1. Directions

Each passage or pair of passages in this section is followed by a number of questions. After reading each passage or pair, choose the best answer to each question based on what is stated or implied in the passage or passages and in any accompanying graphics (such as a table or graph).

Questions 1 through 10 are based on the following passage.

This passage is adapted from George Eliot, Silas Marner. Originally published in 1861. Silas was a weaver and a notorious miser, but then the gold he had hoarded was stolen. Shortly after, Silas adopted a young child, Eppie, the daughter of an impoverished woman who had died suddenly.

Unlike the gold which needed nothing, and must be worshipped in closelocked solitude—which was hidden away from the daylight, was deaf to the song of birds, and started to no human tones—Eppie was a creature of endless claims and evergrowing desires, seeking and loving sunshine, and living sounds, and living movements; making trial of everything, with trust in new joy, and stirring the human kindness in all eyes that looked on her. The gold had kept his thoughts in an everrepeated circle, leading to nothing beyond itself; but Eppie was an object compacted of changes and hopes that forced his thoughts onward, and carried them far away from their old eager pacing towards the same blank limit—carried them away to the new things that would come with the coming years, when Eppie would have learned to understand how her father Silas cared for her; and made him look for images of that time in the ties and charities that bound together the families of his neighbors. The gold had asked that he should sit weaving longer and longer, deafened and blinded more and more to all things except the monotony of his loom and the repetition of his web; but Eppie called him away from his weaving, and made him think all its pauses a holiday, reawakening his senses with her fresh life, even to the old winterflies that came crawling forth in the early spring sunshine, and warming him into joy because she had joy.

And when the sunshine grew strong and lasting, so that the buttercups were thick in the meadows, Silas might be seen in the sunny midday, or in the late afternoon when the shadows were lengthening under the hedgerows, strolling out with uncovered head to carry Eppie beyond the Stonepits to where the flowers grew, till they reached some favorite bank where he could sit down, while Eppie toddled to pluck the flowers, and make remarks to the winged things that murmured happily above the bright petals, calling “Daddad’s” attention continually by bringing him the flowers. Then she would turn her ear to some sudden birdnote, and Silas learned to please her by making signs of hushed stillness, that they might listen for the note to come again: so that when it came, she set up her small back and laughed with gurgling triumph. Sitting on the banks in this way, Silas began to look for the once familiar herbs again; and as the leaves, with their unchanged outline and markings, lay on his palm, there was a sense of crowding remembrances from which he turned away timidly, taking refuge in Eppie’s little world, that lay lightly on his enfeebled spirit.

As the child’s mind was growing into knowledge, his mind was growing into memory: as her life unfolded, his soul, long stupefied in a cold narrow prison, was unfolding too, and trembling gradually into full consciousness.

It was an influence which must gather force with every new year: the tones that stirred Silas’ heart grew articulate, and called for more distinct answers; shapes and sounds grew clearer for Eppie’s eyes and ears, and there was more that “Daddad” was imperatively required to notice and account for. Also, by the time Eppie was three years old, she developed a fine capacity for mischief, and for devising ingenious ways of being troublesome, which found much exercise, not only for Silas’ patience, but for his watchfulness and penetration. Sorely was poor Silas puzzled on such occasions by the incompatible demands of love.

Question 1.

Which choice best describes a major theme of the passage?

2. As compared with Silas’s gold, Eppie is portrayed as having more

3. Which statement best describes a technique the narrator uses to represent Silas’s character before he adopted Eppie?

4. The narrator uses the phrase “making trial of everything” (sentence 1 of paragraph 1) to present Eppie as

5. According to the narrator, one consequence of Silas adopting Eppie is that he

6. Which choice provides the best evidence for the answer to question 5?

7. What function does paragraph 2 serve in the passage as a whole?

8. In describing the relationship between Eppie and Silas, the narrator draws a connection between Eppie’s

9. Which choice provides the best evidence for the answer to question 8?

10. As used in sentence 2 of paragraph 4, the word “fine” most nearly means

11. Questions 11 through 21 are based on the following passage and supplementary material.

This passage is adapted from David Rotman, “How Technology Is Destroying Jobs.” ©2013 by M I T Technology Review.

M I T business scholars Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee have argued that impressive advances in computer technology—from improved industrial robotics to automated translation services—are largely behind the sluggish employment growth of the last 10 to 15 years. Even more ominous for workers, they foresee dismal prospects for many types of jobs as these powerful new technologies are increasingly adopted not only in manufacturing, clerical, and retail work but in professions such as law, financial services, education, and medicine.

That robots, automation, and software can replace people might seem obvious to anyone who’s worked in automotive manufacturing or as a travel agent. But Brynjolfsson and McAfee’s claim is more troubling and controversial. They believe that rapid technological change has been destroying jobs faster than it is creating them, contributing to the stagnation of median income and the growth of inequality in the United States. And, they suspect, something similar is happening in other technologically advanced countries.

As evidence, Brynjolfsson and McAfee point to a chart that only an economist could love. In economics, productivity—the amount of economic value created for a given unit of input, such as an hour of labor—is a crucial indicator of growth and wealth creation. It is a measure of progress. On the chart Brynjolfsson likes to show, separate lines represent productivity and total employment in the United States. For years after World War Two, the two lines closely tracked each other, with increases in jobs corresponding to increases in productivity. The pattern is clear: as businesses generated more value from their workers, the country as a whole became richer, which fueled more economic activity and created even more jobs. Then, beginning in 2000, the lines diverge; productivity continues to rise robustly, but employment suddenly wilts. By 2011, a significant gap appears between the two lines, showing economic growth with no parallel increase in job creation. Brynjolfsson and McAfee call it the “great decoupling.” And Brynjolfsson says he is confident that technology is behind both the healthy growth in productivity and the weak growth in jobs.

It’s a startling assertion because it threatens the faith that many economists place in technological progress. Brynjolfsson and McAfee still believe that technology boosts productivity and makes societies wealthier, but they think that it can also have a dark side: technological progress is eliminating the need for many types of jobs and leaving the typical worker worse off than before. Brynjolfsson can point to a second chart indicating that median income is failing to rise even as the gross domestic product soars. “It’s the great paradox of our era,” he says. “Productivity is at record levels, innovation has never been faster, and yet at the same time, we have a falling median income and we have fewer jobs. People are falling behind because technology is advancing so fast and our skills and organizations aren’t keeping up.”

While technological changes can be painful for workers whose skills no longer match the needs of employers, Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist, says that no historical pattern shows these shifts leading to a net decrease in jobs over an extended period. Katz has done extensive research on how technological advances have affected jobs over the last few centuries—describing, for example, how highly skilled artisans in the midnineteenth century were displaced by lowerskilled workers in factories. While it can take decades for workers to acquire the expertise needed for new types of employment, he says, “we never have run out of jobs. There is no longterm trend of eliminating work for people. Over the long term, employment rates are fairly stable. People have always been able to create new jobs. People come up with new things to do.”

Still, Katz doesn’t dismiss the notion that there is something different about today’s digital technologies—something that could affect an even broader range of work. The question, he says, is whether economic history will serve as a useful guide. Will the job disruptions caused by technology be temporary as the workforce adapts, or will we see a sciencefiction scenario in which automated processes and robots with superhuman skills take over a broad swath of human tasks? Though Katz expects the historical pattern to hold, it is “genuinely a question,” he says. “If technology disrupts enough, who knows what will happen?”

Note: The following two figures supplement this passage.

Figure 1

Begin skippable figure description.

Figure 1, which presents a graph of 2 lines, is titled “United States Productivity and Employment.” On the horizontal axis, the years 1947 through 2007, in increments of 10 years, are indicated, and the year 2013 is indicated at the end of that axis. Below the axis, a note reads “indexed: 1947 equals 100.” The vertical axis is labeled “Percentage of 1947 levels,” and the numbers 100 through 500, in increments of 100, are indicated. The key indicates that one line represents employment and the other line represents productivity. The line representing productivity is consistently above the line representing employment.

According to the graph, the approximate values for the line representing employment are as follows.

1947: 100 percent.

1957: 120 percent.

1967: 170 percent.

1977: 210 percent.

1987: 280 percent.

1997: 320 percent.

2007: 395 percent.

2013: 390 percent.

According to the graph, the approximate values for the line representing productivity are as follows.

1947: 100 percent.

1957: 150 percent.

1967: 210 percent.

1977: 280 percent.

1987: 310 percent.

1997: 380 percent.

2007: 500 percent.

2013: 550 percent.

End skippable figure description.

Figure 2

Begin skippable figure description.

Figure 2 presents a bar graph titled “Output per Employed Person in Manufacturing as Factories Have Become More Automated.” On the horizontal axis, the years 1960 through 2000, in increments of 10 years, are indicated, and the year 2011 is indicated at the end of that axis. The vertical axis is labeled “Output per worker (2002 values equal 100),” and the numbers 0 through 200, in increments of 50, are indicated. Three bars are associated with each year. The first bar represents the United States, the second bar represents Germany, and the third bar represents Japan.

According to the graph, the approximate values for the bars, from left to right, are as follows.

1960. United States, 25; Germany, 30; Japan, 15.

1970. United States, 40; Germany, 48; Japan, 41.

1980. United States, 46; Germany, 55; Japan, 51.

1990. United States, 52; Germany, 70; Japan, 75.

2000. United States, 90; Germany, 100; Japan, 100.

2011. United States, 160; Germany, 120; Japan, 140.

End skippable figure description.

Question 11.

The main purpose of the passage is to

12. According to Brynjolfsson and McAfee, advancements in technology since approximately the year 2000 have resulted in

13. Which choice provides the best evidence for the answer to question 12?

14. The primary purpose of the middle part of sentence 2 of paragraph 3 (“the amount . . . labor”) is to

15. As used in sentence 6 of paragraph 3, the word “clear” most nearly means

16. Which of the following best characterizes Katz’s attitude toward “today’s digital technologies” (sentence 1 of paragraph 6)?

17. Which choice provides the best evidence for the answer to question 16?

18. As used in sentence 1 of paragraph 6, the word “range” most nearly means

19. According to figure 1, which of the following years showed the widest gap between percentages of productivity and employment?

20. Which statement is supported by figure 2?

21. Which additional information, if presented in figure 2, would be most useful in evaluating the statement in sentence 5 of paragraph 4 (“Productivity . . . jobs”)?

22. Questions 22 through 31 are based on the following passage.

This passage is adapted from Patricia Waldron, “Why Birds Fly in a V Formation.” ©2014 by American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Anyone watching the autumn sky knows that migrating birds fly in a V formation, but scientists have long debated why. A new study of ibises finds that these bigwinged birds carefully position their wingtips and sync their flapping, presumably to catch the preceding bird’s updraft—and save energy during flight.

There are two reasons birds might fly in a V formation: It may make flight easier, or they’re simply following the leader. Squadrons of planes can save fuel by flying in a V formation, and many scientists suspect that migrating birds do the same. Models that treated flapping birds like fixedwing airplanes estimate that they save energy by drafting off each other, but currents created by airplanes are far more stable than the oscillating eddies coming off of a bird. “Air gets pretty unpredictable behind a flapping wing,” says James Usherwood, a locomotor biomechanist at the Royal Veterinary College at the University of London in Hatfield, where the research took place.

The study, published in Nature, took advantage of an existing project to reintroduce endangered northern bald ibises (Geronticus eremita) to Europe. Scientists used a microlight plane to show handraised birds their ancestral migration route from Austria to Italy. A flock of 14 juveniles carried data loggers specially built by Usherwood and his lab. The device’s G P S determined each bird’s flight position to within 30 centimeters, and an accelerometer showed the timing of the wing flaps.

Just as aerodynamic estimates would predict, the birds positioned themselves to fly just behind and to the side of the bird in front, timing their wing beats to catch the uplifting eddies. When a bird flew directly behind another, the timing of the flapping reversed so that it could minimize the effects of the downdraft coming off the back of the bird’s body. “We didn’t think this was possible,” Usherwood says, considering that the feat requires careful flight and incredible awareness of one’s neighbors. “Perhaps these big V formation birds can be thought of quite like an airplane with wings that go up and down.”

The findings likely apply to other longwinged birds, such as pelicans, storks, and geese, Usherwood says. Smaller birds create more complex wakes that would make drafting too difficult. The researchers did not attempt to calculate the bird’s energy savings because the necessary physiological measurements would be too invasive for an endangered species. Previous studies estimate that birds can use 20 percent to 30 percent less energy while flying in a V.

“From a behavioral perspective it’s really a breakthrough,” says David Lentink, a mechanical engineer at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who was not involved in the work. “Showing that birds care about syncing their wing beats is definitely an important insight that we didn’t have before.”

Scientists do not know how the birds find that aerodynamic sweet spot, but they suspect that the animals align themselves either by sight or by sensing air currents through their feathers. Alternatively, they may move around until they find the location with the least resistance. In future studies, the researchers will switch to more common birds, such as pigeons or geese. They plan to investigate how the animals decide who sets the course and the pace, and whether a mistake made by the leader can ripple through the rest of the flock to cause traffic jams.

“It’s a pretty impressive piece of work as it is, but it does suggest that there’s a lot more to learn,” says Ty Hedrick, a biologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who studies flight aerodynamics in birds and insects. However they do it, he says, “birds are awfully good hangglider pilots.”

Question 22.

The main purpose of the passage is to

23. The author includes the quotation “Air gets pretty unpredictable behind a flapping wing” (sentence 4 of paragraph 2) to

24. What can reasonably be inferred about the reason Usherwood used northern bald ibises as the subjects of his study?

25. Which choice provides the best evidence for the answer to question 24?

26. What is the most likely reason the author includes the 30 centimeters measurement in sentence 4 of paragraph 3?

27. What does the author imply about pelicans, storks, and geese flying in a V formation?

28. Which choice provides the best evidence for the answer to question 27?

29. What is a main idea of paragraph 7?

30. The author uses the phrase “aerodynamic sweet spot” in sentence 1 of paragraph 7 most likely to

31. As used in sentence 4 of paragraph 7, the word “ripple” most nearly means

32. Questions 32 through 41 are based on the following passages.

Passage 1 is adapted from Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume 2. Originally published in 1840. Passage 2 is adapted from Harriet Taylor Mill, “Enfranchisement of Women.” Originally published in 1851. As United States and European societies grew increasingly democratic during the nineteenth century, debates arose about whether freedoms enjoyed by men should be extended to women as well.

Passage 1

I have shown how democracy destroys or modifies the different inequalities which originate in society; but is this all? or does it not ultimately affect that great inequality of man and woman which has seemed, up to the present day, to be eternally based in human nature? I believe that the social changes which bring nearer to the same level the father and son, the master and servant, and superiors and inferiors generally speaking, will raise woman and make her more and more the equal of man. But here, more than ever, I feel the necessity of making myself clearly understood; for there is no subject on which the coarse and lawless fancies of our age have taken a freer range.

There are people in Europe who, confounding together the different characteristics of the sexes, would make of man and woman beings not only equal but alike. They would give to both the same functions, impose on both the same duties, and grant to both the same rights; they would mix them in all things—their occupations, their pleasures, their business. It may readily be conceived, that by thus attempting to make one sex equal to the other, both are degraded; and from so preposterous a medley of the works of nature nothing could ever result but weak men and disorderly women.

It is not thus that the Americans understand that species of democratic equality which may be established between the sexes. They admit, that as nature has appointed such wide differences between the physical and moral constitution of man and woman, her manifest design was to give a distinct employment to their various faculties; and they hold that improvement does not consist in making beings so dissimilar do pretty nearly the same things, but in getting each of them to fulfill their respective tasks in the best possible manner. The Americans have applied to the sexes the great principle of political economy which governs the manufactures of our age, by carefully dividing the duties of man from those of woman, in order that the great work of society may be the better carried on.

Passage 2

As society was constituted until the last few generations, inequality was its very basis; association grounded on equal rights scarcely existed; to be equals was to be enemies; two persons could hardly cooperate in anything, or meet in any amicable relation, without the law’s appointing that one of them should be the superior of the other. Mankind have outgrown this state, and all things now tend to substitute, as the general principle of human relations, a just equality, instead of the dominion of the strongest. But of all relations, that between men and women, being the nearest and most intimate, and connected with the greatest number of strong emotions, was sure to be the last to throw off the old rule, and receive the new; for, in proportion to the strength of a feeling is the tenacity with which it clings to the forms and circumstances with which it has even accidentally become associated. . . .

. . . The proper sphere for all human beings is the largest and highest which they are able to attain to. What this is, cannot be ascertained without complete liberty of choice. . . . Let every occupation be open to all, without favor or discouragement to any, and employments will fall into the hands of those men or women who are found by experience to be most capable of worthily exercising them. There need be no fear that women will take out of the hands of men any occupation which men perform better than they. Each individual will prove his or her capacities, in the only way in which capacities can be proved,—by trial; and the world will have the benefit of the best faculties of all its inhabitants. But to interfere beforehand by an arbitrary limit, and declare that whatever be the genius, talent, energy, or force of mind, of an individual of a certain sex or class, those faculties shall not be exerted, or shall be exerted only in some few of the many modes in which others are permitted to use theirs, is not only an injustice to the individual, and a detriment to society, which loses what it can ill spare, but is also the most effectual way of providing that, in the sex or class so fettered, the qualities which are not permitted to be exercised shall not exist.

Question 32.

As used in sentence 2 of paragraph 1 of Passage 1, the word “raise” most nearly means

33. In Passage 1, Tocqueville implies that treatment of men and women as identical in nature would have which consequence?

34. Which choice provides the best evidence for the answer to question 33?

35. As used in sentence 2 of paragraph 1 of Passage 2, the word “dominion” most nearly means

36. In Passage 2, Mill most strongly suggests that gender roles are resistant to change because they

37. Which choice provides the best evidence for the answer to question 36?

38. Both authors would most likely agree that the changes in gender roles that they describe would be

39. Tocqueville in Passage 1 would most likely characterize the position taken by Mill in sentence 3 of paragraph 2 of Passage 2 (“Let . . . them”) as

40. Which choice best describes the ways that the two authors conceive of the individual’s proper position in society?

41. Based on Passage 2, Mill would most likely say that the application of the “great principle of political economy” (sentence 3 of paragraph 3 of Passage 1) to gender roles has which effect?

42. Questions 42 through 52 are based on the following passage and supplementary material.

This passage is adapted from Brian Greene, “How the Higgs Boson Was Found.” ©2013 by Smithsonian Institution. The Higgs boson is an elementary particle associated with the Higgs field. Experiments conducted in 2012 through 2013 tentatively confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson and thus of the Higgs field.

Nearly a halfcentury ago, Peter Higgs and a handful of other physicists were trying to understand the origin of a basic physical feature: mass. You can think of mass as an object’s heft or, a little more precisely, as the resistance it offers to having its motion changed. Push on a freight train (or a feather) to increase its speed, and the resistance you feel reflects its mass. At a microscopic level, the freight train’s mass comes from its constituent molecules and atoms, which are themselves built from fundamental particles, electrons and quarks. But where do the masses of these and other fundamental particles come from?

When physicists in the nineteen sixties modeled the behavior of these particles using equations rooted in quantum physics, they encountered a puzzle. If they imagined that the particles were all massless, then each term in the equations clicked into a perfectly symmetric pattern, like the tips of a perfect snowflake. And this symmetry was not just mathematically elegant. It explained patterns evident in the experimental data. But—and here’s the puzzle—physicists knew that the particles did have mass, and when they modified the equations to account for this fact, the mathematical harmony was spoiled. The equations became complex and unwieldy and, worse still, inconsistent.

What to do? Here’s the idea put forward by Higgs. Don’t shove the particles’ masses down the throat of the beautiful equations. Instead, keep the equations pristine and symmetric, but consider them operating within a peculiar environment. Imagine that all of space is uniformly filled with an invisible substance—now called the Higgs field—that exerts a drag force on particles when they accelerate through it. Push on a fundamental particle in an effort to increase its speed and, according to Higgs, you would feel this drag force as a resistance. Justifiably, you would interpret the resistance as the particle’s mass. For a mental toehold, think of a pingpong ball submerged in water. When you push on the pingpong ball, it will feel much more massive than it does outside of water. Its interaction with the watery environment has the effect of endowing it with mass. So with particles submerged in the Higgs field.

In 1964, Higgs submitted a paper to a prominent physics journal in which he formulated this idea mathematically. The paper was rejected. Not because it contained a technical error, but because the premise of an invisible something permeating space, interacting with particles to provide their mass, well, it all just seemed like heaps of overwrought speculation. The editors of the journal deemed it “of no obvious relevance to physics.”

But Higgs persevered (and his revised paper appeared later that year in another journal), and physicists who took the time to study the proposal gradually realized that his idea was a stroke of genius, one that allowed them to have their cake and eat it too. In Higgs’s scheme, the fundamental equations can retain their pristine form because the dirty work of providing the particles’ masses is relegated to the environment.

While I wasn’t around to witness the initial rejection of Higgs’s proposal in 1964 (well, I was around, but only barely), I can attest that by the mid–nineteen eighties, the assessment had changed. The physics community had, for the most part, fully bought into the idea that there was a Higgs field permeating space. In fact, in a graduate course I took that covered what’s known as the Standard Model of Particle Physics (the quantum equations physicists have assembled to describe the particles of matter and the dominant forces by which they influence each other), the professor presented the Higgs field with such certainty that for a long while I had no idea it had yet to be established experimentally. On occasion, that happens in physics. Mathematical equations can sometimes tell such a convincing tale, they can seemingly radiate reality so strongly, that they become entrenched in the vernacular of working physicists, even before there’s data to confirm them.

Note: The following figure supplements this passage.

Adapted from the editors of The Economist, “Worth the Wait.” ©2012 by The Economist Newspaper Limited.

Begin skippable figure description.

The figure presents a graph titled “Years from Introduction of Concept of Particle to Experimental Confirmation.” The horizontal axis has years 1880 through 2000, in increments of 10 years, indicated, and the year 2012 is indicated at the end of the horizontal axis. The vertical axis, from top to bottom, is labeled with the following 9 concepts of particles: electron, photon, electron neutrino, muon neutrino, tau, W boson, Z boson, tau neutrino, and Higgs boson. For each of the nine concepts of particles, a horizontal bar is drawn on the graph. The starting point and ending point for each bar are as follows. Note all values are approximate.

Electron. Starts at 1881 and ends at 1898.

Photon. Starts at 1905 and ends at 1922.

Electron neutrino. Starts at 1931 and ends at 1956.

Muon neutrino. Starts at 1948 and ends at 1962.

Tau. Starts and ends at 1975.

W boson. Starts at 1968 and ends at 1982.

Z boson. Starts at 1968 and ends at 1982.

Tau neutrino. Starts at 1975 and ends at 2000.

Higgs boson. Starts at 1964 and ends at 2012.

End skippable figure description.

Question 42.

Over the course of the passage, the main focus shifts from

43. The main purpose of the analogy of the pingpong ball (sentence 8 of paragraph 3) is to

44. The author most strongly suggests that the reason the scientific community initially rejected Higgs’s idea was that the idea

45. Which choice provides the best evidence for the answer to question 44?

46. The author notes that one reason Higgs’s theory gained acceptance was that it

47. Which choice provides the best evidence for the answer to question 46?

48. Which statement best describes the technique the author uses to advance the main point of paragraph 6?

49. As used in sentence 3 of paragraph 6, the word “established” most nearly means

50. What purpose does the graph serve in relation to the passage as a whole?

51. Which statement is best supported by the data presented in the graph?

52. Based on the graph, the author’s depiction of Higgs’s theory in the mid–nineteen eighties is most analogous to which hypothetical situation?