If Morganville wants to keep its Evaluate

[Beatrice Michael]

Community activist: If Morganville wants to keep its central shopping district healthy, it should prevent the opening of a huge SaveAll discount department store on the outskirts of Morganville. Records from other small towns show that whenever SaveAll has opened a store outside the central shopping district of a small town, within five years the town has experienced the bankruptcies of more than a quarter of the stores in the shopping district.

The answer to which of the following would be most useful for evaluating the community activist’s reasoning?

A. Have community activists in other towns successfully campaigned against the opening of a SaveAll store on the outskirts of their towns?
B. Do a large percentage of the residents of Morganville currently do almost all of their shopping at stores in Morganville?
C. In towns with healthy central shopping districts, what proportion of the stores in those districts suffer bankruptcy during a typical five-year period?
D. What proportion of the employees at the SaveAll store on the outskirts of Morganville will be drawn from Morganville?
E. Do newly opened SaveAll stores ever lose money during their first five years of operation?


why is the answer C here .. why is B not applicable ...

how is proportion important here to the impact

[RonPurewal]

.. why is B not applicable ...

the argument doesn't depend at all on how often people shop locally.

how is proportion important here to the impact

the only piece of evidence that the speaker offers, as far as why save-all is bad, is that "more than 25% of stores have gone bankrupt" after save-all has opened a store in the area.
the problem is that we don't have any basis on which to interpret this statistic -- i.e., we have no way of telling whether "over 25%" is actually a higher-than-normal rate of bankruptcy. that could be a perfectly normal turnover rate, in which case the speaker's evidence would be worthless.

[i.ankurjaini]

The Question asks "What would be most useful in evaluating the activist's reasoning" ?

I feel it is necessary to know, do even the people of Morganville shop at the Central Shopping District? Majority of them might shop at other Shopping Centers. So, if at all they are not even now shopping at Central Shopping District, the opening of SaveAll should not impact the Central Shopping District. It should impact other stores. Thus I choose the option B.

On the other hand, the option C just reiterates what is given in the passage. The passage already says that, as per the records from other small town, more than a quarter of stores in shopping stores are effected by the opening of SaveAll. It does not helps evaluating the activists reasoning.
I am not convinced with the option C (the OA).

@RonPurewal : Would be great if you can help me understand this better; or confirm if my understanding/reasoning is correct.

Thanks,
Ankur.

[jlucero]

Here's the gap in reasoning:

Other towns who have a SaveAll open up near their central shopping district have 25% of their shops go bankrupt

therefore

Our town will have 25% of its shops go bankrupt.

You mention that (C) is a restatement of one of the premises, but it's not. Notice that it says: In towns with healthy central shopping districts, what proportion of the stores in those districts suffer bankruptcy during a typical five-year period? The missing assumption in this conclusion is that our town is like those other towns. But what if the towns that had their shops go bankrupt all had crummy shopping districts? Our town has a healthy shopping district, so maybe we'd be safe from this downturn.

As Ron stated, we don't care WHO shops in our central shopping district. Whether it's Morganville residents or someone else, someone is shopping there and keeping our central district healthy. A SaveAll could steal away local residents or out of towners. And before you say, "well what if those out of towners already have a SaveAll and don't want to shop there, but really like our shopping district", I will say that YOU are adding more assumptions to the argument.

Other towns had shops go bankrupt, so our town will have shops go bankrupt.

Central Assumption: our town is like other towns.

[thanghnvn]

I wish experts to comment on my posting following. in this posting, I explain why this question is hard

acording to Ron, we find a chanlenge to the argument

the objection is: the situation at the present is different from that the past
assumption for evaluating is: the situation at present is the same is that in the past.

now, we go to answer choices to look for a match. no match.
this is why this question hard.

however, prethinking an objection bring us close to the correct answer choices. when reading answer choice, we have to realize the thing which affect the argument, using the prethink as a help. one thing which can affect argument is the sale in typical 5 year period . this sale can change not because of new shops but of other reason.

this question prove that the though the thing we prethink as objection is not in the correct answer, the prethinking is still good.