Explanation for Question 20 From the Reading Section on the Official Sat Practice Test 10
Question 20 says, do the data and figure one support or weaken the argument 2 of the author of the passage and why? So the first thing we need 3 to think about here is the argument of the author of the passage. 4 And the main argument that they're making is that attempts to increase or 5 attempts to reduce traffic, actually increased traffic. 6 And we can see that if we look back in the passage, 7 starting in line 58, it says why didn't inroad. 8 So an attempt to reduce traffic makes traffic move faster in the short term, 9 but the improved conditions eventually attract additional drivers and entice current drivers to drive 10 more and congestion reappears with more cars. 11 So attempts to reduce traffic, 12 widening roads leads to an actual increase in traffic. 13 So if we look back at figure one, 14 we can identify a few key features of this model. 15 It says the effect of route capacity reduction in selected regions. 16 And then the next thing we need to look at is the change in 17 traffic. So they're reducing this capacity 18 reduction is that they're reducing the capacity of the roads. 19 And we can see here that we have a negative percentages for the changes 20 in traffic. So that's going to represent a decrease in traffic. 21 So you're reducing roads, you're reducing traffic. 22 So that is going to support the, 23 um, argument of the author in the passage. 24 So if we look back at the answer choices, 25 C and D say they weakened so we can eliminate 26 both of those. An...