data

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Strategy

• Ask: "Could the statements be true while this conclusion is false?" If yes, reject it.
• Check each word: "all," "some," "never," "always" — these are precision words
• Target: 60 seconds per question

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Practice

Complete the 10 assessment questions. Each presents a set of statements and asks which conclusion safely follows.