For every 100 automobile drivers who are involved in a

Question

For every 100 automobile drivers who are involved in a collision due to brake failure, 1 will be seriously injured. A new safety feature exists that is nearly 100 percent successful in preventing collisions due to brake failure. Because the risk of serious injury from malfunction of the new safety feature is one out of 10,000, it is clearly safer for automobile drivers to have this new safety feature installed than not.

Which of the following would it be most helpful to know in order to evaluate the argument?

A) The probability that an automobile driver will be involved in a collision due to brake failure 
B) The probability that an automobile driver will be involved in any sort of collision 
C) The number of automobile collisions that occur for reasons other than brake failure 
D) The number of new safety features being released that prevent other types of collisions 
E) The total number of automobile drivers that have had this new safety feature installed

anordinaryguy · Answer

"evaluate the argument" : You need to find a seed, if known, could help in strengthening or weakening the argument
"resolve paradox" : You already have two opposite thoughts and you need to fill the gap that could help these opposite thoughts coincide together.

In this question, Complete argument is going in one direction, there is no opposite thought.

You have been given few probabilities (chances of happening A in the total number of chances), so that means you need to find if there could be anything (probability of occurrence of something else) which could strengthen or weaken the argument.
And because u need to find the probability, any choice that is mentioning only 'Number of one thing' can be ruled out. & here you are remained with 'A' and 'B'.

Now  A  can be chosen because it gives us an additional data about the probability of collision due to brake failure. If we know this probability, we would be able find out whether this probability is better than the probability(1/10,000) of malfunction of the new safety feature that is being claimed to reduce the probability of "brake - failure collision"

WishMasterUA · Answer

I VOTED FOR B BUT NOW I SEE THAT CORRECT IS A

UtterNonsense · Answer

but the question says ". A new safety feature exists that is nearly 100 percent successful in preventing collisions due to brake failure." . Doesn't this mean that the probability of collision due to brake failures is already decreased?

unceldolan · Answer

Though I got it wrong, I figured later it's A:

If the probabilty to get involved in an accident due to break failure is 0.5 %, the new system would make no difference in safety. But if the probability was 70 %, it would be a great help. Thus A.

For the other answers: B,C,D out of scope. E: I chose E first, because I thougt that if you had the number of cars with the new feature you could compare it to the new number of accidents --> but a lower number could be influence by other factor. Hence A stays correct.

goaltop30mba · Answer

why is c incorrect?????????
was confused between a and c // chose c...

DonBosco7 · Answer

C is incorrect for 2 reasons:
1 it talks about 'number' instead of 'chances' (probability)
2 it talks about other types of collision, but the focus of argument is only on collisions due to brake failure.

GMATcracker101 · Answer

For every 100 automobile drivers who are involved in a collision due to brake failure, 1 will be seriously injured. A new safety feature exists that is nearly 100 percent successful in preventing collisions due to brake failure. Because the risk of serious injury from malfunction of the new safety feature is one out of 10,000, it is clearly safer for automobile drivers to have this new safety feature installed than not.

Which of the following would it be most helpful to know in order to evaluate the argument?

A) The probability that an automobile driver will be involved in a collision due to brake failure  Correct: In the statement the argument is formulated with the help of statistics. Old feature - 1% and New feature 0.01%. Understand that if the probability of the automobile driver bring involved in a collision due to brake failure is 0.01% then actual probability of old feature - 0.001% and new feature 0.0001% therefore both of these probabilities of occurences are abysmal so the new feature will not substantially improve the safety, however if the probability of the automobile driver bring involved in a collision due to brake failure is 10% then old feature risk - 10% new feature risk 1% there is substantial difference.  
B) The probability that an automobile driver will be involved in any sort of collision  Incorrect: if the probability of any sort of collision is 10% that would not be helpful as we would not be able to understand how it impacts the new brake failure safety feature for that we would need probability of break failure safety collision.  
C) The number of automobile collisions that occur for reasons other than brake failure  Incorrect: as the statement is present in form of probability and not numbers, therefore we cannot use the data to compare.  
D) The number of new safety features being released that prevent other types of collisions  Incorrect: not relevant to the statement 
E) The total number of automobile drivers that have had this new safety feature installed  Incorrect: data not pertinent to the statement.

For every 100 automobile drivers who are involved in a

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For every 100 automobile drivers who are involved in a

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