AutoSafe

gasg wrote:Last year, AutoSafe sold a large number of new automobile
insurance policies and luxury cars were stolen at a particularly
high rate, resulting in a record number of theft-related insurance
claims submitted to AutoSafe. This year, Autosafe will no longer
sell insurance policies to owners of luxury cars. Therefore,
unless Autosafe sells a record number of policies to owners of
non-luxury cars, fewer theft-related claims will be submitted
this year.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the
argument relies?
(A) Each year, luxury cars are stolen at a higher rate than
are non-luxury cars.
(B) Customers who purchased policies last year are no
more likely to have their cars stolen this year than they
were last year.
(C) This year, the theft rate of non-luxury cars will not be
substantially higher than the theft rate of non-luxury
cars last year.
(D) This year, the number of stolen cars recovered by
AutoSafe policyholders will be greater than the
number of stolen cars recovered by policyholders
last year.
(E) The number of automobile thefts that a¤ected AutoSafe
policyholders last year was not nearly as high as the
number of thefts that a¤ected non-policyholders.


between B/C

answer (C) This year, the theft rate of non-luxury cars will not be substantially higher than the theft rate of non-luxury cars last year.

Id also go with C here.

The info we need from this is as follows:

1. Luxury cars were stolen at a high rate causing a high number of claims
2. Luxury policies will no longer be sold
3. This will result in fewer claims unless they sell a record number of policies to non luxury owners

A. Incorrect. He does tell us in the passage that luxury cars are stolen at a high rate and its not really an assumption. The rate at which they are stolen is an assumption. For instance lets say 75% of luxury cars are stolen and only 50% of non-luxury cars are stolen in year 1. What if in year 2 the number is 90% and 89%. The luxury car is still higher, but at that number you would not need a record number of policies to see a big increase in thefts


B. Incorrect. All this is telling us is that current policy holders wont see large increases in the anticipated theft rate, but the argument is detailing new policyholders. Just because the rate among current policyholders remains the same it does not mean that the rate among new ones will not be high.

C. Correct. Here the author is telling us that the rate of the non luxury model will be basically equivalent to the luxury model rate from the previous year. In order for thefts to go up at that point they would have to sell substantially more policies than they have in the past otherwise the claims will go down due to less policies being sold.

D. Incorrect. Totally irrelevant to the argument

E. Incorrect. Again totally irrelevant.

I agree with C. Last year's theft of luxury car was a spike. To reach the conclusion that we'll have policies this year, we have to assume that we won't see a similar spike in non-luxury cars. The author assumes that the rate of theft for non-luxury will be approximately the same, and the number of claims is dependent only on the number of policies sold.

B discusses customers who purchased polcies last year, who are irrelevant to this year: many of last year's customer will not be customers this year, as Autosafe will not be selling luxury policies this year at all.

Thanks for replies..
OA is C

Hi Whats the source