The violent crime rate (number of violent crimes per 1,000 residents) in Meadowbrook is 60 percent higher now than it...
GMAT Critical Reasoning : (CR) Questions
The violent crime rate (number of violent crimes per 1,000 residents) in Meadowbrook is 60 percent higher now than it was four years ago. The corresponding increase for Parkdale is only 10 percent. These figures support the conclusion that residents of Meadowbrook are more likely to become victims of violent crime than are residents of Parkdale.
The argument above is flawed because it fails to take into account
Passage Analysis:
| Text from Passage | Analysis |
|---|---|
| The violent crime rate (number of violent crimes per 1,000 residents) in Meadowbrook is 60 percent higher now than it was four years ago. |
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| The corresponding increase for Parkdale is only 10 percent. |
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| These figures support the conclusion that residents of Meadowbrook are more likely to become victims of violent crime than are residents of Parkdale. |
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Argument Flow:
The argument starts with crime rate increases for two cities over four years, then jumps to a conclusion about which city is more dangerous now. We go from "Meadowbrook's rate increased more" to "Meadowbrook is more dangerous."
Main Conclusion:
Residents of Meadowbrook are more likely to become victims of violent crime than residents of Parkdale.
Logical Structure:
The author uses the percentage increases in crime rates as evidence to support a claim about current relative safety. However, this creates a logical gap - we're told about changes but not about the actual current crime rates in each city.
Prethinking:
Question type:
Misc - This is a flaw question asking what the argument fails to consider. We need to identify what important information is missing that makes the conclusion potentially incorrect.
Precision of Claims
The argument makes claims about percentage increases in crime rates over time (\(60\%\) vs \(10\%\)) and concludes about current absolute risk levels. The precision issue is that percentage changes don't tell us about actual current crime rates.
Strategy
For this flaw question, we need to think about what crucial information the argument ignores when jumping from percentage increases to absolute risk levels. The key flaw is likely about baseline rates - we can't determine current risk just from knowing percentage changes without knowing what those percentages are applied to.
Population density changes don't directly affect our ability to compare crime rates, since crime rates are already calculated per 1,000 residents. The rate calculation inherently accounts for population, so density changes wouldn't impact the validity of using these rates to compare safety levels between the cities.
Population growth rates are also irrelevant here because we're dealing with crime rates (crimes per 1,000 residents), not absolute numbers of crimes. Whether a city's population grew fast or slow doesn't change the meaning of its crime rate or our ability to compare rates between cities.
The ratio of violent to nonviolent crimes is a red herring. The argument is specifically about violent crime rates only, and the conclusion is about violent crime victimization likelihood. Information about nonviolent crimes wouldn't affect this analysis.
This hits the core flaw perfectly. We can't determine which city is more dangerous today just from knowing percentage increases without knowing what those percentages started from. If Meadowbrook had a much lower baseline rate four years ago, it could still be safer than Parkdale now despite the larger percentage increase. The argument completely ignores these crucial starting points.
Crime prevention expenditures might be interesting context, but they don't address the logical gap in the argument. The flaw isn't about what might explain the trends - it's about whether we can validly conclude current relative safety from the given percentage data alone.