Critical Reasoning

Roland: The alarming fact is that 90 percent of the people in this country now report that they know someone who is unemployed.
Sharon: But a normal, moderate level of unemployment is 5 percent, with 1 out of 20 workers unemployed. So at any given time if a person knows approximately 50 workers, 1 or more will very likely be unemployed.


Sharon’s argument relies on the assumption that
(A) normal levels of unemployment are rarely exceeded
(B) unemployment is not normally concentrated in geographically isolated segments of the population
(C) the number of people who each know someone who is unemployed is always higher than 90% of the population
(D) Roland is not consciously distorting the statistics he presents
(E) knowledge that a personal acquaintance is unemployed generates more fear of losing one’s job than does knowledge of unemployment statistics

I think D shud be the right answer, taking the cue from causality and assumptions. 'D' shows that the data used to make the assumption are accurate, i.e., they arnt being distorted

(Official Answer is B)

If we consider roland's statement:
He says 90% people report they know someone who is unemployed

Sharon's Argument:
level of unemployment is 5%

both assume data is generic i.e for the whole country. Hence B

this question is not relevant to the first argument.

evidence should be representative (princeton review), B is correct

thankx cyrus!

I also think B is correct