Q5 - Four randomly chosen market

[tzyc]

I just wanted to double check...Is (B) wrong because the results vary and (C) correct because their results are relatively the same?

Thank you

[ohthatpatrick]

The correct answer is (D). You implied it was (C) but you may have still been talking about (D).

Inference is often all about why the other answers are wrong, so let's just go through them:

(A) Classic "Fake comparison". Nothing in the passage ever discusses "smaller cities", so there's no way we can assume some comparison about how hard it is to estimate population.

(B) Nothing in the passage indicates that these estimates were "useful for marketing". Yes, they were conducted by market research companies, but that doesn't mean they're "useful for marketing". Also, the estimates for rapidly growing cities were all over the place, so common sense wouldn't suggest that those would be very useful (how do you know which estimate is correct?)

(C) The rate of fluctuation's stability/instability is out of scope, but this also seems to be going against the information. If rapidly growing cities had stable, non-fluctuating rates of change, then companies would all be able to predict them consistently. Instead, the info says that for rapidly growing cities, the different companies' estimates were all over the place.

(D) Since all the companies had similar estimates for stable cities, we can support the idea that they're likely to be equally reliable in this capacity. (Note, we are not actually saying that the common estimate is correct. But it's still true to say the companies would be equally reliable. Say that the figure they all come up with is wrong. Well, then they're all equally reliable, which is to say not very reliable at all.)

(E) The comparison of "how accurate" these estimates are goes beyond the scope of anything we're told. We only know that some estimates were similar and that some were varied. We have no idea if any of those estimates are accurate.

Hope this helps.

[a8l367]

(B) Nothing in the passage indicates that these estimates were "useful for marketing". Yes, they were conducted by market research companies, but that doesn't mean they're "useful for marketing". Also, the estimates for rapidly growing cities were all over the place, so common sense wouldn't suggest that those would be very useful (how do you know which estimate is correct?)

Could someone point to the flaw in the thought path for B?

Can estimates (for rapidly groeing cities) (in general) be useful for marketing? Yes, otherwise why whould someone pay for such an estimate or conduct it?