Reading Comprehension

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I think I can help!

238. It can be inferred from the passage that the 1840 United States census provided a count of which of the following?
(A) Women who worked exclusively in the home
(B) People engaged in nonfarming occupations
(C) People engaged in social movements
(D) Women engaged in family-run enterprises
(E) Men engaged in agriculture

Based on the question, I know that the answer will be in the first paragraph. Or I should say, the information needed to support one of these answer choices is in the first paragraph. Since it is asking us to make an inference, I know that the answer will not be written in a specific sentence, but rather I will have to find info to support one of the answer choices.

(A) Women who worked exclusively in the home - I know that early on, women were not being counted. Actually the whole passage is about how the census did not properly count women in the workforce. So I can eliminate this answer choice because it contradicts the main idea of the passage.

(B) People engaged in nonfarming occupations - This was a maybe the first time I went through the answers, but I was able to find a better inference. This one requires a little more assuming based on what we are told in the passage. So I eliminated this one ultimately.

(C) People engaged in social movements - I threw this one out immediately. It is an idea from a different part of the passage and not related to who is being counted by the sentence.

(D) Women engaged in family-run enterprises - We are explicitly told that women are not counted at this point. They are just a part of the male household. So, I eliminated this answer choice.

(E) Men engaged in agriculture - Here is our answer. This is a well-supported inference and does not require too much of a logical leap to make this true. Basically, everything in this sentence supports this answer choice: "Through 1840, simple enumeration by household mirrored a home-based agricultural economy and hierarchical social order: the head of the household (presumed male or absent) was specified by name, whereas other household members were only indicated by the total number of persons counted in various categories, including occupational categories."

239. The author uses the adjective "simple" in line 5 most probably to emphasize that the
(A) collection of census information became progressively more difficult throughout the nineteenth-century
(B) technology for tabulating census information was rudimentary during the first half of the nineteenth century
(C) home-based agricultural economy of the early nineteenth century was easier to analyze than the later industrial economy
(D) economic role of women was better defined in the early nineteenth century than in the late nineteenth century
(E) information collected by early-nineteen-century censuses was limited in its amount of detail

This one is a little tricky, but if you are on the look out for what might be wrong in these answer choices, it's pretty easy to narrow down. And as always, we need to remember what the whole passage is about. "Simple" is going to have something to do with the main idea. The passage is about how the census was not good and counting women in the work force. As the passage progresses we learn about how they improved their ability to count women in the work force.

(A) collection of census information became progressively more difficult throughout the nineteenth-century - This contradicts what we learn in the passage. We are not told that things become more difficult. And actually, we learn nothing about how hard or easy it is to collect information. We are only told about the information collected. Eliminate.

(B) technology for tabulating census information was rudimentary during the first half of the nineteenth century - I originally kept this as a possibility the first time through, but when I returned to it, I realized it was wrong for a similar reason that (A) was wrong. We have no idea what type of technology they are using to collect information. We just know about the information.

(C) home-based agricultural economy of the early nineteenth century was easier to analyze than the later industrial economy - Again we don't know anything about the analysis of the data. We just know what the data contains or represents. Eliminate.

(D) economic role of women was better defined in the early nineteenth century than in the late nineteenth century - This flat out contradicts the ideas in the passage that counting women in the census was a gradual process of improvement in the nineteenth century. Not the other way around.

(E) information collected by early-nineteen-century censuses was limited in its amount of detail - And here we find our answer. We know that the "simple" methods for collecting data were imprecise-the were only counting men and households. They were not counting women or minorities early on.

I hope that you find these explanations helpful.

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