Raul: The disturbing reality is that 85 percent of individuals now report that they know at least one individual who has spent at least one year in prison.
Stefano: But suppose that any given person knows about 40 other people. If about 5 percent of the population, or about one out of every 20 individuals, has spent at least one year in prison, then any given person probably knows multiple people who have been imprisoned for at least one year.
Stefano's argument relies on the assumption that ____.
(A) for the population in question, reasonable rates of imprisonment with one-year sentences are not generally exceeded
(B) individuals who have never been imprisoned for one year or longer do not associate only with other individuals who have never been imprisoned for one year or longer
(C) at least 85 percent of the population in question is always comprised of people who know at least one person who has been imprisoned for at least one year
(D) Raul is not intentionally manipulating the numbers he uses to support his assertion
(E) first-hand knowledge of the prison system motivates individuals to stay out of prison more than do statistics about the percentage of the population that has been imprisoned for at least one year
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Raul & Stefano
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Geva@EconomistGMAT
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Answer should be B. Stefano's argument assumes an even distribution of the 5% of the population that is imprisoned. If indeed 1 of every 20 random people (i.e., choose 20 people at random, from anywhere in the country, and 1 one of them has been imprisoned) has been imprisoned for at least a year, then everybody would know someone. However, this even geographical/socio-economic distribution is not necessarily true - suppose the 5% imrpisoned are all living in one city? an extreme example, but I just use it to show how Stefanos' argument can be broken.
B plays to this assumption - if B is wrong, and people who have not been imprisoned for over a year DO associate only with other people like them, then it is possible to choose someone who knows 40 people, but all of them have never been imprisoned for a year, much like himself. Thus, in order for Stefano's argument to hold, he must assume that the "innocents" (and the argument here uses inncoents in the broad sense of "not in the population of prison sentence>1 year") do not keep to themselves.
B plays to this assumption - if B is wrong, and people who have not been imprisoned for over a year DO associate only with other people like them, then it is possible to choose someone who knows 40 people, but all of them have never been imprisoned for a year, much like himself. Thus, in order for Stefano's argument to hold, he must assume that the "innocents" (and the argument here uses inncoents in the broad sense of "not in the population of prison sentence>1 year") do not keep to themselves.
