Last year, after the number of subway riders who had had their pockets

I go for A C is making too many assumptions.

Maybe the answer wants to explain why these specific riders experienced a higher rate of pick-pocketing? Then it would not explained clearly enough in the question imo.

for me is clear.

in A nothing mentioned the fact that the central station was renewed

c instead has good reasons to be the answer........

I am not convinced either. C makes far too many assumptions.

One can assume that tourist can be easy target for pick pocketing, yet it is difficult to find a correlation as even tourist can read the beware board and become cautious about their possessions, so A can be easily rule out, C seems like the only somewhat logical explanation for the given discrepancy.

I agree that C is making too deep assumptions.

I feel B is the right answer. Double the the traffic, double the pick pocketing.

Actually the rate is going to go down with the increase in the number of people. Since we talking about per capita rate. B is going to aggravate the discrepancy.

Or we can look at it this way- more the number of riders, more the opportunities for pick-pocketers. Hence, as the number of riders doubles, so does the number of instances of pick pocketing. This is what is also implied in the fact set.

I went for B because, since the no of people increased, the no of pick pockets also increased and hence the rise in per ca pita. But A is also a close contender.

Per capita increase manifest that even those commuters became the target of pickpockets who were not been picked by the pickpockets in previous occasions, now the question is why so?
There must be something motivating the pickpockets to rob them, but what?
Perhaps when commuters look for their valuables; pickpockets will be getting the clues about their potential target.

I believe you are vouching for C. If the reasoning in C is to be believed, you also have to make an assumption that the pick-pocketers are actually standing near the signs and keeping a constant eye on people who are nearing the signs. Do we have anything in the passage which leads us to substantiate this assumption? I guess not.

So, IMO, C is making unsubstantiated assumptions, something you never have to do in an actual GMAT CR question.

guys the ans seems to be C
the explanation that i've found follows

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.

Hey all,

I actually agree that you shouldn't rule out stuff based on stereotypes (or "commonly-known" info) -- what you should do is be *suspicious* of them. Elimination should always be based on concrete wrongs-- it is far easier to eliminate what's wrong that try to defend what's right. But I find that commonly-held, not-necessarily-true assumptions are often huge traps for students, especially ones who don't have a lot of experience with the test, because to newbies "correct answer" sometimes correlates with "yeah, I agree with that!" Of course, the more familiar with the test a student gets, the more ruthless and specific he or she is able to be about what piece of an answer choice knocks it out.

Sorry if that wasn't clear (and I can see why from my language it may not have been). I think almost all rules about "if you see this, rule it out *automatically*" are bogus--I see that kind of thing a lot more with sentence correction ("Oh, 'being' is there so it must be wrong!") but the higher up the score scale people get, the less useful that will become. Make sure as you study, especially past the 600 level, to differentiate between things that are concretely wrong based on RULES (eliminate pronto) and things that are often wrong because of TENDENCIES (be suspicious of, and exercise extra care when evaluating).

Here, the actual ruling out for me of A was because the fact that these people are tourists is not necessarily related to whether or not they will be more easily pickpocketed-- that distractor feeds on a stereotype that a lot of people have about tourists...a *common* assumption, which is not necessarily a *justified* assumption for this population. Ian's quite right that there could be a population change (A) or increase (B), which might make it easier for pickpockets. But how much of an increase would justify a two-fold increase the per capita rate of pickpocketing? Even for B, we'd have to assume a linear relationship between number of riders and pickpocketing rates.

I nixed D because there are some other obvious plausible reasons for fewer pickpockets being prosecuted/convicted...city budget cuts, policy priority shifts.

There are *definitely* assumptions being made in C. But the size of the leap being made seem smaller to me-- nothing needs to change about the constitution of the population, so even if we're starting with an identical baseline, and riders "tend to" do a behavior that makes the act of pickpocketing much easier, then those riders, even within a comparable population, would certainly be easier targets. And because the language used implies that a significant proportion of the riders walking past these signs exhibit this behavior ("Riders tend to" rather than "some riders tend to," or "riders may," etc), I'd lean toward that choice helping to explain a two-fold increase more than the others.

Is it perfect explanation? Absolutely not--and the question asks which choice "helps to explain"-- we have all kinds of variables and assumptions for all the choices, but given the array of options I vote for it being most direct. And Rahul brings up an interesting point, although again (and that's why I'm really glad Ian brought up the point above--it's an important distinction, and my previous post wasn't clear about it-- the ultimate call is about what most directly explains with the fewest assumptions. If this were a GMAT question, and enough people got it right for the wrong reasons, it would probably be considered of "lower level" difficulty. Difficulty is a function of how many people (and which people) get a question right/wrong, which simply means clicking the right bubble. I can think of at least one math question in the OG that seems quite challenging for many, but has a low-number because so many people get it right for the wrong reason.

That said, I agree that the question could be improved, and I think it should have been along the lines that Gottesschaf mentioned--in a perfect world I'd like to see the discrepancy pointed to in the question rather than just "the discrepancy pointed out in the passage"-- but dealing what's there, I still vote C.

I agree that this is a very awkward question.

If you're evaluating the statement:
"people rummage through their pockets or feel through their clothes to verify the presence of their possessions"

There are two perfectly logical conclusions you can come to from that.
1) As the OA indicates, pickpockets watch this and now have a better idea where the valuables are...
Weaknesses of this conclusion:
a) women keep their valuables in their purse, and men keep their wallet in a back pocket (which is easily visible), and their cell phone in a pocket or visible on a belt loop. I don't consider there to be that many unknowns in the 'where to people keep their valuables' game.
b) after seeing the signs, regardless of whether pickpockets know where to look for the valuables, people have already in the signs, have already had the fear of pickpockets instilled in them, and are now significantly more attentive to their possessions. This would likely make pickpocketing more difficult than if the target hadnt seen the sign and hadnt rummaged through his/her pockets.

2) People rummage through their pockets, know exactly where their goods are, and are now on double guard for those pockets which hold valuables.
Weaknesses:
a) Pickpockets know where to look...

Honestly, if you put someone (person A) in a crowd and tell them that pickpockets are prevalent in the area, and then put a pickpocket in the crowd and tell them exactly where person A has their valuables, my money says that pickpocket will not be successful.


When I was doing the problem originally, I came to conclusion (2), and discredited (C) because it did nothing to explain the paradox.

I don't think we are allowed to make such a deep assumption in the real GMAT CR question.

I picked C. But my reasoning was as below :

The concern is about being pick pocketed AT the central station.

Suppose i'm at the central station and i have had my pocket picked, if i happen to check my pockets while i'm still at the central station and find my wallet missing, I would report that i got pick pocketed AT the central station.

However, if i wait until i get home or even until i leave the central station to check my pockets, I might think that i had been pick pocketed somewhere else.

Thanks VerbalBot
Though I chose (b), but then I realized "Per Capita" = no. of incidence/no. of people. Per capita increase means either numerator increase or denominator decrease.
So, C