PT5.S1.Q12- Translating the Stimulus

miriaml7

I have an incredibly difficult time understanding a stimulus that is science-based or involves numbers. I found that PT5.S1.Q12 gave me an incredibly hard time due to not understanding the stimulus. I ended up having to draw out pictures, to truly understand what the stimulus was saying (https://ibb.co/5GKKtHY). Once I drew it out I was able to figure it out. Under timed conditions, I know that I would not have had time to draw it all out.

I am wondering if anyone else has had trouble with quickly understanding a science/number-based stimulus, and if so what you all have found to be the most successful way to overcome this?

Thanks in advance!

BinghamtonDave

Is this question about meteorites/impact craters?

miriaml7

Yes! @BinghamtonDave

FindingSage

What I try to do is as I read each sentence, I translate it into something I can understand. Seriously I do this with both LR and RC. This morning I read an economics RC passage, I pictured the beanie baby craze to connect to that passage. LR is shorter so I don't always put the stimuli into examples, but I always translate each sentence to a way I can connect with.

So for the first sentence, I am picturing a large bowl in the earth that has been caused by something hitting the earth.

The second sentence I am now understanding as we find more of these large bowls in places where we don't have a lot of earth quakes.

Then the conclusion, I simplified this to say: This relatively greater amount of these securely identified craters ( still picturing these large bowls in the earth and we are finding more of them in places where there is less earthquakes) must be explained be explained by the fact that there are less destructive earthquake type of occurrences in these areas.

At this point, I think a little bit about the argument. The author is assuming that having more earthquakes hurts/destroys these impact craters. They are also assuming that the frequency of the regions where these craters are hitting is not impacting the likeliness that these impact craters will be destroyed. The loophole in this argument would be something like: what it if the regions that are prone to having earthquakes are just getting struck by these meteors more frequently and that is why those regions have less of these impact craters? Because this is an SA question I am not only trying to block this loophole, I am trying to make the original argument valid. So I am looking for something along the lines of: The rate of the impact craters varies little from region to region.

miriaml7

Thank you so much for this detailed response! You're awesome! @FindingSage

FindingSage

@miriaml7 , you are very welcome! Without a science background these types of questions really used to intimate me but I think I have improved a lot by just trying to translate line by line into something that makes sense. Once in awhile, I still get one where I feel like I might have an easier time drawing something out. Under time I skip those, and come back on round two when I feel a little less rushed.