moledude wrote:unemployment can often occur more frequently in certain geographical regions in the country, instead of "spreading out" all over.
Does this make sense? I hope this helps.
The assumption Sharon makes is that unemployment cannot occur in geographically isolated areas.
I would rate this as not one of the best GMAt arguments, though it is a from the OG! I will give my explanations later but here is how I arrived at the answer.
I feel that the only way to solve this question is to find the answer using Process of Elimination.
Sharon reckons that unpolyment is about 5% (1 in 20). So, if anyone knows 50 workers they will also know 1 or more people who are unemployed.
C looks tempting but since the question is asking for an assumption the Sharon makes, we must ignore Roland's argument. Also Sharon's argument only refers to how many unemployed people will someone know not what proportion of people out of the total population that will know someone unemployed.
D, similar to C refers to Rolands argument and hence is not relevant.
E refers to fear that is created by knowing statistics of unemployed, which is irrelevant.
A Sounds good but it fails the negation test. Even if the normal levels are exceeded, still someone who knows 50 people will know 1 or more people who are likely to be unemployed. So it is not a critical to the argument.
Hence B, as no other answer is good enough. However I have a problem with B too.
Imagine a community with 15% unemployment but the overall unemployement of the country can still be 5%. In other words other commnuties with less than 5% unemployment compensate the 15% unemployment of one community.
So, if a person lives within the community with say 1% unemployment the likelihood is that he may not know a single person who is unemployed. But if all communities have the same 5% then the statistics will be true across all communities.
My question is, it is very much possible that a person knows people from other communities (with greater than 5% unemployment) and therefore the stats still hold true even if unemployment is concentrated in geographically isolated segments.
Sorry for this long-winded post. I hope I have got my point across. Im keen to hear others opinion on this.
