Q25 - For someone who interprets the lines as referring to a

[john.o.wray]

Can someone break this question down for me? I'm not even sure what it's asking or how best to attack it...

[a3friedm]

In my opinion a lot of the questions in the 90's are worded much differently than the newer tests so they tend to be harder to absorb.

The stimulus tells us that there are long light lines on dark surface material in the peru desert. One group of these lines cross over a a large bird-like figure. An investigator has interpreted these as evidence for spaceship-traveling aliens, because he says the Incas would have had no use for them as roads.

The problem with this argument that jumps out to me is that the investigator reaches his conclusion by dismissal of a single alternative. In effect, just because it wasn't used as a road, perhaps it was used in a religious ceremony, or to track stars.

Question 24 is kind of nice because it helps direct you to the flaw in case you missed it at first and thankfully answer choice (C) is the big flaw in the argument and they dont try and trick you.

Question 25 seems to be really interesting in that I personally understood it as a hybrid strengthen/ resolve the discrepancy question. The question stem is posed as a double negative, ie. "Most effectively counters ... two kinds of line pattern served unrelated purposes." This means our answer choice should give evidence as to how the straight lines and the birds are related.

I mentioned this reminds me of a resolve the discrepancy question because we need an answer choice that explains both the birds and lines.

(A) This perhaps explains the lines, but not the relationship between the birds and the lines.

(B)Exactly what we need, lines are consistant with astronomical events and the bird a constellation.

(C) this is tempting as well, but remember we need to explain the relationship to the bird and the straight lines. This just gives us an explanation for the straight lines, thus this cannot be the right answer.

(D) out of scope, doesn't do anything for the lines or the birds.

(E) This is opposite of what we want, if anything this shows the two are unrelated.

Hope this helps

[onguyen228]

If the objection is to the two patterns being unrelated which implies that it is related, then to counter it, you would have to prove that it is unrelated. That is how I interpreted the question stem.

Can someone explain to me why this is wrong?

[maryadkins]

Really great explanation! Thank you for explaining it so well a3friedm.

To answer your very good questions about this confusing paragraph, onguyen228:

The objection is THAT the two phenomena are unrelated, not an objection TO their being unrelated. It's worded in an annoying way, I know. But since it reads, "counters an objection THAT..." what follows the "that" is the objection being countered. The objection is that the lines and the bird are unrelated. We want to COUNTER that objection, so we want to show that they are related.