Court records from medieval France show that in the years 1300 to 1400 the number of people arrested in the French re...
ShannonOh22August 5, 2019
Between A and E
I selected (A) for this question, which is dandy...but then I got to (E), and I wasn't so confident. I know whenever a stimulus discusses a percentage, particularly in a weaken question, it is smart to look for an answer choice that contains information regarding TOTAL numbers (i.e. population, total sales, # of items sold, etc.), because that answer will usually refute whatever is stated in the argument.
This is what E does...and although it says the population was "decimated" in 1348 by the plague, it also says there was a substantial increase in the population for the "first five decades" - this too could be a very good reason for the increase in "documented interpersonal violence" - not that I need to spell it out, but more people = more fighting = more opportunities for violence = greater number of people reporting violence.
A is clearly correct too, but can you please let me know how/why I could have safely and confidently eliminated E if I were taking the actual exam and this question came up? There's a lot of ambiguity in that answer choice - are you guys able to provide something concrete that would enable me to cross it off? Maybe the fact that it doesn't provide any ACTUAL numbers, it just says the "population increased substantially"?
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That's correct - (B) shows provides a reason to counter the assertion that just because something has worked well in the past, it still works well today. Since patients in the hospital are now, on average, more seriously ill, it is more likely they are more difficult to treat and more likely for a fatigued doctor to make a mistake. I agree that it is not the most intuitive or strongest response, but it demonstrates that Q's using the quality of care evidence from the past may no longer apply to the present conditions.
Does that make sense?
Let me know if you have any further questions.
IrinaAugust 5, 2019
@Shannon,
Great question.
Let's look at the argument:
Court records show that from 1300-1400 the number of people arrested increased by 30 percent compared to the previous century. If the increase was not the result of false arrests, therefore, medieval France had a higher level of documented interpersonal violence in the years 1300-1400.
This is a weaken question, thus we are looking for an answer choice that would undermine the conclusion.
As you correctly pointed out, the stimulus uses percentages, meaning the population size is actually irrelevant because the LEVEL of crime is proportionate to the population and would be the same. Let's say the population is 100 people and there are 10 crimes or 10% versus the population size is 1000 people and there are 100 crimes, still 10%. There are more crimes in absolute numbers, but the LEVEL of crime is still the same. Since the conclusion we are looking to weaken is concerned with the "higher level of documented ..violence," and the population numbers alone cannot explain the change in % level, we can safely eliminate (E).
I think the key to this question is to pay very close attention to the conclusion. If the conclusion was using absolute numbers instead of a percentage to argue that the level of crime has gone up, the change in population size would be a good answer choice, but since it is using a % change, we need to look for alternative explanations.
