31 LR One Question 14
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Could you explain why {A} is wrong? If I negate (A), it looks as if {A} and {E} appear similar.

We need to know that neither of them learned calculus from someone else. We do not need to know that either one of them did or did not teach calculus to anyone else. Make sense?



Consider the difference between (B) and (E)—we need to know that they didn't learn it from some third source, but we don't need to know that nobody else also came up with it independently.
Clearer?

wouldn't there also have to be an assumption that Leibniz and Newton didn't find out from each other besides the notebook and letters?

Yes! Totally true. This shows that there may be many assumptions made by an argument (though there will only ever be one presented as an answer choice!)

Hello Dave,
I got tripped on this question, but after watching your video and reading through the comments I think I understand where I went wrong. I want to walk you through my thought process to see if I'm on the right track.
I selected D because I fell for the idea that there were only two people to consider in this scenario. When I negated the answer choice I assumed that Leibniz, if aware of Newton's work on calc, must have taken some important idea from him. However, the passage literally points that he had some knowledge of what Newton was doing minus the critical details. Just because you're working on something doesn't mean you have it all figured out(which makes that answer kind of like so what in my head now). Additionally, I can imagine a situation where I was given some idea of another person's actions, yet we independently discovered the same thing. For example, let's say my friend and I are both explorers. My friend sends me a nebulous letter alluding to the fact that he just found an incredible new place and 10 years later we meet in the center of that land. Both of us correctly claim we discovered the land independently, he entered from the eastern shore and I entered from the western shore.
Now I think the reason I missed E was because I was not reading closely. The key wording here is "crucial details about calc". I created this faulty analogy about how you could give me crucial details about baking doesn't mean I can come up with some awesome pastry that no one has ever had. I believe that analogy would work had the answer said "crucial details about mathematics" because then we would be going from general to specific, which would make it an inadequate answer choice. However, as written it's almost saying, but for this information, these individuals would have not discovered calc.
Am I on the right track?