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Citizens of Parktown are worried by the increased frequency of serious 20 May 2020, 21:05
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(B) Crimes committed by teenagers in afternoon are mostly small thefts and inconsequential vandalism

(C) Teenagers are much less likely to commit serious crimes when they are at home than when they are not at home[quote][/quote]

i chose B over C due to following reason, please clarify.

Why I rejected B ?
>>It doesn't mention that teenagers can not do crimes in early morning or at mid nights. It makes hard to assume that if teenagers don't do heavy crimes between 3pm to 6pm then it would help to reduce worries of citizens.

Whyi chose C?
>>Teenagers are much less likely to commit serious crimes when they are at home. Why This less likely is not just limited to the time when they are at home but why it could not be expanded to their internal thought of tendency not to commit serious crimes.
Example: People tend to become happy when they go on travel. The effect of happiness is not just limited to time till they are in travel. They could still be happy after trip is over till few hours , day or more .

In B i need to assume that crimes could happen only at night to make the option to be true.
but in C i don't need to put too much effort of assuming that teenagers are less likely to commit crimes only when they are at home

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Citizens of Parktown are worried by the increased frequency of serious 11 Aug 2021, 21:09
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Every reply here seems to highlight SERIOUS upfront. But it is not so obvious, it is a very subtle flaw. That is what makes it a 700 level question.

In reading the argument, I couldn't catch SERIOUS as the flaw on which the whole reasoning is going to be based. Even after reading option B, the option did not feel like the best possible statement which can 'substantially' weaken the argument. But only after reading and eliminating all the other options was I left with option B as an 'okay' choice.

Now the approach I took - We need an option that can explain "Why this measure will work" (Maybe that's why reading option B, it did not shine on me). All the other options are either irrelevant or opposite (explain why measures won't work). And I could not eliminate B, and hence the answer.
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Citizens of Parktown are worried by the increased frequency of serious 18 Aug 2022, 09:03
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I tried to work with numbers here but somehow can't justify B as the answer.

Let's say there are 100 crimes in Total out of which 45 are 'Not Serious' and 55 are 'Serious' (increased frequency of serious crimes)
Let crimes between 3-6 PM be 80(most) and post 6 PM be 20.
If I take into account statement B,
Let's assume 'Not Serious' crimes in afternoon=45 and 'Serious' crimes=35
Then, 'Not Serious' crimes in evening=0 and 'Serious' crimes=20.
So effectively, by deploying curfew in the evening, Serious crimes eliminated =20. Rest of the 35 are still being committed in the afternoon.
Can this plan be called effective?
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Citizens of Parktown are worried by the increased frequency of serious 18 Aug 2022, 13:45
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TheAlchemist36
By deploying curfew in the evening, Serious crimes eliminated =20. Rest of the 35 are still being committed in the afternoon.
Can this plan be called effective?
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The language we're trying to weaken is this:
Quote:
[keeping teenagers at home in the late evening is] unlikely to affect the problem that concerns citizens [that problem being increased frequency of serious crimes committed by local teenagers]
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So, you shouldn't ask whether this plan can be called effective, TheAlchemist36. Instead, you should ask whether this plan is likely to affect the increased frequency of serious crimes committed by local teenagers.
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Citizens of Parktown are worried by the increased frequency of serious 18 Aug 2022, 22:06
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TheAlchemist36
I tried to work with numbers here but somehow can't justify B as the answer.

Let's say there are 100 crimes in Total out of which 45 are 'Not Serious' and 55 are 'Serious' (increased frequency of serious crimes)
Let crimes between 3-6 PM be 80(most) and post 6 PM be 20.
If I take into account statement B,
Let's assume 'Not Serious' crimes in afternoon=45 and 'Serious' crimes=35
Then, 'Not Serious' crimes in evening=0 and 'Serious' crimes=20.
So effectively, by deploying curfew in the evening, Serious crimes eliminated =20. Rest of the 35 are still being committed in the afternoon.
Can this plan be called effective?
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Increased frequency of serious crime does not mean that most crimes committed by teenagers are serious now. In fact, from our general awareness, we could say that teenagers usually commit petty crimes (shoplifting, vandalism etc.) but say 5% are serious crimes. Even if it goes up to 10%, we would say that the frequency of serious crime has increased.
The author says that the plan of keeping teenagers home post 6 pm will not work because most teenager crimes occur between 3 to 6. But what if most of these crimes occurring between 3 to 6 are petty crimes and the serious ones occur after 6 pm. Then the plan of keeping teenagers home after 6 pm will help curb serious crime and those crimes are the ones that really bother the community.
Hence, the author's claim that the plan is useless is weakened.
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Citizens of Parktown are worried by the increased frequency of serious 23 Aug 2022, 09:12
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TheAlchemist36
I tried to work with numbers here but somehow can't justify B as the answer.

Let's say there are 100 crimes in Total out of which 45 are 'Not Serious' and 55 are 'Serious' (increased frequency of serious crimes)
Let crimes between 3-6 PM be 80(most) and post 6 PM be 20.
If I take into account statement B,
Let's assume 'Not Serious' crimes in afternoon=45 and 'Serious' crimes=35
Then, 'Not Serious' crimes in evening=0 and 'Serious' crimes=20.
So effectively, by deploying curfew in the evening, Serious crimes eliminated =20. Rest of the 35 are still being committed in the afternoon.
Can this plan be called effective?
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Well, even in your example, the plan helps reduce the serious crimes by nearly 40%. That's not too bad!

But forget about the numbers for a second. The author says, "a curfew won't help because MOST of the crimes are committed in the afternoons." Fair enough... that's certainly a good reason to question whether the curfew will help. Does it PROVE that the curfew won't work? Nope. We could pick some convenient numbers to show that the curfew might still help. Regardless, the author points out a potential weakness in the plan.

Now imagine that a random guy -- let's call him Tim -- stands up to the author and says, "Yeah, but the teens don't commit many SERIOUS crimes in the afternoon. Since we're only worried about the SERIOUS crimes, we don't care so much about the afternoon ones -- that's why we're focusing on the evening crimes."

Sure, we could pick some numbers to show that the curfew might not be a sweeping success, but that's not the point. We aren't trying to PROVE that the curfew will work. We're just trying to come up with something that hurts the author's argument.

Tim's point shows that the curfew might still be very effective DESPITE the point that the author made. If only a small percentage of the serious crimes occur in the afternoon, then a curfew is a great idea! So (B) weakens the argument, even though it doesn't prove or disprove anything.

I hope that helps a bit!
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Citizens of Parktown are worried by the increased frequency of serious 04 Sep 2022, 00:37
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KarishmaB Ma'am,

Option C says teenagers are less likely to commit serious crimes when they are at home. If this is the case, then doesn't this weaken the conclusion. Teenagers will stay at home, and this would make them less likely to commit serious crimes. Hence, this weakens the conclusion. This directly affects the problem at hand.

I am aware that the time when they stay home is not the time when SERIOUS crimes are committed. But by virtue of them staying home would make them less likely to commit serious crimes. (What is wrong with this interpretation?)

Please share your two cents.
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Citizens of Parktown are worried by the increased frequency of serious 05 Sep 2022, 00:17
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KarishmaB Ma'am,

Option C says teenagers are less likely to commit serious crimes when they are at home. If this is the case, then doesn't this weaken the conclusion. Teenagers will stay at home, and this would make them less likely to commit serious crimes. Hence, this weakens the conclusion. This directly affects the problem at hand.

I am aware that the time when they stay home is not the time when SERIOUS crimes are committed. But by virtue of them staying home would make them less likely to commit serious crimes. (What is wrong with this interpretation?)

Please share your two cents.
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Conclusion: The plan of keeping children at home after 6:00 pm to reduce serious crime will not work.
We need to weaken it. So we need to say that the plan will work.

(C) Teenagers are much less likely to commit serious crimes when they are at home than when they are not at home

This option tells us something that our plan already assumes and it makes sense to assume it - if teenagers are home, they are less likely to commit crimes. It tells us only that after 6:00 PM (when teenagers are at home) they are much less likely to commit serious crimes. Great. But what if they commit serious crime before 6:00 PM? Then will the plan work? No. So are implying that the plan will work? No.
This option doesn't specify exactly when the crime are committed.

(B) Crimes committed by teenagers in afternoon are mostly small thefts and inconsequential vandalism

This option tells us that there are few serious crime in afternoon i.e. most serious crimes take place in the evening. Then if the teenagers are home at that time, they will not commit crimes and hence serious crimes will be avoided. So our plan will work.

Therefore, (B) weakens the conclusion.
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Citizens of Parktown are worried by the increased frequency of serious 15 Oct 2022, 01:05
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I was stuck between B and E.

I rejected B because I thought the teens can probably alter their behavior. Its not like they have picked the afternoon slot for doing small crimes and evening slots for big crimes. Putting a curfew on evening can very well alter teens behaviour to shift the serious crimes to afternoon.
We are using similar logic to reject E right? "weekdays". What about changing their behaviour to crime crimes on "weekends".

any inputs?
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Citizens of Parktown are worried by the increased frequency of serious 19 Oct 2022, 16:07
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monkinaferrari
I was stuck between B and E.

I rejected B because I thought the teens can probably alter their behavior. Its not like they have picked the afternoon slot for doing small crimes and evening slots for big crimes. Putting a curfew on evening can very well alter teens behaviour to shift the serious crimes to afternoon.
We are using similar logic to reject E right? "weekdays". What about changing their behaviour to crime crimes on "weekends".

any inputs?
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As you suggest, it's certainly possible that teenagers could alter their behavior in any number of ways. But when considering the answer choices, we should make sure our thinking is always supported by information in the passage.

Let's start with (E):

Quote:
Which of the following, if true, most substantially weakens the argument ?

(E) The schools in Parktown have introduced a number of after school programs that will be available to teenagers until 6pm on weekday afternoons
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The conclusion we're trying to weaken is that keeping teenagers home in the late evening is unlikely to affect the frequency of serious crimes committed by teenagers. So the fact that there is an after school program from 3pm to 6pm is irrelevant. We're concerned specifically with the effects of the measure that keeps teenagers home in the late evening (i.e. after 6pm).

Looking at this from another angle: we don't know if anyone will go to the after school program, or if it will be effective, so it's hard to draw any conclusions from (E). Yet either way, whether the after school program succeeds or fails, we don't know how it might impact the measure we care about.

Bottom line, we could speculate about how this program might effect teenagers' behavior. But we couldn't really support those speculations, so they couldn't helps us weaken the argument. Eliminate (E).

Here's (B) again:

Quote:
(B) Crimes committed by teenagers in afternoon are mostly small thefts and inconsequential vandalism
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The passage concludes that the measure of keeping teenagers home in the late evening is unlikely to affect the problem of serious crimes committed by teenagers. To support this argument, the passage tells us that "most crimes committed by teenagers take place between 3pm and 6pm." So according to this argument, in order to succeed, the measure should keep teens home between 3pm and 6pm, not the late evening.

Notice that (B) weakens this argument. It may be that most crimes committed by teenagers' happen between 3pm and 6pm. But most of those aren't serious crimes. So 3pm to 6pm wouldn't be a good time to keep teenagers at home.

On the other hand, the passage tells us there is an "increased frequency of serious crimes committed by local teenagers." And if the crimes between 3pm and 6pm are mostly NOT serious, then the serious crimes must be happening at other times (such as the late evening). And if that's the case, then the measure would be effective.

So, since (B) weakens the argument, it's correct.

I hope that helps!
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Citizens of Parktown are worried by the increased frequency of serious 27 Oct 2023, 07:22
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Understanding the argument -
Problem - Citizens are worried about the increased frequency of serious crimes committed by local teenagers
Plan - The city government has instituted a series of measures designed to keep teenagers at home in the late evening. (Keep in mind that the scope of our argument is limited to this plan.)
Conclusion - The plan (which plan - the one cited above and not any other plan) is unlikely to affect the problem. What problem? The serious crime.
What is the support the author uses for the conclusion - most crimes committed by local teenagers take place between 3 pm and 6 pm. Most crimes? Serious or non-serious - we don't know. What if only non-serious crimes occur between 3 pm and 6 pm - then we are using apples to justify oranges. But if these are serious crimes, then the objection is valid.

Option Elimination -


(A) Similar measures adopted in other place have failed to reduce the number of teenagers in the late evening - Strengthener.

(B) Crimes committed by teenagers in afternoon are mostly small thefts and inconsequential vandalism - exactly.

(C) Teenagers are much less likely to commit serious crimes when they are at home than when they are not at home - Strengthener.

(D) Any decrease in the need for police patrols in late evening would not mean that there could be more intensive patrolling in the afternoon - Strengthener.

(E) The schools in Parktown have introduced a number of after school programs that will be available to teenagers until 6pm on weekday afternoons - Alternate plan, out of scope.
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Citizens of Parktown are worried by the increased frequency of serious 05 Dec 2024, 13:43
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