Balzania put in place regulations

[byuwadd]

So the reason C is correct is because we are operating under the assumption that those who have remained mining in Balzania have some special advantage that allows their reclamation costs to be lower?

This seems like a bit of a stretch to me.

C basically says that mine operators have stopped surface mining in Balzania because the reclamation costs are high there. How do we get from this statement to the assumption that those remaining have some sort of reclamation cost advantage?

I'm not seeing it. :(

[jlucero]

Because if you stop "mining in the mountainous areas (where the) reclamation costs per ton of coal produced are particularly high" you would be left with areas where the costs are NOT as particularly high.

If I said that my diet requires me to stop eating the foods with the highest caloric content, I'd be left with the foods with less caloric content. It would be a much worse (and sketchier) assumption to say that I would stop eating those foods and replace them with worse foods.

[byuwadd]

Thanks Jlucero,

I guess I kind of breezed over the phrase "mountainous areas" when I read this argument (I thought it was just a fluffy adjective explaining Balzania as a whole).

Now that you've emphasized that portion I understand the problem.

I will sleep soundly tonight. :)

[divineacclivity]

The explanation as usual is very good. It really helped me get over option B and get some more confidence that I wouldn't get an answer wrong by selecting choices like B if I think the way it is explained above :)

I'm left with a little doubt about option B though:

B says that the use of coal declines => the cost might have declined accordingly too, so, the govt has to give some incentive/subsidy (in the form of lesser reclamation charges) to keep coal miners' interest alive in coal mining

Please help me negate my logic above for option B. Thanks.

[jlucero]

The explanation as usual is very good. It really helped me get over option B and get some more confidence that I wouldn't get an answer wrong by selecting choices like B if I think the way it is explained above :)

I'm left with a little doubt about option B though:

B says that the use of coal declines => the cost might have declined accordingly too, so, the govt has to give some incentive/subsidy (in the form of lesser reclamation charges) to keep coal miners' interest alive in coal mining

Please help me negate my logic above for option B. Thanks.

Be careful in the cost comparison in B. The number that has gone down is:

four dollars per ton of coal

Not $4 per $1000 of coal. In that case, B could be a potential answer. But the question never discusses how the value of coal has changed over the years. Only how the cost of reclamation compares to how much coal has been removed.

[adm45]

Ron or someone else- can you post the video link, which Ron or someone else explains this problem.

Best,

[jlucero]

Not sure where that video is, but if anyone knows, feel free to include it below. In the meanwhile, browse these videos and see if you can find it. Good luck.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xlz7ht ... TKMQXx8KlY

[rustom.hakimiyan]

The explanation as usual is very good. It really helped me get over option B and get some more confidence that I wouldn't get an answer wrong by selecting choices like B if I think the way it is explained above :)

I'm left with a little doubt about option B though:

B says that the use of coal declines => the cost might have declined accordingly too, so, the govt has to give some incentive/subsidy (in the form of lesser reclamation charges) to keep coal miners' interest alive in coal mining

Please help me negate my logic above for option B. Thanks.

Be careful in the cost comparison in B. The number that has gone down is:

four dollars per ton of coal

Not $4 per $1000 of coal. In that case, B could be a potential answer. But the question never discusses how the value of coal has changed over the years. Only how the cost of reclamation compares to how much coal has been removed.

Hi Joe,

I'm stuck on B because of a similar issue, which I think you're trying to address above.

The way I read B was as follows:The use of coal as a fuel has gone down, therefore I inferred that coal production has gone down and as a result, less lands need to be reclaimed. Since less reclamation is happening, the government is incentivizing people to mine more by reducing the reclamation cost. What is the flaw in this reasoning? Am I inferring too much?

The inference steps I see are as follows:
1) Since coal use declined, less lands need to be reclaimed.
2) Govt offers an incentive to increase mining. Therefore cost went down.

In C, the inference is as follows:
1)Since Mine operators don't mine in expensive areas, they mine in cheaper areas.
2) Cost went down.

Why is C better than B?

[RonPurewal]

The use of coal as a fuel has gone down, therefore I inferred that coal production has gone down

This ^^ is a questionable inference to start with. It's certainly reasonable, but, depending on how fixed costs work, the opposite might be true, too. (E.g., now that fewer people are using first-class mail, the cost of a first-class stamp continues to increase, because the fixed costs of the postal system are spread over fewer delivery charges.)

That's not the main point, though.

The main point is that the statistic in the passage is explicitly chosen to make this consideration irrelevant:

and as a result, less lands need to be reclaimed.

By considering this cost in terms of dollars PER TON OF COAL, we are engineering the statistics to make the volume of mining irrelevant.
Looking at "per ___" statistics makes the size of "____" irrelevant.
Consider per-capita (= per population) crime statistics. Those make the actual population of a city irrelevant, enabling direct comparisons between the crime rates of cities of different sizes. (The number of crimes, by contrast, will normally be higher in bigger cities, even if those cities are safer than the smaller ones.)

[RonPurewal]

Also, this:

Since less reclamation is happening, the government is incentivizing people to mine more by reducing the reclamation cost.

This is not a tax or a fine. It's a cost. It's the cost inherent in the process of fixing the land that has been gutted and destroyed by mining. Like, say, the cost of restoring an old, rusted-out car.

[JianchengD868]

more mining, more reclamation cost?

these problems do require a certain baseline amount of common sense, yes.
note that the common-sense component really *is* "common": if the test writers wrote a problem that they thought involved common sense, but the problem in fact confused test takers, then it would be rejected during the experimental phase.

Lately I have been doing tricky problems of all types and unfortunately I feel compelled to look for the least obvious (most tricky) explanation .

this probably means that you've been doing problems from questionable third-party sources. (remember, documents downloaded for free are worth exactly what you pay for them!)

CR problems are not supposed to be "tricky". they are meant to challenge overly rigid modes of thinking, but they are not meant to stick a metaphorical foot out and trip you.

Hi Ron,

I think the key of this question is to identify the unit of reclamation cost is dollars per ton of coal, just like price.
So, things increase or decrease the tons of coal only affect the total cost but not the reclamation cost (price).
Maybe because different areas have different prices, the average price exists.
Only C talks about the price, but other four choices are intentionally related to tons of coal, so they are irrelevant.

Would you please confirm my point?
Thanks a lot.

Regards,
JianchengD868

[RonPurewal]

unlike most CR problems with statistics, this one actually doesn't require ANY understanding of the units. literally no understanding whatsoever.
the understanding you DO need here is a basic understanding of how averages work--specifically, the notion that, if you remove the highest numbers from a data set, the average will go down.

see, the units in the passage ("dollars per ton of coal produced") are exactly the same as those in the correct answer. so, it doesn't matter what those units are.

[RonPurewal]

in fact, you can even change the units to nonsense words, and the reasoning will still make sense. (these days, on average, people only pay $4 per pink flamingo, compared to $8 per pink flamingo a few years back. choice C: they stopped making the most expensive pink flamingos. ok, yep, that explains why the average went down.)

[JianchengD868]

in fact, you can even change the units to nonsense words, and the reasoning will still make sense. (these days, on average, people only pay $4 per pink flamingo, compared to $8 per pink flamingo a few years back. choice C: they stopped making the most expensive pink flamingos. ok, yep, that explains why the average went down.)

Dear Ron,

Thank you so much.
I can identify the right choice using your method, but I don't how to explain why the wrong choices are wrong because they are so odd.

I initially mistook the reclamation cost for a fixed cost, and thought that the tons of coal from the surface would affect the average reclamation cost.
This misled me to analyze the production of coal from the surface in choice B and choice E. While, tons of coal only affect the total cost of reclamation. In this way, I can cross them off with enough reasons.

Kind regards,
Jiancheng

[RonPurewal]

cool.

just make sure that you read SLOWLY ENOUGH to absorb these sorts of things. 99.99999 per cent of all misunderstandings stem from rushing through the text, and/or from the stress caused by rushing).