How to Answer Command of Evidence Questions With Graphs on the SAT

Welcome to SAT Climb. This is command of evidence, the version built on a graph or a table. The answer is sitting right there in the data. But here's the catch: not every true number is the right number. Your job is to match one exact claim to the one figure that proves it.

Here's the shape of it. A short text sets up a claim, a graph holds the data, and four choices each quote a number. A study compares four fertilizers by the average number of days the soil stayed moist. The claim you must support: fertilizer C kept the soil moist the longest. Notice the claim is exact. C, and longest.

Three steps. First, pin the exact claim: C is the longest. Second, read the graph. C is fourteen days, and it's the tallest bar. Third, predict what a correct choice must do before you read them. It has to give C's value and show it beats the others. Now match. Choice C: fourteen days, longer than any other fertilizer. That's the real number from the graph, and it supports the exact claim. That's your answer.

Here's why the traps work. Choice A says six days, the shortest. That's a real number off the graph, but it points the wrong way. Choice B says nine days, longer than D. Also true, but it's about B, and it never shows C is the longest. Choice D sounds perfect, the most of any fertilizer, except eleven isn't anywhere on the graph. Right-sounding words, invented number. A figure is only evidence when it's the right number for this exact claim.

Your turn. Weekly bus riders went from twelve thousand before the new route to twenty thousand after. The claim: ridership grew. To show growth, you need both numbers moving up. Only the before isn't enough, cost is irrelevant, and twenty-five thousand never appears on the graph. Riders rose twelve to twenty thousand. That is B.

Three traps. One: grabbing a number that's true but supports a different point. Two: falling for a choice that sounds right but quotes a value that isn't on the graph at all. Three: forgetting to check both things, that the number is real and that it matches the exact claim. Pin the claim, read the graph, and only then match. Do that, and the data questions become free points.

Command of evidence, the quantitative version: solved. Pin the claim, read the graph, and match the one number that proves it. Start practicing free at S.A.T. climb dot com. Your SAT is closer than you think.