PT111.S3.Q22 > Question

SECTION 1 · lr

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7 Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13 Question 14 Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19 Question 20 Question 21 Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25 Question 26

SECTION 2 · rc

PASSAGE 1

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6

PASSAGE 2

Question 7 Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13 Question 14

PASSAGE 3

Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19 Question 20

PASSAGE 4

Question 21 Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25 Question 26

SECTION 3 · lr

SECTION 4 · lr

The author concludes that counting the number of sections in a rattle would be all that’s needed to infer a snake’s age, if only the rattles weren’t so brittle. The single reason given for this is that when a snake molts, it gains a section on its rattle.

What does molting have to do with a rattlesnake’s age? The author must assume that as a snake ages, it molts with some kind of predictable regularity. She must also assume that—brittleness aside—nothing other than age can influence the number of sections in a rattle. (Otherwise, if rattlesnakes molt unpredictably or irregularly, or if other factors affect the number of sections in a rattle, we can’t possibly infer a snake’s age solely from its number of rattle sections.)

The frequency of molting doesn’t matter, as long as that frequency is predictable. Maybe rattlesnakes molt once a month. We could still infer a snake’s age (in months) by counting the number of sections in its rattle.

The overall appearance of different rattles doesn’t matter. All that matters is that the number of sections in any given rattle increases in a predictable way as the snake ages.

The frequency of molting doesn’t matter, as long as that frequency is predictable. Maybe rattlesnakes molt once a month throughout their entire lives. We could still infer a snake’s age by counting the number of sections in its rattle.

The hypothetical, conditional conclusion sets the issue of brittleness aside: if rattles weren’t so brittle, then we could use them to infer age. Since brittleness is removed from consideration, the author doesn’t need to make any assumptions related to brittleness.

If this weren’t true, it would mean that at least one other factor besides age can influence how many sections a rattle has. And that would mean we can’t infer a snake’s age solely from the number of rattle sections. We’d also have to know how food availability has affected that number.

PrepTest 111 - Section 3 - Question 22

Difficulty

Analysis

Answer Popularity

Question history

Confirm action