Q13 - A small collection of copper-alloy

[Djjustin818]

This question through me for a loop. I was between A B and E and ended up choosing B. But I wasted about 5 minutes dwelling on how the date of the coins could affect the argument (i.e. A + E)
Could someone please explain how I could've avoided that or get past wasting time on things like this for future reference? I'm still not even sure if I understand why A and E are wrong.. Thanks!

[csunnerberg13]

I thought this was a weird/tough question too - I got stuck thinking about A and B for a while. When I went back in review, though, I think I may have figured it out. Here's my thought process - any confirmation from others/geeks would be great..

Some of the coins were dated to 375. --> The stuff on top of the coins were dropped into the well no earlier than 375.

What's the assumption? Basically, we're assuming that because the coins are on bottom and their dates are as old as 375, the implements had to have been placed there sometime after the coins were placed there, which is sometime after they were made, which couldn't have been earlier than 375.

What's the gap? Well, did the coins have to get there first just because they were on the bottom? Could the stuff have been sitting there for a hundred years before the 375 coins were dropped in and fell to the bottom?

We want to strengthen this argument - so I want an answer that's going to suggest that the implements got there first.

(A) says that coins stay in circulation for many decades. This really does nothing to our argument. If we know it's possible that the coins were made in 375, but not placed there in 375, we still have no idea about the order in which the coins and the implements got there. A makes it possible that the coins were dropped in later than 375, but we still know nothing about when everything actually got there.

(B) addresses our gap - they couldn't fit through the implements to get there after the implements had already been placed there. This gives us reason to think the coins were there first.

(C) Value? Who cares? Not relevant

(D) I don't really care HOW the implements got there or what may have happened to them in certain situations. I just want to know the order they got there.

(E) tells us that items below the coins might have been put there even earlier than the coins....well that's great, but what about when the coins AND the implements got there?? We still don't know.

I hope this helps and any additional pointers would be great.

[ohthatpatrick]

Great explanation!

I'll throw in a bit of my take for the original poster who wondered how he/she could avoid the detour of wasting 5 minutes thinking about how the dates affected the argument.

When you're doing Assumption Family questions, you should look for missing logical links as well as play Devil's Advocate to the conclusion to consider possible objections and alternative explanations.

Here, the conclusion says that the earliest the kitchen items could get there was 375 a.d.

The "Anti-conclusion" says that the kitchen implements got there BEFORE 375.

What would the author say to the anti-conclusion?

He'd say, "How could the kitchen implements get there before 375 a.d.? The kitchen items are ON TOP of coins that couldn't have gotten there until 375 at the earliest?"

How could the anti-conclusion respond?
You're assuming that just because it's higher in the well, it's more recent. What if the kitchen implements were originally at the bottom of the well 1000 years ago, and then someone in 375 a.d. dug them out and hid a bunch of coins underneath them? What if people just used the well as a wishing well, and the coins slipped through the cracks in the pile of kitchen items and formed a cache below?

By considering some of these Devil's Advocate possibilities, we may prime our brains to recognize that (B) is just ruling out one of these possible objections.

I remember the first time I did this question thinking to myself, "How could I argue that the KITCHEN ITEMS got there first? Why would the coins be on the bottom?" and then thinking, "I guess the coins would just drop through the cracks and collect at the bottom, no matter WHEN they were thrown in."

If you're not currently giving yourself a little more time upfront to consider possible objections, experiment with doing so. Like so many things LSAT, a little more up-front investment of time thinking/evaluating greatly accelerates the time we need to deal with the answer choices.

Good luck!

[agutman]

Hey guys! Here's my explanation. Hope it helps!

PT69, S1, Q13 (Strengthen)
As usual for this question type, we should start by finding the conclusion. In this case it’s pretty easy to spot, thanks to the trigger "˜therefore’: the implements were dropped into the well no earlier than 375 A.D. What is that conclusion based on? We’re told that these implements lay on top of a cache of coins, some of which dated to 375 A.D. We can now diagram the core:

Implements were found on top of coins from 375 A.D. --> The implements were dropped into the well no earlier than 375 A.D.

Can you identify any gaps in the logic? Is there any way those implements still could have been dropped into the well prior to 375 A.D.? Perhaps an earthquake shifted things around? Or some people dug underneath the implements and buried the cache of coins underneath them. As we consider the answer choices, let’s remember to be flexible, and make things easier by really focusing on how they relate to the core. The correct answer must help us conclude that the implements were dropped in 375 A.D. or later.

(A) this is tempting because it implies that the coins were dropped decades later than 375 A.D., which suggests that the conclusion can be even stronger (not only were the implements dropped no earlier than 375 A.D., but in fact they were dropped decades later than that!)... But our job isn’t to make the conclusion more extreme; our job is to strengthen the argument! This answer choice doesn’t help us prove that the implements were dropped after the coins.

(C) is out of scope; the argument is about the age of the implements relative to the coins, not about the relative value.

(D) is out of scope; it explains the background information (background booster?), and has nothing to do with the chronology of dropping coins and implements into the well.

(E) is very tempting because it’s a premise booster. This makes it more likely that the coins were dated to a period later than 300 A.D., but notice how it has nothing to do with the implements!

That leaves (B), which tells us that the coins could not have ended up beneath the implements due to some particular weird phenomenon that we had failed to consider. It’s still not full proof (there could have been other weird phenomena that could have affected the layering of the artifacts in the well, such as an earthquake or people burying the coins beneath the implements), but by getting rid of one potential gap, this answer choice strengthens the argument.

So (B) is correct.