@

This makes perfect sense. Thank you!

I don't believe it's a good idea to be involving numbers in your problem solving method. Time is a luxury, and any kind of setup like this that will increase the mental load of thinking about the problem will serve only to slow you down, right or wrong. Instead, think about the groups involved in this question and the direction of the variable being tracked (known crime rate).

Going with this approach, we have two groups: local police departments and random citizens. Seeing from the paragraph that local PDs report on crimes reported to them, we know that the direction of PD "perceived crime" statistics will follow the number of police reports given. As the local PDs are reporting increased crime, this means reported crime is going up.

Meanwhile, from our intuition (and the lack of any information given to the contrary), we assume the random citizen group gets their "perceived crime" variable data from ambient crime levels exclusively, in other words representing the number of reported AND unreported crimes occurring. As their survey indicates a downward trend, we can conclude the total number of crimes is going down or not moving.

If reported crime is going up compared to total crime, the proportion of reported crimes is increasing. This leads us to E as an answer.

In many logical reasoning questions, I often find myself returning to the same logic in my answers: how much information do I need to abstract from the question to reach this conclusion? Given that I'm sure you've already figured out why the other choices are incorrect, I will focus exclusively on B and E.

First, let's talk about why B is wrong. Look over the passage carefully. If it helps, split the paragraph into a bulleted list made only of statements of fact. Notice that B is in fact saying the opposite of what the passage tells us. A manufacturer chooses stabilizers, a low cost option, at the expense of flavor. This means when minimizing costs, manufacturers prefer consistency to flavor. B says the opposite of this and therefore cannot be correct.

Take it a step further, though - let's say B in fact did match the logic we could possibly infer from the paragraph. It would still be incorrect. Despite the fact that we can make a decently logical estimate in favor of this hypothetical B, the fact remains that we don't actually have enough information. We don't know if companies choose stabilizers because consumers prefer consistency, if it's the only option they can afford at all, or otherwise. In choosing our hypothetical B, we assume one of many possibilities.

Compare this to E. E uses only information directly in the paragraph. Nothing is assumed besides "ice cream should be cold", which is such a basic fact of life you are expected by the test creators to know it. As a result, E is the most direct, correct inference of all the choices and must be the correct answer.

I hope this helps.