Q8 - The more modern archaeologists learn

[rdeuts75]

I thought the correct answer choice was E. Can someone please explain why B is the correct answer?

Thanks.

[dtangie23]

The argument really hinges on the following:

The writings of Mayan religious scribes were mathematically very competent.

Therefore

Ancient Mayans in general had a solid grasp of sophisticated mathematical concepts.

How can we make such a broad statement about Ancient Mayans in general just from analyzing the writings of religious scribes?

There's no reason to believe that religious scribes represent the general Mayan population. Suppose most American priests are good at kung fu. Would it be reasonable to infer that Americans in general are good at kung fu? No. We'd need a more representative sample of the population. (B) makes the most sense.

[bbirdwell]

I agree. You probably know the kind of argument that (E) describes, and this isn't it -- there's no cause.

[slimz89]

just wanted to point out that this is probably the first time i have seen an answer choice that is not only irrelevant, but its impossible to pick.

the answer choice I'm referring to is answer choice D. i only see the word scientific once in the passage so how could there be 2 senses.

can an instructor help me understand what the LSAT writers were trying to do??

[christine.defenbaugh]

Fascinating observation slimz!

Any number of things might be going on. The answer choice "relies on two different sense of the term 'blah'" is an extremely common wrong answer choice, and only occasionally correct. So, it is entirely possible it was included as a matter of course.

It's also likely, though, that they anticipated that some test-takers would think there was an improper leap between 'scientific observations' and 'mathematics', and would choose (D) simply because it mentioned the first of those.

While we're here, I'll go ahead and break this one down from the top. Since we're dealing with a flaw, we have to start with the core. dtangie23 has a great version above.

PREMISE: Mayan religious scribes' writing showed high math competence.
CONCLUSION: Mayan people in general got sophisticated math.

Holy generalization, batman! We move from evidence about one subcategory to a sweeping statement about the entire population of Mayans. There's no reason to think that the religious scribes were a good proxy for the population as a whole. (B) nails this disconnect.

Not the Problem
(A) The argument does not explicitly define intellectual achievements, but this term appears in a bit of background/context fluff. Also, it's fairly clear what the author means by 'intellectual achievements' - there's no reason we really need to be more specific.

(C) Who cares about other civilizations? We're talking about what we know about the Maya.

(D) The argument doesn't even use this term twice, much less use it in two different ways.

(E) The conclusion does not claim that one thing caused another. If the author had said "therefore, being a scribe causes one to learn more math" or "learning more math causes one to be a scribe", then causation could be in play.

Nice observation slimz! Be sure to let me know if you see any other little weirdness pockets like that! I love keeping track of them!

[krisk743]

This is a pretty tough question for number 8. I see how it is unrepresented now because he uses the religious scribes found to speak about the Mayan people in general. I most definitely didn't see that under time and was thinking more along the lines of how they're talking about intellectual achievements from their Math on the wall. Or maybe the religious scribes were written from another group, or from the group at a different time where they may have been influenced by another group.


From this thinking I know I didn't pay enough attention to huge words like "people in general" and the "religious scribes" part enough. I thought the things above were the issue but I may be fighting with the premise facts on this one.

I still chose E because I thought - even though it DEF wasn't perfect - that the writings there could have been a correlation to going into the extreme to state that they understand intellectual achievements by Mayan's.


The more I write this the more I realize how wrong I am to be honest...but just trying to see how I can get rid of these thoughts I had in my head when attacking this question.