Riverside Summer Courses: Matching a Student to the Rules
Riverside Community Center has posted its summer course list. Cooking Basics meets Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10:00–11:30, costs ¥3,500, and is open to anyone aged 12 and over. Photography Walk meets Saturdays 9:00–12:00, costs ¥2,000; students may bring a camera or borrow one of the center's five cameras at the front desk on the day. Swimming meets Mondays and Wednesdays, 16:00–17:00, costs ¥4,000, and students must be able to swim 25 meters without stopping. English Conversation meets Fridays 18:30–20:00, costs ¥3,000, and is limited to high school students. Yuki is 14 and in the second year of junior high school. Her parents allow her to spend at most ¥5,000 on courses this summer. She is free on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. On Saturdays she must be home by 11:00 to look after her younger brother. She can swim 25 meters and does not own a camera. She wants to take as many courses as she can.
1. Which course or courses can Yuki actually take? Explain why each of the other three is impossible.
Read the worked answer
Test every course against four separate conditions: age, day and time, cost, and equipment.
- English Conversation - fails on age. It is limited to high school students, and Yuki is in junior high school.
- Swimming - she meets the 25-meter rule, but the class runs Monday and Wednesday late afternoon, while she is only free on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Ability is not the problem; the timetable is.
- Photography Walk - it ends at 12:00, but she must be home at 11:00 on Saturdays. It would also push her over budget if combined: ¥3,500 + ¥2,000 = ¥5,500, more than her ¥5,000 limit.
- Cooking Basics - Tue/Thu 10:00–11:30 matches her free mornings, age 12+ includes her, and ¥3,500 is inside the budget.
So the answer is Cooking Basics only. The trap is stopping at the first matching detail; each wrong option fails for a different reason.
2. Suppose Yuki's family found someone else to look after her brother, so she were free all Saturday. What is the best she could do then, and what new uncertainty appears?
Read the worked answer
With Saturdays free, the Photography Walk becomes possible on time: it runs 9:00–12:00 and costs ¥2,000, which fits her budget on its own.
But the money limit still blocks the obvious plan. Cooking (¥3,500) plus Photography (¥2,000) is ¥5,500, so she cannot take both unless her parents raise the limit by at least ¥500. If the limit stays at ¥5,000, she has to choose one, and Cooking alone leaves ¥1,500 unused while Photography alone leaves ¥3,000 unused.
The new uncertainty is the camera. The flyer says cameras are borrowed at the front desk on the day, and there are only five of them. Nothing is reserved, so on a busy Saturday she could arrive and find none left. A careful answer should say: she may take Photography Walk, but she should ask at the front desk before the first class, or check whether a family member's camera can be used. Availability is a risk, not a disqualification.
3. A classmate says: 'The swimming course says you must be able to swim 25 meters, and Yuki can, so she can take it.' Where is the mistake in that reasoning?
Read the worked answer
The mistake is treating one requirement as if it were the only requirement. The 25-meter rule is a necessary condition - you cannot join without it - but it is not a sufficient condition. Meeting it proves only that Yuki is eligible in terms of ability.
A course listing usually contains several independent conditions, and all of them must hold at once: age, ability, day and time, cost, and equipment. Yuki satisfies the ability condition but fails the time condition, because Swimming meets Monday and Wednesday from 16:00 to 17:00 and she is free only on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.
The useful habit is to list the conditions separately and tick or cross each one. A person who checks only the condition a question happens to mention will pick the wrong course - which is exactly how distractor options are built in this kind of reading task.