Winter storms in Lakeville cause icy road conditions, which the Depart

Question

Winter storms in Lakeville cause icy road conditions, which the Department of Public Works alleviates by applying road salt after storms. It takes far less salt to prevent icy conditions by applying salt before a winter storm, however, than it does to melt the ice after the fact. In order to reduce the environmental damage caused by salt on Lakeville’s main roads, the department plans to apply salt to those roads whenever a winter storm is predicted.

Which of the following would be most useful to establish in evaluating the plan’s chances for success?

(A) How much road salt costs the department
(B) How frequently winter storms predicted for Lakeville fail to arrive
(C) What proportion of Lakeville’s minor roads are salted after storms
(D) How often Lakeville experiences winter storms
(E) What percentage of the accidents that occur as a result of icy conditions on Lakeville’s roads occur on minor roads

GMAT™ Focus Sample Question from  mba.com

gmatophobia · Accepted Answer

Plan : The department plans to apply salt to those roads whenever a winter storm  is predicted

Goal : In order to reduce the environment damage caused by salt on Lakeville’s main roads

Reasoning : It takes far less salt to prevent icy conditions by applying salt before a winter storm, than it does to melt the ice after the storms.

In arriving at the conclusion the author assumes that almost all predictions will lead to a Winter Storm and thereby result in icy roads. Hence, to evaluate the argument one needs to know the probability of success/failure of the prediction.

Answer Choice Elmination

(A) How much road salt costs the department

Cost is not the factor in the entire argument. The goal is to reduce the environmental damage. Hence, factoring in the cost is out of scope in the context of the argument.

(B) How frequently winter storms predicted for Lakeville fail to arrive

This option looks quite promising. One needs to know what's the rate of success of the prediction, because the salts will now be applied whenever a storm is predicted. If  MOST  of the predicted winter storms fail to arrive, then applying road salt whenever the prediction is made will lead to more harm than the current setting does. However, if  NONE  (or very FEW) winter storms predicted for Lakeville fail to arrive, then applying the road salt whenever the prediction is made makes sense. Let's keep this option

(C) What proportion of Lakeville’s minor roads are salted after storms

Knowing this information doesn't really matter. Whatever portion it is, the same portion needs to be salted either before the storm or after. Hence, this option is a distortion.

(D) How often Lakeville experiences winter storms

While this option looks promising if one considers that the plan will work if Lakeville experiences winter storms often, however, the option weakly impacts the argument. Note, that the public department currently applies road salt whenever the storm occurs and the plan is to apply salt to those roads whenever a winter storm is predicted. Hence, regardless of the frequency of the winter storms the road salts are applied. Choice B is much superior to this choice. Hence, we can eliminate this.

(E) What percentage of the accidents that occur as a result of icy conditions on Lakeville’s roads occur on minor roads

Out of scope. The goal is to reduce the amount of road salt applied, and thereby reduce the environmental damage caused by such salt on Lakeville’s main roads. Accidents are not a factor in the entire argument.

Option B

SunidhiM20 · Answer

To solve Evaluate questions, one needs to apply a simple 4 step process-  
1)   Read the passage thoroughly   ( Spend most of the time understanding the passage)
2)   Identify the conclusion  
3)   Identify the assumption  
4)   Look at the options and identify the which one is in sync with the assumption/conclusion

Please Note: There can be multiple assumptions for a passage and your assumption might be different from the options provided. Hence, keep an open mind while solving these questions.

Now let's come to the passage-

Let's make pointers in our head and eliminate the information not required-

1)Winter storms  in Lakeville  cause icy road conditions, 
2) which the Department of Public Works  alleviates by applying road salt after storms.
3) It takes far less salt to prevent icy conditions by applying salt before a winter storm, however, than it does to melt the ice after the fact.
4)In order to reduce the environment damage caused by salt on  Lakeville’s main  roads
5)  the department plans  to apply salt to those roads whenever a winter storm is predicted.

Look how we have striked out irrelevant information so as to simplify the passage for us.

So what do you think is the conclusion?

The conclusion revolves around apply salt on roads before storm(after predicting a storm) to prevent environmental damage of the roads
 
  and what do you think is the assumption? 
 The assumption is that prediction would be accurate.

Now let's look at the options-

(A) How much road salt costs the department  
- No discussion about costs have been done in the passage, this can be eliminated right away.

(B) How frequently winter storms predicted for Lakeville fail to arrive  
- This seems very close to our assumption. But we need to look at other options as well.

(C) What proportion of Lakeville’s minor roads are salted after storms 
 
- Whether it is 70% or 40% of roads salted, it doesn't make a difference.

(D) How often Lakeville experiences winter storms
  
- Whether it is 3 times a year or 7 times a year, the cadency of storms makes no difference to our conclusion.

(E) What percentage of the accidents that occur as a result of icy conditions on Lakeville’s roads occur on minor roads  
- No discussion about accidents is done in the passage and this statement makes no difference to our conclusion.

Hence, you saw how by just analyzing the passage thoroughly and finding the right conclusion can help us solve these type of questions easily.

Hence, the correct option is Option B
   Hope this helps!

Maheshkv · Answer

Hi bb, any issue with "gmat focus" tag? Unable to filter on basis of it

Bunuel · Answer

It works well for me: https://gmatclub.com/forum/critical-rea ... EfquGvMlHS What issues are there for you?

GmatKnightTutor · Answer

Winter storms in Lakeville cause icy road conditions, which the Department of Public Works alleviates by applying road salt after storms. It takes far less salt to prevent icy conditions by applying salt before a winter storm, however, than it does to melt the ice after the fact. In order to reduce the environmental damage caused by salt on Lakeville’s main roads, the department plans to apply salt to those roads whenever a winter storm is predicted.

Which of the following would be most useful to establish in evaluating the plan’s chances for success?

(A) How much road salt costs the department
(B) How frequently winter storms predicted for Lakeville fail to arrive
(C) What proportion of Lakeville’s minor roads are salted after storms
(D) How often Lakeville experiences winter storms
(E) What percentage of the accidents that occur as a result of icy conditions on Lakeville’s roads occur on minor roads

The passage talks about a plan to "salt" roads before a winter storm because it would require less salt to prevent icy conditions that way and it would reduce environmental damage caused from the salt itself. The idea is to therefore "salt" the roads whenever a winter storm is predicted.

What would be something useful to know before greenlighting such a plan?

(C) is the answer. If, for example, winter storm predictions were wrong 50% of the time, even if you were using 20% less to salt the roads each time, you may end up using more salt overall during the winter season.

-contact: gmatknight site | gmatclub dm

VerbalBot · Answer

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Winter storms in Lakeville cause icy road conditions, which the Depart

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Winter storms in Lakeville cause icy road conditions, which the Depart

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