#24 - A park’s user fees are employed to maintain the park. When fewer

[tetsuya0129]

Hi Powerscore staff,

I picked (E) by following my gut but I was not perfectly sure about what the principle is in the stimulus. I assumed the principle to be something like:
Even one factor (user fee) became less influential, the other factor (amount of users) can still cause the effect (improved maintenance).

Following this notion, I could see how A, C, D are wrong and E is right. But, I couldn't really discern what's the principle behind B.

Could you please go through this question? Thank you very much.

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Leon,

You took exactly the right approach to this "Parallel Principle" question. Your first task is to prephrase the principle underlying the situation described in the stimulus. You did that very well (I wouldn't make any significant changes to your prephrase), and that appropriately led you to the correct answer choice, where you get a similar situation in which a reduction in effect of one cause (the library revenues) is more than offset by another cause (the reduction in number of patrons).

It sounds like your primary uncertainty is regarding the principle exhibited by answer choice B, so let's take a look at that. Answer choice B starts with a paradoxical situation: store revenues increase, even though there's less open time for people to shop and spend money at the store. The manager offers a speculative cause of the revenue increase (more pleasant appearance due to more cleaning time), but that's all it is. It's just a speculative cause. So the principle is something like, when one cause of an effect is removed and the effect intensifies, it's possible that another cause offsets it. The difference is in the speculative nature of the alternate cause. In the stimulus, we know that "[w]hen fewer people use the park, it suffers less wear." In answer choice E, we also know that "fewer patrons" will lead to less wear and tear on books. But in answer choice B, we cannot be sure what's going on in the mind of shoppers. It's possible they like the cleanliness, sure. But maybe they just feel more pressure to get their shopping done, so urgency causes them to come to the store more often than they would if they felt the security of knowing the store is open at all times. That lack of certainty about the offsetting cause makes answer choice B much more different from the stimulus than answer choice E is.

I hope this helps!

[tetsuya0129]

Thank you for the kind words! Yes, your explanation indeed helps! It provides me a framing for the reasoning of (B). I am more certain about this type of reasoning. Also, it feels really good to know that my purported principle behind the stimulus is on the spot.