Conditional Diagramming Part II: “And” in the Necessary Condition

[Read more on Conditional Diagramming: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5]

In my last post, I discussed conditional statements with “or” in the sufficient condition. Diagrams with multiple necessary conditions can, depending on the circumstances, then be used to create multiple single diagrams. Let’s look at an example.

If the rule reads: “If Operations is offered, then Accounting or Sales is also offered,” then the diagram is solely:

         A
O → or
         S

Because the necessary condition is just at least one of the two (A or S), you cannot separate this relationship into two separate component statements.

However, if the rule reads: “If Operations is offered, then Accounting and Sales are also offered,” then the single diagram is:

          A
O → and
          S

But, because O forces both of A and S to occur, the two individual sub-statements also apply:

O → A

and

O → S

Again, how you diagram these statements is sometimes a personal choice, but one that should be made while examining the context of the game and the other rules.