Critical Reasoning

To decrease the number of crimes in city Y, the city's Police Commissioner proposed taking some police officers from low-crime districts of the city and moving them to high-crime districts of the city. His proposal is based on city Y crime data that show that the number of crimes in any district of the city decreases when additional police officers are moved into that district.

The Police Commissioner's proposal depends on which of the following assumptions?

a)City X experienced a drastic reduction in crime after implementing a proposal similar to that proposed by the Police Commissioner of city Y.

b)The severity of crimes committed in any district of the city decreases when additional police officers are moved into that district.

c)The number of crimes committed in all high-crime districts of city Y is more than triple the number of crimes committed in all low-crime districts of city Y.

d)There are more low-crime districts than high-crime districts in city Y.

e)Districts of the city from which police officers are removed do not experience significant crime increases shortly after the removal of those officers.

Ans: e;
Can anyone please explain?

IMO E .

The argument is assuming that by removing the police officers from low crime district will not result in increase in crime in those low crime regions .

If you negate this assumption your conclusion or the proposal will fall apart.

He can implement the proposal only if the action performed is not disturbing the other low crime areas , otherise if he implements plan and shifts officers to high crime area and decrease the crime rate in high crime areas but in turn increase the crime in the low crime areas , the situation remains the same just the places are changed .

akchop , please kindly make the use of spoiler function while posting the question to hide the answer , so that the fellow readers can have their take at question without being getting biased by the answer .

akchop10 wrote:To decrease the number of crimes in city Y, the city's Police Commissioner proposed taking some police officers from low-crime districts of the city and moving them to high-crime districts of the city. His proposal is based on city Y crime data that show that the number of crimes in any district of the city decreases when additional police officers are moved into that district.

The Police Commissioner's proposal depends on which of the following assumptions?

a)City X experienced a drastic reduction in crime after implementing a proposal similar to that proposed by the Police Commissioner of city Y.

b)The severity of crimes committed in any district of the city decreases when additional police officers are moved into that district.

c)The number of crimes committed in all high-crime districts of city Y is more than triple the number of crimes committed in all low-crime districts of city Y.

d)There are more low-crime districts than high-crime districts in city Y.

e)Districts of the city from which police officers are removed do not experience significant crime increases shortly after the removal of those officers.

Ans: e;
Can anyone please explain?

IMO E, Proposal of commissioner is to move the police officers from low crime city to high crime city that will help in countering soaring crime rates.

As his proposal is based upon the data of the city Y, so what if the crime rates of city Y increases after shifting officers from city Y, then his proposal will fall apart.!!!

hence E is an assumption that commissioner has made while forming a proposal.!!!

I am not reading the answer choices yet. Trying to analyze the argument and offer the challenges for picking up.

Conclusion:
To decrease the number of crimes in city Y, the city's Police Commissioner proposed taking some police officers from low-crime districts of the city and moving them to high-crime districts of the city.


Premise:
His proposal is based on city Y crime data that show that the number of crimes in any district of the city decreases when additional police officers are moved into that district.



gap No 1 Causal relationship
Implies the correlation between the crime data and number of crimes decreases when additional police officers are moved. There's must be a serious relationship (ASSUMPTION) for such causal reasoning.


gap No 2 Sampling/Statistics
Given the above causal reasoning is true, ASSUMPTION is valid, the number of additional police officers moved into the high-criminal districts should be varying. There must be formula how many police officers need to be moved instead of just proposing some police officers ... To justify such statistical matching one needs to have observed strong tendency in criminal incidence decrease with little or some increase in police officers. This ASSUMPTION is based on the previous one (Causal relationship)


gap No 3 Analogy
There is not gap here, as the premise mentions in any district of the city

However, there's mismatch between the premise which contains condition about decrease in crime rate after increasing the police force, BUT does not say anything about what will happen with the crime rate if some police officers will be removed from some district. Will the crime rate remain the same or increase. Because if the crime rates in districts from where the police officers will be dragged is going to increase this will not help BUT will hurt the Police Commissioner's plan/proposal. So we need to make assumption that the less criminal districts will remain the same level of crime rates even with shrinkage in police force.

Now it's obvious so much answer is E