Lesson 2, HW, Reading Comp. Passage #7

[ellenb]

Dear Powerscore,

For this passage I got most of them right except question #4, please let me know, why A is wrong and why/how C is the right answer? And for #6 why/how A is wrong and why D is the right answer?


Thanks

Ellen

[Jacques Lamothe]

Hi Ellen!

For #4, (A) is wrong because good models did exist prior to the Herculina event. Astronomers did not pay attention to the models, but lines 5-8 indicate that theoreticians did have them. (C) is correct because of the statements made in lines 37-41. Since astronomers now view asteroid satellites as a more "respectable" observation, they are more commonly reported. Prior to Herculina, an astronomer who witnessed the secondary occultations would probably not report it because they were not aware of the models that could explain the phenomena.

For #6, (D) is correct. From the passage, we know that even if every asteroid had satellites, astronomers would only observe secondary occultations once out of every observed primary occultation. Since the passage claims that the reported observations of secondary occultations are too high to be accurate, we can infer that those observations must be reported for more than one out of every hundred observations of primary occultations.

(A) is a tricky answer choice. It is a comparing the percentage of primary occultation observations accompanied by reported secondary occultation observations post-Herculina to the percentage of reported observations from prior to Herculina. In theory, the percentage of reported observations could have been .5% prior to the Herculina observation and a ten-fold increase would raise that to 5%, far above the expected 1 in 100 chance of observation that the passage mentions. However, it could also be the case that the percentage prior to Herculina was .01% and the ten-fold increase raised that percent to .1%, an amount well within the 1% limit that the passage identifies. Knowing from the passage that reports of secondary occultations combined with primary occultations make up more than 1% of all reported primary occultations does not allow us to infer that a tenfold increase in the percentage of reports with the two occultations combined raised the percentage above the believable number. While it's possible that the percentage did increase ten-fold, the information in the passage does not imply answer choice (A) nearly as strongly as it implies answer choice (D).

I hope that helps!

Jacques

[rachelgstevens]

Hi, I’m a little confused because my Passage 7 does not have the same question numbers as the one answered here. On mine, question 6 asks about the primary purpose of the passage. My #5 does list the question you answered above about the frequency of reports. Am I missing something here? Just want to make sure I’m grading my responses correctly.

[Stephanie Oswalt]

Hi, I’m a little confused because my Passage 7 does not have the same question numbers as the one answered here. On mine, question 6 asks about the primary purpose of the passage. My #5 does list the question you answered above about the frequency of reports. Am I missing something here? Just want to make sure I’m grading my responses correctly.

Hi Rachel,

Thanks for the question! The original posts on this thread were from a while back; we have updated our course material since then, so some of the question numbers have changed.

The correct answers and explanations are at the end of your homework. Also mentioned are the original LSATs the passages are from, so that you can find the related discussion on the forum. For reference, your Passage 7 is from Dec. 1991 and can be found on the forum here: lsat/viewforum.php?f=1103.

I hope this helps! Let us know if you have any additional questions!

Thanks!