* Assumption - Low Crime Districts

[ranjeet1975]

To decrease the number of crimes in city Y, the city’s Police Commissioner proposed taking some police officers from low-crime districts of the city and moving them to high-crime districts of the city. His proposal is based on city Y crime data that show that the number of crimes in any district of the city decreases when additional police officers are moved into that district.

The Police Commissioner’s proposal depends on which of the following assumptions?
- City X experienced a drastic reduction in crime after implementing a proposal similar to that proposed by the Police Commissioner of city Y.
- The severity of crimes committed in any district of the city decreases when additional police officers are moved into that district.
- The number of crimes committed in all high-crime districts of city Y is more than triple the number of crimes committed in all low-crime districts of city Y.
- There are more low-crime districts than high-crime districts in city Y.
- Districts of the city from which police officers are removed do not experience significant crime increases shortly after the removal of those officers.

Why A should not be the answer. Though I opted E but A is also very strong to pick. If we negate A then the plan for City Y is not supported.

Please explain.

[george.kourdin]

think if we negate A, it does not bode well for the plan, but it doesn't have nearly as large of an impact on the plan as does E. if we negate E, we are saying that districts from which we removed police officers WILL have a crime increase and this certainly foils the commissioner's plan.

if we negate A, all we learn is that city X did not experience a drastic reduction in crime after a similar proposal was implemented. we don't know anything about city X. there could easily be other variables in play that affect the outcome. what if city X implemented a death penalty for any crime at the same time that the discussed proposal went into effect?

city X is not discussed in the passage. in my experience, whenever one of the answer choices involves a comparison to a situation where a similiar "thing" has happened, it's likely a trap and a wrong answer because there are other variables in play that would make this comparison/assumption insignificant. unless we are comparing two items in an absolute vacuum where no other events can alter the outcome, its likely that this is an inaccurate comparison.

one example comes to mind: see 4th answer choice
cr-officials-of-the-youth-hockey-league-t7530.html

[RonPurewal]

please read the forum rules: read-before-you-post-general-verbal-folder-guidelines-t2718.html

you can't post problems in this folder without giving the ORIGINAL SOURCE of the problem -- i.e., the company or author that first produced the problem (not, for instance, a forum or other secondhand source on which it has previously been posted).
if you don't know the original source, then i'm sorry, but you can't post the problem here.
this applies to MGMAT problems as well -- there are over three thousand problems in our database, so we won't recognize all of them from memory.

we will delete this thread within a week if the original source of the problem is not posted. thanks.