#24 - In university towns, police issue far more parking

[ieric01]

Hello,

I thought this was a causation vs. correlation flaw. I included my thought process below. Was my reasoning wrong? Thanks!

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Why would anyone think students are getting most of the parking tickets?

Because it just happens that during the school year, when there’s a surge in students, police hand out more parking tickets than when they’re out of town. For this reason, they think one event is the cause of the other. In other words, the surge in students is the cause of more parking tickets. What they fail to consider is it might not be the students but local residents (who probably make a majority of the town's population), visitors, or even the staff at the university, who are responsible for the spike in parking tickets.

[Adam Tyson]

Exactly, ieric01! Well reasoned, and that should get you to the correct answer. Excellent work!

[nivernova]

I have a question.

Although, the wording in A is different from that of the stimulus and E, why isn't "a greater proportion" of kids the same as "more" kids?

Is it because the absolute number of kids can be fewer while representing a greater proportion than a previous one?

Like, previously, there were 50 kids and 100 adults( 1:2 ratio of kids to adults), but we can have 10 kids around now and there is only a single adult with them.

Is my thinking correct?

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi nivernova,

Good question! The ideas of greatest proportion and "more" are two different ideas. For example, you could have 1 adult and 9 kids, for a 9:1 kid to adult ratio. You could also have a different day with 50 kids and 100 adults, where you had more kids, but a lower kid to adult ratio (1:2).

The other problem with answer choice (A) is that it describes a changing relationship. As one thing rises (proportion of children to adult) the amount of popcorn sales also rises. That's not what we have the in the stimulus. In the stimulus we have two distinct time frames (school time/not school time). More tickets are given during one time frame (school time) than the other (non school time). The author concludes that most of those tickets must go to a certain population that is likely to be there during school time. But we don't know that is the ONLY population that can get tickets. For example, if it was a residential school, most of the cars could belong to faculty/staff, and most of the tickets could be going to them. That's the key error. We don't know the proportion of student tickets to overall tickets.

Similarly in answer choice (E), we know that there are more children around when kids visit, but we don't know the proportion of snacks to guests versus nonguests. Maybe a household has 4 children, and 1 guest. We don't know the proportion of the population getting snacks that is a guest population versus the home population. That matches our error in the stimulus where we don't know the population of people getting tickets who are students versus nonstudents.

Hope that helps!

[lsatstudent99966]

Hi there,

I got this question right, but I feel like my thought process is simpler than the explanation provided. Can anyone see if my reasoning is correct?

I think the argument in the stimulus is flawed because, besides other possibilities, a likely reason for the surge in parking citations during the school year is that, during this time, the total number of citations comes from two groups: "citations to students" + "citations to other people who are always in town." However, when students are out of town, the citations come only from the people who are always in town. Of course, that doesn’t mean students are receiving most of the citations. It just means that when there's a larger population in the area, more citations will be issued. In fact, we’d reasonably expect the residents of the town (who are always there) to receive more citations in total.

Now, looking at (A), we’re only told that the proportion of child moviegoers to adult moviegoers increases. We’re not even told that the total number of moviegoers increases, so we wouldn't reasonably expect an increase in overall popcorn sales just from that. Therefore, (A) is already not a match for this reason.

On the other hand, (E) has the same flawed reasoning as the stimulus. Beyond other possibilities, a very likely explanation for the situation in (E) is that when other children come to visit, snacks are given to both the children in the family and the visiting children, while normally, snacks are only given to the children in the family. Of course, no one will reasonably conclude that the visiting children get more snacks. In fact, we’d reasonably expect the children who live there to consume most of the snacks, as they are the ones always in the house.

So... even though I know that my explanation of the phenomenon isn't the only possible one, but I hope I can confirm that I’m not missing anything in thinking that "the phenomenon described in both the stimulus and (E) is actually what we'd normally expect, and that in both cases, the authors’ explanations of the phenomenon contradict what we would reasonably expect."

[Adam Tyson]

That looks like a good explanation to me, 99966! More of something doesn't mean most of that thing. More tickets when students are around doesn't prove most tickets go to students, just as more snacks when other kids visit doesn't prove most snacks to those other kids.

[lsatstudent99966]

That looks like a good explanation to me, 99966! More of something doesn't mean most of that thing. More tickets when students are around doesn't prove most tickets go to students, just as more snacks when other kids visit doesn't prove most snacks to those other kids.

Thank you so much Adam!