Drill 26 · Reading & Writing · Hard Command of Evidence
SAT R&W Command of Evidence (Hard) — Drill 26 is a Reading & Writing practice drill covering Hard Command of Evidence. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.
This set looks at how researchers read old structures for signs of deliberate sky-watching. Each item reports a finding about an alignment or a marked stone and asks which single piece of evidence decides between a built-on-purpose reading and a coincidence. The data items pair a table and a bar comparison; read each for the contrast it is set up to draw rather than for the single largest value. The quotation item draws from a nineteenth-century story.
A ring of standing stones sits on a high plateau, and from its center a gap between two outer stones frames the point on the horizon where the sun rises on the longest day of the year. One reading is that the builders set those stones on purpose to mark the solstice sunrise. Another is that the alignment is an accident of where loose stones happened to be raised, since with enough stones around a circle some gap will line up with almost any horizon point by chance. To tell the readings apart, an archaeoastronomer surveys the full ring and the ground around it rather than the single framed gap alone.
Question 1. Which finding, if true, would most strongly support the deliberate-alignment reading over the chance reading?
Explanation: Correct: A matching gap aimed at the opposing solstice, plus worn paths leading to both framed gaps, shows repeated use tied to specific solar events -- the pattern intentional sky-marking leaves and a chance alignment would not. That repetition is what separates design from coincidence. A: Taller, better-shaped framing stones show care in building the ring, but careful stones can still face their direction by chance; this alone does not tie them to the solstice on purpose. C: Similar rings elsewhere show the form was common in the region but say nothing about whether this ring's gap was aimed at the sunrise deliberately. D: A clear horizon makes alignments easier to observe, but it does not show that this particular gap was intentionally placed; it leaves the chance reading just as available as the deliberate one.
Table: four marked stones at the upland site
At a nearby site, four large stones each carry a carved notch that points toward some spot on the horizon. The team wants the one stone that best fits a deliberate solar marker, which they define two ways at once: the notch must point within two degrees of a known sunrise or sunset bearing, and the stone must show repeated re-cutting -- at least three separate episodes, the sign that people returned to maintain it across many years. A stone that meets only one of those two tests does not qualify. The table lists, for each stone, how far its notch sits from the nearest solar bearing and how many separate re-cutting episodes its carving shows.
Question 2. Based on the table, which stone best fits the team's two-part test for a deliberate solar marker?
Explanation: Correct: Only Stone Z meets both thresholds: its notch sits 1 degree from a solar bearing (within the two-degree limit) and it shows 4 re-cutting episodes (at least three, so repeated maintenance). It is the one stone that satisfies both parts of the test at once. A: Stone W points right on a solar bearing (0 degrees off) but shows only 1 re-cutting episode, so it fails the repeated-maintenance half of the test. B: Stone X has been re-cut 5 times, the most of any stone, but its notch sits 7 degrees off the nearest solar bearing, well outside the two-degree limit. C: Stone Y misses on both counts -- 4 degrees off the bearing and only 2 re-cutting episodes -- so it is not the best fit on either measure.
A student reads the opening of a nineteenth-century story narrated by an elderly lawyer who runs a quiet office. The student argues that the narrator presents himself, from the very start, as a man who values a comfortable and untroubled way of living above ambition or struggle.
Question 3. Which quotation from the story most directly supports the student's claim about how the narrator values his way of living?
Explanation: Correct: The student's claim is about what the narrator values in a way of living. The keyed line states it outright -- a lifelong conviction that the easiest way of life is the best -- which is exactly the preference for comfort over struggle the claim describes. A: This line is about the lack of records for Bartleby's life, not about what the narrator values for himself. B: Being thought a safe man describes others' opinion of his reliability; it is close, but it reports his reputation rather than stating that he prizes an easy life. D: This just describes the view from his chambers and says nothing about what he values in a way of living.
Excavators recover a flat bone plaque incised with a long row of small notches grouped into clusters. Two interpretations are offered. On one, the clusters tally the days between successive new moons, so the plaque served as a portable lunar calendar. On the other, the notches are purely decorative, cut to please the eye with no counting behind them. The same row of marks fits either story on its face, so the team looks for a feature of the clusters themselves that one interpretation predicts and the other does not.
Question 4. Which finding, if true, would most strongly favor the lunar-calendar interpretation over the decoration interpretation?
Explanation: Correct: A real lunar month runs about 29.5 days, so a genuine moon-tally would round its clusters to runs of twenty-nine and thirty. Finding that repeated 29/30 pattern is what the calendar reading predicts and mere decoration has no reason to produce. B: Even, skilled cutting shows the marks were made with care, which fits a decorative aim just as well as a counting one; it does not separate the two. C: That similar plaques exist, plain and incised alike, speaks to how common the object was, not to whether these notches counted lunar months. D: Polishing the reverse is a finishing touch consistent with either a decorated object or a calendar; it says nothing about counting.
Two hilltop sites are compared for how often their standing stones line up with notable horizon points. At each site, surveyors count alignments that fall on a solar or lunar rising-or-setting bearing ("sky-event" bearings) and, separately, alignments that fall on ordinary bearings with no sky event attached. The bar chart shows both counts for the suspected solstice site and for a control site of similar size and stone number. A reviewer cautions that the suspected site simply having more alignments overall would not show intent; what matters is whether sky-event bearings are favored there beyond what the control shows.
Question 5. Which statement best compares how strongly the two sites favor sky-event bearings over ordinary ones?
Explanation: Correct: At the suspected site sky-event alignments (18) tower over ordinary ones (6), a gap of 12, while at the control the two are nearly even (8 versus 7, a gap of 1). The suspected site favors sky-event bearings far more strongly, which is the difference the setup asks about. A: More sky-event alignments at the suspected site is true (18 versus 8) but reflects partly that it has more alignments overall; it does not isolate the favoring of sky events the question asks about. C: This is true from the chart -- the control's ordinary count (7) edges just above the suspected site's (6) -- but it is beside the point; the question is about each site's sky-event-over-ordinary edge, not the ordinary counts on their own. D: This is technically true -- both sites do show more sky-event alignments than ordinary ones (18 versus 6, and 8 versus 7) -- but it is far too weak. It treats the two sites as favoring sky events similarly, when the suspected site's gap (12) dwarfs the control's (1), which is the contrast the question is after.