Excavation of the house of a third-century Camarnian official revealed

Question

Excavation of the house of a third-century Camarnian official revealed that he had served four magistrates—public officials who administer the law—over his thirty-year public career, in four provincial capital cities. However, given the Camarnian administrative system of that era, it is unclear whether he served them simultaneously, as a traveling administrator living for part of the year in each provincial capital, or else did so sequentially, leaving one magistrate after several years to join another.

Which of the following would, if found in the excavation, most likely help reveal the pattern of the official's administrative service?

(A) Maps and documents describing each of the four provincial capitals
(B) A cache of the official's documents related to work from early in his career
(C) A set of cups of a type made only in the city of the first magistrate whom the official is known to have served
(D) Several pieces of furniture in the styles of two of the provincial capital cities
(E) Heavy clothing appropriate only for the coldest of the four cities

CR53341.01
OG2020 NEW QUESTION

Argument Construction

Situation 
Evidence from an excavation makes clear that a particular third-century Camarnian official served four magistrates in four provincial capitals over his thirty-year career, but it is unclear whether he served the magistrates simultaneously or sequentially.

Reasoning 
 What evidence, if it were also found in the excavation, would be most helpful in determining whether the official served the magistrates simultaneously or sequentially?  It would be helpful to find documents from throughout the magistrate's career indicating at what times he worked for each magistrate, or even documents from just one period, as long as there were a large number, because this would likely show whether he was working for just one magistrate or for all four.

(A) We already know that the official worked in each of the four capitals. The fact that maps and documents describing the capitals were at his house tells us nothing about whether he worked for magistrates in these capitals simultaneously or not.

(B) Correct . Presumably the work-related documents would show whom he was working for at the time, and for how long—and would provide evidence as to whether he was working for multiple magistrates or for just one.

(C) Merely finding a set of cups made only in one of the cities tells us little. Even if we knew when he acquired the set, he need not have been working for the magistrate of that city at the time he acquired it; perhaps he had simply traveled to that city.

(D) One frequently moves furniture when moving from one city to another, so the fact that the official had pieces of furniture that may have come from different cities does not give us any indication of whether the official worked for all four magistrates simultaneously or not.

(E) The fact that heavy clothing appropriate only for the coldest of the four cities was found in the excavation of the official's house does not imply that other clothing, appropriate for one or more of the other cities, was not found. Consistent with the finding of the heavy clothing, the official may have worked exclusively in the city for which that clothing was appropriate, or worked intermittently in this city.

VeritasPrepBrian · Accepted Answer

Here if you break down the two options as to how the official worked, you can see why (B) would be so helpful:

simultaneously, as a traveling administrator living for part of the year in each provincial capital, or else did so sequentially, leaving one magistrate after several years to join another.

If you can, as (B) says, get insight into a period of time of his work, you can determine whether all of that work took place in one place (sequentially - all the work from a period took place in one location, and then he eventually left to go to another for a period of several years) or over multiple places (simultaneously - in any given year he worked in all four locations). If you can get even a period of 9-12 months, for example, you get that insight (only one location: definitely sequential because he's fixed on one location; exactly two locations: maybe either (maybe you just caught him in a transition from one location to another; 3+ locations: definitely simultaneous).

Note also that the other choices all include artifacts from locations that are fairly easy to move around. Cups, clothing, furniture...it's fairly easy to see someone collecting items over the course of his career and moving them from one location to the next (sequential) or having all of them because they're necessary for his simultaneous work. So none of those give that insight the way that documents from a period of time would.

DavidTutorexamPAL · Answer

The passage states that an official served 4 magistrates and asks whether he did so simultaneously or sequentially. As we do not have enough information to infer what would support one claim over the other, we have no choice but to go over the options one by one, the Alternative approach.

A. If we assume that having all the maps means he worked at all the places, this works. But making assumptions is dangerous; let's check the others.
B. The documents will likely show where he was working at the start of this career (many places or just one). But we don't know if he was working for all 4 at the start or not. Better than A, let's check the others.
C. This won't help, he could have carried the cups with him in both cases.
D. Similarly to (C), he could have carried previous furniture with him on moves or been working in several places at the same time.
E. This doesn't help, he would need the clothes if he was working in only that place or also in other places.

Of the options, (B) is the strongest. Note that thinking about each option independently takes quite a while and should be avoided if possible.

KarishmaB · Answer

Brian has already explained the solution in detail above so I will focus on just option (E) (which seems to be throwing you off)

(E) is certainly wrong - Say he works at all 4 places for some part of the year - 3 months each. One would expect him to have heavy clothing suitable to city A (say, coldest).
Say he worked in the four cities one after the other. When he lived in city A, he would have bought the heavy clothing. On his move to another city after years, he could have easily carried the clothes not knowing what the future held for him. Or he could have moved to city A at the end and bought the clothes at that time. 
So finding clothes apt for only one city tells us nothing about his service pattern. 
If we find clothes apt for all 4 cities, that tells us nothing either. He could have acquired them all in one year or in sequence in one stint after another.

(B) does have the problem of "early" but it is the best option we have. Say, if we know how things were in the first 5 years of his career (whether he was serving multiple magistrates or only one), we can guess what the pattern was for him. Note that the assumption of the question is that there was a pattern and it was not a mix of patterns. The question asks what would help us find the pattern that his career followed (so we know that his career followed one of the two patterns - simultaneous service or one after another). If he first served only one magistrate early on and mid way in his career switched to multiple, then the question makes no sense. The question makes sense only if his career followed only one pattern. So even documents of just early times should reveal the pattern.

Option (B) is correct.

Kritisood · Answer

VeritasKarishma , hi, could you please help with why A is wrong? if we get documents of his describing each of the four provincial capitals we are bound to get some dates on those documents. or we could even judge by how old those documents are? I dont think we would have to make any assumption to arrive at this either?

KarishmaB · Answer

Kritisood

(A) Maps and documents describing each of the four provincial capitals
Option (A) only says maps and docs describing the capitals. It doesn't say anything about those docs being his docs. For example, a map and a doc describing Delhi will not tell you whether a person worked there and at what time.

nkshmalik1 · Answer

Can anyone tell me why C is wrong, I was left with B and C . 
In option B :
"A cache of the official's documents related to work from early in his career" , it is not clear that how his work from "early" in his career would help determine official pattern of service, As early in his career could span for few years, hence not clear. Official could have served a single magistrate and later on in his career he simultaneously served multiple magistrates.

Experts please explain. Thanks.  GMATNinja   AjiteshArun

AjiteshArun · Answer

Hi  nkshmalik1 ,

There are two possibilities:
1. He worked with all 4 magistrates,  sequentially . ← We don't know exactly how many years he worked with each magistrate.
2. He worked with all 4 magistrates,  simultaneously . ← We are  quite sure  that he worked with each magistrate for only a few months at a time, because of "living for  part of the year  in  each  provincial capital".

Option B gives us "a cache of the official's documents related to work from  early in his career ". Now, because these documents are restricted to his early career (and not his entire 30-year career):
* If  all  these documents mention (or involve in any way)  only one  of those magistrates,  (1) would be strengthened .
* On the other hand, if those documents mention (or involve in any way)  more than one  magistrate ( preferably all 4 magistrates ),  (2) would be strengthened .

As always, we should keep in mind that "strengthened" does not necessarily mean "proved".

Option C gives us "a set of cups of a type made only in the city of the first magistrate whom the official is known to have served".  But the discovery of these cups does not tell us whether he was working  exclusively  with that magistrate . For example, he may have moved on to other cities after obtaining those cups, or he could have stayed put for some time. Both possibilities are still open, so we are no closer to the answer the question wants.

tyildirim92 · Answer

One of the strategies, though neither the best nor applicable to many questions, is internalizing the prompt. To illustrate, you have a 6-year-long Bachelor's degree to study, i.e. medicine, and you will be an exchange student under different professors' supervision in four different cities. You have two options at hand. You either work simultaneously with all the professors or study with only one professor for a longer time, say 2 years. Now tell me;

(A) Maps and documents describing each of the four cities

// can't you carry all these maps together with you all the time? so, it supports both scenarios equally

(B) A cache of your professor's/university documents related to work from early in your career

// you are in your early career, right?. now, if you have documents that belong to different professors' or universities' work, then you are studying simultaneously with more than one professor at a time. if your documents belong to only a single professor or a university, then you are studying with only one professor.

(C) A set of cups of a type made only in the city of the first university whom you are known to have served

// can't you carry all these cups together with you all the time? so, it supports both scenarios equally

(D) Several pieces of furniture in the styles of two cities

// can't you carry pieces of furniture with you all the time? well, some of you may say no but this option explicitly states that you already carried a piece of furniture from one city to another. so, it supports both scenarios equally

(E) Heavy clothing appropriate only for the coldest of the four cities

// can't you carry heavy clothing together with you all the time? so, it supports both scenarios equally

yes! I can hear you! This strategy takes time. So, you are advised to do it when you study CR, not in the exam. Do not worry, your brain is magical, it will grasp this strategy and you will be subconsciously trained to apply this strategy to the questions in the exam without your notice.

mSKR · Answer

Hi  VeritasKarishma   VeritasPrepBrian ,  AjiteshArun

I am unable to reject D and not able to select B due to below reasoning.

Could you please give insights what'w wrong with my approach and how can i avoid this kind of mistake.
( As per above explanations in the posts, I couldn't reach there with my natural thinking ability)

PS: I have attached excel sheet in case to edit.

tyildirim92 · Answer

B-) whether he carried his documents or kept the documents in the house where he lived in his early career will not change the content of the documents, right? so, the documents, regardless of where it is found, will shed light on his working style. (short-term-stay or long-term-stay)

D-) the furniture may have been carried by a seller or a merchant. in such a case, this option will be irrelevant.

I hope the answer was clear.

AjiteshArun · Answer

Hi  imSKR ,

Why did you assume that the official could not take some of his furniture with him (in the "simultaneously" column for D)?

mSKR · Answer

Because, normally , if we have a travelling job, we carry usually portable items to move from one city to another. We prefer to buy heavy items ( such as furniture) for a stable house or one base location or a permanent location.
( The reason to such assumptions:
1. Personal experience 
2. if you have a travelling job, usually company arrange accommodation for you with house having furniture items or hotel ( also including furniture ) 
3. As per my understanding , furniture means sofa, table, bed , almirah etc. , why a person would buy these heavy items to transfer again in 4 months in another city. It's not impossible that he can't carry but a normal thought would not suggest to take such an inconvenience including extra costs for movers and packers and that too regularly)

AjiteshArun · Answer

There are a couple of things we could do differently: 1. Keep the "third-century" bit in mind. 2. Not assume that all furniture is "heavy". Furniture can include small items like chairs and small tables and bookcases (I'm guessing here

, but someone who works with magistrates may need some place to keep documents/books). What I like about B is the "early" bit. That was the time when the official would have worked with either one (or less than 4) or many (4) magistrates. By not including "early", options like D cover his entire career, which complicates the issue.

adityaganjoo · Answer

@VeritasPrepBrain : We don't know what's inside the documents. We don't know whether the documentation was done properly. How can we rely on something so vaguely mentioned.

MBAB123 · Answer

adityaganjoo , the question is not asking which of the following would definitely reveal the pattern of the guy. The question is "Which of the following would, if found in the excavation, most likely help reveal ". Of course, the documents might turn out to be useless for reasons that you've mentioned. But in the given scenario, it obviously makes more sense to inspect these official documents first rather cups, clothing, etc. I'm no Brian-from-Veritas , but hope this helps!

woohoo921 · Answer

I see why Choice B is a better answer choice, but I want to clarify on Choice A's wording of "documents describing". What if the documents described the cities at specific points in time, and he mentioned something about his work?

Choice A seems similar to Choice B, but I guess that Choice B is better because this choice specifies that the documents specifically relate to his career?

DmitryFarberMPrep · Answer

woohoo921 
Try to avoid thinking of these in terms of better/worse. As written, the wrong answers are all wrong, not just less useful than the right answer.

Sure, if A added details that would directly tell us more about the sequence of his work, it would be a lot like B. As it is, A just supports what we already know--he worked in all 4 places. If an answer just supports the same info we already have, it is of no use to us, since we always accept the information we have been given.

jabhatta2 · Answer

Hi  ReedArnoldMPREP  - i understand the OA does not have to 'proove' the conclusion but i think (B) has a big assumption

If you pick (B) - arent you assuming that the work is different in the four provincial cities ?

For example - an teacher. Even if you are working in 4 different cities, the work material is going to be the same if you are in NY / Chicago / texas or california.

Even if you get these 'official documents', how can one say whether you were moving across 4 cities or you live in NY for some time / then moved to chicago / then texas and finally california ?

ReedArnoldMPREP · Answer

One of the more difficult things in CR is not being 'critical' of answer choices as you are for the arguments themselves. On an argument you want to ask "Well, is this conclusion true? What if  ?" You don't really want to do that for answer choices.

Every CR answer choice is one of three things: opposite, irrelevant, or correct. That is, it (on its own terms) either does the OPPOSITE of what we need the answer to do (weaken instead of strengthen, be the negation of an assumption instead of being an assumption) or is IRRELEVANT to what we need the answer to do or is CORRECT.

Here's the deal: you should add virtually *nothing* to an answer choice to move it from one to the other. You shouldn't add things to an irrelevant answer to make it strengthen, nor should you add possibilities to strengtheners to make it weakeners.

Is it *possible* that the documents from the four different cities and the four different magistrates are totally indistinguishable, and therefore the documents from this official don't end up being useful to determine the pattern of his administrative service? Sure. But is there any reason to think so? No. So on it's own, having documents from this official's early career--working in one city, or in four different cities, under four different magistrates--seems most likely to be helpful (since they are different cities, which will have different problems, different people involved, different magistrates, different buildings and street names etc etc etc)... it seems that this will help us answer the question about the guy's schedule.

The question is, *on its own* does B seem like it will help us determine the guy's schedule? Well there are three options: is it IRRELEVANT to the question? ...No, I don't think so. Is it the OPPOSITE of what we want answer to do? (Meaning, is it relevant to the question. but will it make it MORE difficult or not help at all?) "Well, if we consider that maybe all the documents in different cities are indistinguishable..." Is there any reason to think that? No. Okay, so... don't! Is it the CORRECT answer? "Well, it's not, if we consider that maybe all the documents in different cities are indistinguishable." But don't!

You have to consider this big new thing, to move the CORRECT answer to an IRRELEVANT answer. But that big new thing has NO textual support (and doesn't seem plausible! Also, as a note, teaching in different cities WOULD have some pretty distinguishing markers, I suspect. Each state has its own curriculum).

Excavation of the house of a third-century Camarnian official revealed

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Excavation of the house of a third-century Camarnian official revealed

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