LSAT 131, Section 4, RC Passage 1, Computing

RC Passage 1 Explanation (Comparative)

PASSAGE TEXT: Recent studies have shown that sophisticated computer models of the oceans and atmosphere …

Paragraph Summaries

Passage A

1. Climate models can simulate big climate trends, but they rely on many variables. Even small changes in those variables can change the results.
2. Reliable climate predictions require testing many combinations of variable values. Individual computers can’t handle that many simulation runs.
3. Networked desktop computers could divide up the calculations and run them in parallel. This kind of public computing can work, but it needs enough people to participate.

Passage B

1. Many problems in nature and society are naturally parallel. They involve many simple elements that together create complex systems.
2. Ant colonies show this kind of parallel behavior. One ant is simple, but many ants together can behave like an organized, intelligent system.
3. Computing is shifting from sequential computing to massive parallel computing. Parallel problems are best solved by parallel systems.

Analysis

Passage A is practical: we have a giant climate-modeling problem, and one machine won’t cut it. Passage B is the theory behind why A’s solution makes sense.

The link is parallelism. Climate simulations involve tons of variable combinations that can be broken up and calculated at the same time. That’s exactly the sort of problem Passage B says parallel computing is built for.

The ant example is there to make the idea intuitive. One ant is dumb. A colony is not. Same with computers: one desktop is weak, but thousands working together can function like one huge machine (not literally alive, just collectively powerful).

The one potential issue is identified in Passage A. Parallel desktop computing is technically possible, but it only works if enough people volunteer their machines.

So overall, Passage B supports the logic of A’s proposal, but it doesn’t prove people will participate or that climate models will become perfect. It just explains why a distributed, parallel approach is a good fit for a massive, calculation-heavy problem.