premise: The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914 (1977) is a book by the American historian David McCullough, published by Simon & Schuster. It won the U.S. National Book Award in History, the Francis Parkman Prize, the Samuel Eliot Morison Award and the Cornelius Ryan Award.
hypothesis: The Panama Canal was completed before David McCullough was born.
reason: The statement fits into the correct category because the excerpt states the date that the Panama Canal was completed in the book title, but does not say when the author was born. The system may have been confused by the other dates in the excerpt.