Critical Reasoning

Last year, after the number of subway riders who had had their pockets picked at Central Station had risen to an all-time high, the transit authority erected signs in Central Station telling riders to beware of pickpockets. In the year since the signs have been erected, though, riders have had their pockets picked at Central Station at a per-capita rate nearly double that before the signs were erected.

Which of the following, if true, helps to explain the discrepancy pointed out in the passage?

A.) Since Central Station's major renovation, during which the signs were erected, Central Station has become much more attractive to tourists from out of town.

B.) Rising gas prices and a surging downtown job market have caused the daily number of riders at Central Station nearly to double within the past year.

C.) Riders walking past the new signs tend to rummage through their pockets or feel through their clothes to verify the presence of their possessions.

D.) The number of individuals convicted of petty theft or grand theft for picking pockets at Central Station has decreased within the past year.

E.) Most of the pickpockets' victims were riding the subway during peak travel hours, when Central Station is especially crowded.

Hey, diebeatsthegmat:

Good question - I clicked with C pretty quickly, but I wonder if it's because of outside knowledge...

Here's the explanation: We need to resolve the discrepancy that:

1) Authorities have posted signs to warn people to be more careful about pickpockets
2) Since that point, pickpocketing has actually INCREASED

What C does (or attempts to do) is link the two together by saying that the signs actually provoke potential victims to signal the locations of their possessions to potential thieves by rummaging in their pockets, therefore making it easier for pickpockets to locate the items they want to steal.



Now, I've heard about this in the news and have actually caught myself patting my wallet to make sure it's still there in response to signs like that, so I was looking for something just like choice C when I read this. I wonder if this question wouldn't be filtered out of the official GMAT pool for that reason. Here I'd say:

-If someone has heard this warning before, they'll get this right without thinking
-If not, C may not perfectly bridge that link between "riders rummaging" and "signaling to thieves" as well as it needs to.

So I'd just look at this as a great practice problem that probably wouldn't make the official test.

Brian@VeritasPrep wrote:Hey, diebeatsthegmat:

Good question - I clicked with C pretty quickly, but I wonder if it's because of outside knowledge...

Here's the explanation: We need to resolve the discrepancy that:

1) Authorities have posted signs to warn people to be more careful about pickpockets
2) Since that point, pickpocketing has actually INCREASED

What C does (or attempts to do) is link the two together by saying that the signs actually provoke potential victims to signal the locations of their possessions to potential thieves by rummaging in their pockets, therefore making it easier for pickpockets to locate the items they want to steal.



Now, I've heard about this in the news and have actually caught myself patting my wallet to make sure it's still there in response to signs like that, so I was looking for something just like choice C when I read this. I wonder if this question wouldn't be filtered out of the official GMAT pool for that reason. Here I'd say:

-If someone has heard this warning before, they'll get this right without thinking
-If not, C may not perfectly bridge that link between "riders rummaging" and "signaling to thieves" as well as it needs to.

So I'd just look at this as a great practice problem that probably wouldn't make the official test.

Hi Brian, great reply!. Just wanted to ask one thing what you think of option B. Thanks.

Brian@VeritasPrep wrote:Hey, diebeatsthegmat:

Good question - I clicked with C pretty quickly, but I wonder if it's because of outside knowledge...

Here's the explanation: We need to resolve the discrepancy that:

1) Authorities have posted signs to warn people to be more careful about pickpockets
2) Since that point, pickpocketing has actually INCREASED

What C does (or attempts to do) is link the two together by saying that the signs actually provoke potential victims to signal the locations of their possessions to potential thieves by rummaging in their pockets, therefore making it easier for pickpockets to locate the items they want to steal.



Now, I've heard about this in the news and have actually caught myself patting my wallet to make sure it's still there in response to signs like that, so I was looking for something just like choice C when I read this. I wonder if this question wouldn't be filtered out of the official GMAT pool for that reason. Here I'd say:

-If someone has heard this warning before, they'll get this right without thinking
-If not, C may not perfectly bridge that link between "riders rummaging" and "signaling to thieves" as well as it needs to.

So I'd just look at this as a great practice problem that probably wouldn't make the official test.

so it does sound as if we would not care if our stuff in our pocket was lost because we didnt know about the theft problem before we're noticed, so we didnt know whether our stuffs ( money or blah blah) were lost. however when we knew that the theft problem's happening in stations where we were, we suddenly wanted to check if we lost anything and turned out that we losted something stored in the pocket... and this explains why the the rate of being stolen was increased

wow.... thanks brian... this question is really weird for me hihihihih

die - it looks like you've got it with the explanation of C, and like I said I've seen that in the news before, too. Actually, I've heard of groups of thieves in which one will carry around a sign warning "beware of pickpockets" to encourage tourists to signal their valuables for the rest of the thieves to see. Funny how that works...

M09, good question - you know, I don't think I even looked at the other answer choices when I first saw this question (since the topic line just asked about C). I see two flaws with B that would help to eliminate it:

1) The "conclusion" of the passage is that "riders have had their pockets picked at twice the PER-CAPITA (per/person) rate". So the number of riders shouldn't matter - we're already looking at "per person", so if the rate went up to 2x per person, and we have twice as many people, then rates are up four times the original, and it's still a strangely escalating problem. The stimulus overrides B with the "per capita" tag.

2) This is more nuanced, but these Explain-the-Paradox questions almost always require the correct answer to pertain to both parts of the paradox. That's not entirely absolute, but I'd be leery of an answer choice that seems to completely ignore one of those facets. Here, choice B doesn't have anything to do with the signs, so that alone would give me pause about choosing it. This is probably a pretty poor hypothetical, but if the choice were something more like "during tourist season, twice as many international riders ride the trains, and the foreign-language signs tend to slow them down and detract from their attention to surroundings" or something like that, then it would link "more people" and "signs". Again, probably a bad hypothetical, but I'd strongly prefer a choice that at least dealt with both sides of the paradox.

Brian@VeritasPrep wrote:die - it looks like you've got it with the explanation of C, and like I said I've seen that in the news before, too. Actually, I've heard of groups of thieves in which one will carry around a sign warning "beware of pickpockets" to encourage tourists to signal their valuables for the rest of the thieves to see. Funny how that works...

M09, good question - you know, I don't think I even looked at the other answer choices when I first saw this question (since the topic line just asked about C). I see two flaws with B that would help to eliminate it:

1) The "conclusion" of the passage is that "riders have had their pockets picked at twice the PER-CAPITA (per/person) rate". So the number of riders shouldn't matter - we're already looking at "per person", so if the rate went up to 2x per person, and we have twice as many people, then rates are up four times the original, and it's still a strangely escalating problem. The stimulus overrides B with the "per capita" tag.

2) This is more nuanced, but these Explain-the-Paradox questions almost always require the correct answer to pertain to both parts of the paradox. That's not entirely absolute, but I'd be leery of an answer choice that seems to completely ignore one of those facets. Here, choice B doesn't have anything to do with the signs, so that alone would give me pause about choosing it. This is probably a pretty poor hypothetical, but if the choice were something more like "during tourist season, twice as many international riders ride the trains, and the foreign-language signs tend to slow them down and detract from their attention to surroundings" or something like that, then it would link "more people" and "signs". Again, probably a bad hypothetical, but I'd strongly prefer a choice that at least dealt with both sides of the paradox.

Hi Brian, thanks for pointing out the flaws in option B..thanks again