From 1994 to 2001, violent crime in New York City steadily

Which of the following conclusions is best supported by the information above?

(A) The decrease in the total crime rate in the United States caused the decrease in New York City’s crime rate.

(B) New York City spends more per capita on law enforcement than does the rest of the United States.

(C) If the rest of the United States were to adopt law enforcement tactics similar to those of New York City, national violent crime rates would continue to fall.

(D) Between 1994 and 2001, the violent crime rate in New York City was consistently higher than the national average.

(E) The violent crime rate in New York City will soon be below the national average.

This is an Inference question, as demonstrated by the phrase, “which of the following conclusions is
best supported by...” Since the question is Iooking for a conclusion that must be true based off of the
information given, our first line of attack for thìs problem is to evaluate whether each answer choice
contains extra information not found in the premises.

Answer choice “A” contains extra information, and thus cannot be true. Proving that something is
“causing” something else is a high standard, and there Is nothing in the premises that explicitly shows
the decrease in the United States crime rate caused the decrease in New York’s crime rate. Correlation
does not mean causation.

The body of the question does not contain any information on Iaw enforcement spending, so answer
choice “B” fails the “no new information” filter. A conclusion that contains new information may or
may not be true.

Answer choice “C” contains a prediction of the future, implying that the Iaw enforcement techniques
of one area could be successfully applied to another area. Such conclusions are also very difficult to
prove. The Testmaker is hiding two fatal mistakes in answer choice First, it assumes that the
techniques of a subsample (New York City) can be successfully applied to a larger area (the United
States.) This Is an overgeneralization. Second, it predicts future effects based on present trends. Until
the future is known, this can never be explicitly “proven. There is no information about the future.

The Testmaker tries to hide answer choice “D” by requiring a bit of math and hoping the novice test
taker confuses percentage changes with actual values. The violent crime rate in the United States
steadily dropped 28%, down to 500 violent crimes per 100,000 people. If we notice that 28% is
approximately 2/7, it is very easy to approximate what the crime rate was before the drop:

500 = 0.72 x that is roughly 700

Therefore, the violent crime rate in the United States steadily decreased from 700 to 500 (violent
crimes per 100,000). Since the violent crime rate of New York City decreased from 1,861 to 851 (violent
crimes per 100,000) during this same time period, New York City’s rate was consistently higher than
the national average. Answer choice D is true, and therefore is the correct conclusion.

Answer choice “E” contains another prediction of the future. As mentioned earlier, until the future is
known, this can never be explicitly uproven “ There is no information about the future in the problem,
so “E” contains additional information. We cannot know what will soon be.