Several police departments, including Fort Barnsdale's, have called on

CR ASSUMPTION SERIES: 3) Several Police Departments

Several police departments, including Fort Barnsdale's, have called on Traffnav, a social media navigation company that operates a real-time traffic condition sharing application, to remove the ability to report police officer sightings from the platform. The police departments making the request fear that such information could interfere with law enforcement operations. In response, Traffnav has refused to honor the request, citing that “most users tend to drive more carefully when they believe law enforcement is nearby."

Traffnav's response to the police department's request relies on which of the following assumptions?

Ⓐ Fort Barnsdale has one of the lowest crime rates of any of the cities submitting the request to Traffnav.

Ⓑ Fort Barnsdale does not have the worst traffic conditions of the cities calling the removal of Traffnav’s police location reporting feature.

Ⓒ Fort Barnsdale’s law enforcement officers sometimes use the Traffnav app to avoid traffic congestion or road hazards.

Ⓓ Traffnav's real-time traffic data couldn’t also be used to interfere with law enforcement operations.

Ⓔ Traffnav's real-time traffic data can also be used to avoid law enforcement operations.


Official Explanation

Question Type: Assumption
Boil It Down (Simplified & Abbreviated Summary of the Prompt): Traffnav users more careful because of officer sighting reporting feature -> Shouldn’t stop sighting reporting
Missing Information (assumption): Traffnav doesn’t interfere with law enforcement operations.
Goal: Find the option that contains missing information required for the argument to logically function.

Note: The Opposite Test – Since by definition an assumption is a piece of missing information required for the argument to work, if we take the opposite of a valid assumption the argument will collapse. Therefore, we can use the Opposite Test with the options. Just take the logical opposite of the option and ask: does the argument collapse? If not, the option is wrong. If yes, it’s the correct option.

Traffnav’s response that drivers are safer when aware of law enforcement presence altogether and mysteriously bypasses the claim raised by the police departments that the awareness of law enforcement presence can interfere with law enforcement operations (think camera crews, and overly curious onlookers). Just because people are generally safer if they’re aware that police are nearby, doesn’t also prevent some from interfering with police operations.
We need an option that helps buttress Traffnav from the claim that the app can be used to interfere with police operations.

Let’s see which option best achieves the goal:


Ⓐ Traffnav’s response doesn’t require any information about Fort Barnsdale’s crime rate. Applying the Opposite Test: Fort Barnsdale could have a relatively high or low crime rate, and Traffnav’s position could still stand.

Ⓑ Similar to A, this option raises a factor that is completely irrelevant to Traffnav’s reasoning. Fort Barnsdale’s traffic conditions have no impact on their argument. Whether the traffic conditions are good or poor is in no way something that Traffnav’s response requires. The Opposite Test: Fort Barnsdale DOES have the worst traffic conditions of the cities calling the removal of Traffnav’s police location reporting feature. No impact on the argument, so not required.

Ⓒ The Opposite Test: Fort Barnsdale’s law enforcement officers NEVER use the Traffnav app to avoid traffic congestion or road hazards. No impact on the argument. Whether Fort Barnsdale’s law enforcement officers do or do not use the app is not something required for Traffnav’s argument to hold.

Ⓓ The Opposite Test: Traffnav's real-time traffic data CAN also be used to interfere with law enforcement operations. Argument dismantled. If most people tend to drive more carefully when they believe law enforcement is nearby, but Traffnav’s app can ALSO be used to interfere with law enforcement operations, then Traffnav’s argument would blow up in the company’s face. That proves that this option is required to be true for Traffnav’s response to hold.

Ⓔ This option is the statistical runner up because the ability of drivers to AVOID law enforcement seems to be on Traffnav’s side at a casual glance, however the subject of AVOIDANCE is logically irrelevant to the argument. If some can use the data to avoid law enforcement operations that’s irrelevant since it would also leave the possibility open that some could still use that data to seek out and interfere with law enforcement options. This piece of information is definitely not something required by Traffnav’s response. The Opposite Test: Traffnav's real-time traffic data CAN’T be used to avoid law enforcement operations. No impact on the argument. People may still or still not interfere with police operations.


◀ CR ASSUMPTION SERIES: Question 2) Violent Forms of Robbery

▶ CR EVALUATION SERIES: Question 1) The Berringer Motorcycle Co.

if we use assumption negation technique, we can see that answer choice D is weakening the argument made by Traffnav in response to Police Department. In other words, "assumption negation technique" means that we have to logically negate the answer choice and see if negated answer choice weakens the argument, then that is the correct answer choice.

So, if Traffnav's real-time traffic data could also be used to interfere with law enforcement operations (logical negation of the given answer choice), then Police Department's concern is still relevant.

P.S. apply "assumption negation technique" to only contender answer choices.

Ⓔ This option is the statistical runner up because the ability of drivers to AVOID law enforcement seems to be on Traffnav’s side at a casual glance, however the subject of AVOIDANCE is logically irrelevant to the argument. If some can use the data to avoid law enforcement operations that’s irrelevant since it would also leave the possibility open that some could still use that data to seek out and interfere with law enforcement options. This piece of information is definitely not something required by Traffnav’s response. The Opposite Test: Traffnav's real-time traffic data CAN’T be used to avoid law enforcement operations. No impact on the argument. People may still or still not interfere with police operations.


Hi Max,
In the claim arguments such as above, I can't spot any conclusion easily. which sentence is conclusion?

Does option E work as strengthener rather than assumption?

The level of question is 600-700, how 700+ assumption question correct choice would be? How is it worded? or what is GMAT strategy of correct choice would be?

Thanks

Hi Mo2men,

I'm happy to help. We're being asked what Traffnav's response relies on. In a nutshell, the response is that Traffnav's users are more careful because of the officer sighting reporting feature, so the reporting feature shouldn’t be removed from the app.

As per E, no it can't be used as a strengthener either because using the app to AVOID law enforcement operations is Out of Focus in regard to the possibility of it still be used to intentionally interfere with law enforcement operations. In fact, if the app can be used to AVOID operations, it goes against Traffnav's position because it shows that the app can be used to make a decision as to avoid or interfere with law enforcement operations. Ultimately, E just does nothing for us as an Assumption, Strengthen, or Weaken option.

And as to the difficulty of the question, questions posted at GMAT Club are auto-calibrated based on user response to the voting tool. As you can see since the data has populated, this question is WAY, WAY up there in difficulty.

Hi Max,
When I asked about whether E is strengthener. I forgot to complete that E strengths the police claim which is against Traffnav. However, you pointed that out in you reply.

Thanks for your full and sufficient explanation.

This question was really easy IMO (D and E are the only possibly relevant answers and they are about the same general topic), and I know that it was made by a large company and that most readers will, as a result, take it as gospel (which is a logical flaw), but it suffers from a serious logical problem and is another prime example of why we should only use official questions (sorry third-party companies, but your questions usually suck). I also don't care if moderators or the company's zealots disagree - this post is more for those who are properly studying GMAT, stumble upon this question, and are properly confused as to the logic. If you don't see the problem after reading this post, either you don't understand how assumptions work or you don't understand how the negation test works. Go improve your understanding.

Actual LEO Request: "remove the ability to report police officer sightings from the platform"
Actual Traffnav Response: "Traffnav has refused to honor the request, citing that 'most users tend to drive more carefully when they believe law enforcement is nearby'"
Credited Response: "Traffnav's real-time traffic data couldn’t also be used to interfere with law enforcement operations."
Negated Credited Response: "Traffnav's real-time traffic data could also be used to interfere with law enforcement operations."
Problem: This is too broad - it doesn't connect reported police officer sightings to interfering with law enforcement operations
Discussion as to why:

A tenant of GMAT assumptions (specifically, "relies on" assumptions) is that they are required. This means that if the assumption is not true, there is no possible way for the conclusion to still be true. We use the negation test to check this first by making the answer choice not true and then by seeing the result on the conclusion - if the conclusion can still possibly be truthful in any way, then the answer is not a required assumption. In other words, for D to be an assumption, the negation of it must leave zero room for the conclusion to still be true.

This negation of D tells us that Traffnav's real-time traffic data could possibly interfere with law enforcement operations, but it doesn't tell us which traffic data could interfere (maybe the reported police officer sightings, maybe something else). This does not force the reported police officer sightings to interfere with law enforcement operations. As a result, it's possible for the reported police officer sightings to not interfere with law enforcement operations and instead for another aspect of the traffic data to interfere instead. Under this possibility, the response of refusal (that most users drive more carefully) is not fallacious because there is no negative for the reported police officer sightings. Therefore, the response is still possible valid even when answer choice D is negated, meaning that D is not actually an assumption that is relied on by Traffnav's response.

Still don't agree? That's okay. You probably still don't realize the inner workings of the negation test. One thing to remember is that, upon negating the answer, you have to consider all remaining possible scenarios and choose the ones that are most favorable for the conclusion. If any scenario is still favorable to the conclusion, the negation information was not required because there was still another possibility. Here's a quick example:

Premise: BusinessSchool University requires at least a 500 GMAT score for entrance and does not make exceptions.
Conclusion: You were admitted.

Correct Assumption: You scored at least a 500 GMAT.
Correct Assumption Negation: You did not score at least a 500 GMAT (so you scored 490 or lower).
Correct Assumption Analysis: There is no possible outcome that still allows the conclusion to be valid or to have any support for it. Thus, this is a required assumption.

Incorrect Assumption: You scored at least a 510 GMAT.
Incorrect Assumption Negation: You did not score at least a 510 GMAT (so you scored 500 or lower).
Incorrect Assumption Analysis: It would be incorrect to consider the possibility that you scored a 400 and therefore that the conclusion is wrong and that this is a required assumption. The reason why is that you still could have scored a 500 exactly on the GMAT, which would still be compatible with the conclusion.

Rule: No matter how small the likelihood, you need to consider the negation possibilities that are most favorable to the conclusion. If even one of them is still compatible with the premises and conclusion, then the answer is not a required assumption. If under all negation possibilities the conclusion is impossible or if under all negation possibilities the conclusion no longer has any reason to be believed, then the answer is a required assumption.

Again, the credited response is too broad and says that the "traffic data" (not the reported police officer sightings) couldn't be used to interfere with law enforcement operations. The negation of this leaves open the possibility that other aspects of the traffic data could be used to interfere but that the reported police officer sightings still could not, which is still compatible with the conclusion. Thus, D is not an assumption that is relied upon by the response. This could be fixed by narrowing the scope of the answer to just the reported police officer sightings.

You might think this is minor, but it changes the way that the negation test is applied an incorrectly misleads those who are studying for the test. This can have disastrous consequences on trickier assumption questions for which (unlike here) there are multiple relevant topics in the answers.

You are a good question analyst, are you an aspiring GMAT tutor? I think you misinterpreted this question though. Look at exactly what this question is asking us to do. "Traffnav's response to the police department's request relies on which of the following assumptions? "
Traffnav is assuming Traffnav's real-time traffic data couldn’t also be used to interfere with law enforcement operations.
Applying negation technique: Traffnav's real-time traffic data could also be used to interfere with law enforcement operations.
In that case the response by Traffnav fails to address the police department's claim. On top of that, the stimulus describes the app as "a social media navigation company that operates a real-time traffic condition sharing application" so the police sightings feature would fall under the real-time traffic data description by that definition.
I think your understanding of the negation technique is really good, but I think you misinterpreted the objective of the question to find something Traffnav's response to the police department's claim depends on. Without D, the response has no impact on the claim, thus negation technique makes Traffnav's response without any merit.

By the way, why attack this question of all things? It seems like I can find 1000s of other third party questions that are more questionable than this one. Seems strange. Also, it's a little demeaning to say to whole GMAT Club community that if you don't agree then you don't understand negation. Your point can be well taken without being having a rude manner. I mean no offense to you. I hope you understand.

I have been teaching and tutoring GMAT and LSAT professionally for almost 10 years (I only mention LSAT because half of it is GMAT CR on crack). I have spent many thousands of hours with many thousands of students from many different backgrounds. I have built test prep programs and hired/trained teachers and tutors. I hope by now I am no longer still "aspiring".


I haven't misinterpreted the question, but most everyone else has - that's the point of my original post. You imply that I am not following the question's instructions, but I'll quickly try to show again why I have, even though others (including you just now) haven't.

We are being asked to find a required assumption for "Traffnav's response to the police department's request relies on which of the following assumptions?" (direct copy and paste from the question stem with emphasis added).

First, we are analyzing the request and the response, but you still haven't actually identified either of these as important. Why is that?

Second, "relies on which of the following assumptions" means we are looking for an assumption that it depends on.

Therefore, we are exactly looking for something that "Traffnav's response to the police department's claim depends on", and I haven't "misinterpreted the objective of the question"

Let's actually identify those things:

Request: "remove the ability to report police officer sightings from the platform"
Response: "Traffnav has refused to honor the request, citing that 'most users tend to drive more carefully when they believe law enforcement is nearby'"

This is entirely about the reported police officer sightings, and nothing else. It directly tells you that in the question. Why aren't you recognizing that?


Yes, but as I mentioned in my original post, the credited response includes such reported sightings, but not in a permissible way. I showed earlier that such an inclusion was not done properly to create an assumption. I suggest you read that again and maybe you'll see why it is not an assumption.


So I shouldn't point out a poorly written question because others are worse? That's bad logic.


I still don't see why this is wrong. If I said 1 + 1 = 2, would it be wrong to say something similar? (assuming under base 10 and all that jazz)


I fight against these bad questions and people who defend them all the time - sometimes on GMAT Club (though not as much recently), sometimes not. I do it because I send a lot of students to GMAT Club and other similar resources, but crap like this gets students relying on bad information and then I have to fix their warped understandings (oh my god is sentence correction so poorly explained on the internet).

I used to be nice about pointing out flaws, but it gets nowhere, probably because I don't have an "expert" tag next to my name (sadly, people are instinctively wired to be group-based and focus more on group designations such as those, so they don't respect contrary opinions such as mine). It's also sad because Bunuel does a phenomenal job on the quant side, but (and I qualify this by saying that I haven't been around in a while) I don't see a lot of rockstars on the verbal side. It's a little demoralizing and seems to be a pointless effort in general, but I still fight the good fight for my students.

I mean no offense to you or anyone specifically, and I especially don't mean to offend those with an open mind. I do, however, have no sympathy for certain of the big companies who are overly confident in their crap products and use cherry-picked testimonials to attract customers, take their money, and then provide bad content (they know who they are - I used to work for one of them - and by the way this in no way is directed specifically at EmpowerGMAT because I have very little experience with them, though if they are going to charge students $99+ a month, they should probably have better questions than this). I used to send nice, cordial emails to companies and/or to mods on sites like these, but almost every time I got either no response or an F-off response, so I'm done with that.

I also hold others (especially students) to a high standard - I'm not going to sugar-coat it when they are deficient in content and need to fix that. To not be honest with them is to do them a disservice. And I would expect the same treatment from others.

Cheers

in gmat, theere are many pattern similar to this question. That is, there are 2 parallel argument, and the second is the main argument most of time. Because there are 2 arguments, the scope shifts; the right answer should cover the shift of the scope => C is correct.

Several police departments, including Fort Barnsdale's, have called on Traffnav, a social media navigation company that operates a real-time traffic condition sharing application, to remove the ability to report police officer sightings from the platform. The police departments making the request fear that such information could interfere with law enforcement operations. In response, Traffnav has refused to honor the request, citing that “most users tend to drive more carefully when they believe law enforcement is nearby."

Traffnav's response to the police department's request relies on which of the following assumptions?

Ⓐ Fort Barnsdale has one of the lowest crime rates of any of the cities submitting the request to Traffnav.

Ⓑ Fort Barnsdale does not have the worst traffic conditions of the cities calling the removal of Traffnav’s police location reporting feature.

Ⓒ Fort Barnsdale’s law enforcement officers sometimes use the Traffnav app to avoid traffic congestion or road hazards.

Ⓓ Traffnav's real-time traffic data couldn’t also be used to interfere with law enforcement operations.

Ⓔ Traffnav's real-time traffic data can also be used to avoid law enforcement operations.

Premise 1 : Several police departments, including Fort Barnsdale's, have called on Traffnav to report police officer sightings from the platform.
Premise 2 : such information could interfere with law enforcement operations.
Premise 3 : most users tend to drive more carefully when they believe law enforcement is nearby

Traffnav assumes that the sightings of law enforcement can not be used to do criminal activities.
D states just that .

Yeah, I also often take all premises on one side and the main conclusion on the other side if I have shortage of time to check the relationship between the premises and the conclusion. Nevertheless, doing so will reduce my ability to think precisely, or fully interpret the idea and logic behind the argument.

I do not think D is a perfect answer, but just so so compared to the other options.
Police say APP’s information could interfere with law enforcement, but Traffnav disagree, so obviously it must assume its data will not interfere with law enforcement (too easy).
Also, D is too general and doesn’t actually addresses what Traffnav says: most users tend to drive more carefully when they believe law enforcement is nearby.
Welcome to commentary.