Inferences
SAT Reading & Writing · Rachel · Class 07 · October 17

Inferences

Finish the Chain

  • StemWhich choice most logically completes the text?
  • Sub-typeInferences — a reasoning chain to complete
  • ThemeHistory → Mesoamerican archaeology → Maya marketplaces
  • PointThe text gives a general rule and a mistaken premise; the blank is the conclusion the two produce together.
  • Pointand thus assumed that: the blank is what the scholars believed, not what is true.
Question 2
Archaeologists and historians used to believe that the Maya civilization during its Classic period (roughly 250–900) lacked agricultural marketplaces. One reason for this belief was that these scholars misunderstood the ecology of the regions the Maya inhabited. Marketplaces typically emerge because different individuals or groups want to trade resources they control for resources they don’t control. Scholars seriously underestimated the ecological diversity of the Maya landscape and thus assumed that ______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

  1. marketplaces likely would not have attracted many traders from outside the regions controlled by the Maya.
  2. farming practices would have been largely the same throughout Maya lands even if the crops people produced varied significantly.
  3. marketplaces would not have enabled Maya people to acquire many products different from those they already produced.
  4. farmers would trade agricultural products only if they had already produced enough to meet their own needs.
Worked Answer

C. marketplaces would not have enabled Maya people to acquire many products different from those they already produced.

  1. The chain, in order: (1) the rule: marketplaces emerge when people want resources they do not control; (2) the scholars’ mistake: they “seriously underestimated the ecological diversity” of the Maya landscape; (3) “and thus assumed that”: the conclusion they drew from the rule and the mistake, which is where their belief that there were no marketplaces came from.
  2. Run the rule on the mistaken premise: little diversity → everyone produces the same things → nothing to gain by trading → a marketplace would not give people products they did not already have.
  3. “And thus assumed that” means the blank is the scholars’ belief, the wrong one. C states that belief and nothing more.
Method from Question 2
  • Write the chain in order before the choices: the rule (marketplaces emerge when people want resources they do not control) and the mistaken premise (little ecological diversity) produce the conclusion.
  • When the lead-in is assumed that or believed that, the blank is the scholars’ belief: it must follow from their mistake, not from the truth.
  • Keep the chain’s people and place. A choice about traders from outside, or about farmers’ own needs, brings in a group or a condition the chain never used.
  • A choice whose conclusion is about something the chain never used (farming practices) cannot finish the chain, whatever it concedes about crops.