PT158.S4.Q23 > Question

SECTION 1 · rc

PASSAGE 1

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7

PASSAGE 2

Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13

PASSAGE 3

Question 14 Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19 Question 20

PASSAGE 4

Question 21 Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25 Question 26 Question 27

SECTION 2 · lr

Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Question 6 Question 7 Question 8 Question 9 Question 10 Question 11 Question 12 Question 13 Question 14 Question 15 Question 16 Question 17 Question 18 Question 19 Question 20 Question 21 Question 22 Question 23 Question 24 Question 25

SECTION 3 · lr

SECTION 4 · lr

The official concludes that the city should raise fines for parking violations again if they want to further decrease violations. As support, he says that the fines were raised six months ago to pay for the newly opened parking garage, and violations have dropped by half since then.

This is the cookie-cutter flaw of assuming that correlation proves causation. The official points out a correlation between higher fines and reduced violations and then jumps to the conclusion that higher fines caused a reduction in parking violations. He ignores any other possible explanations— like the newly opened parking garage— that might account for the reduction.

The official doesn’t confuse an effect of reduced violations with a cause of reduced violations. Instead, he takes a possible cause of reduced violations— higher fines— to be the definite cause of reduced violations.

The official never assumes that raising fines again will reduce parking violations by another 50%. He just thinks it will further reduce violations. Also, (B) fails to address the fact that the official assumes that raising fines actually caused the reduction the first time.

The official doesn’t address the financial benefits of higher parking fines, but he doesn’t need to. His argument is about an assumed causal connection between higher fines and reduced violations, not about the city’s financial benefits.

The official might assume that people with parking violations would rather park legally, but this doesn’t describe the flaw in his argument. His argument is flawed because he assumes that higher fines caused a reduction in parking violations, based only on a correlation.

The official assumes that higher fines caused the reduction in parking violations based only on a correlation. He fails to consider other possible explanations— like the newly opened parking garage— that might account for the reduction.

PrepTest 158 - Section 4 - Question 23

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