Not taking the effects of El Ni&ntildeo into account when figuring the effect of volcanic eruptions on Earth's cl...

Annie on October 15, 2019

@RitaW,

The passage begins to discuss El Nino at line 20. It states that the scientists filtered out temperature changes caused by El Nino because the weather pattern can "mask the cooling brought about by an eruption" or can also "mimic volcanic cooling." Therefore, you're looking for an answer choice where certain data points could obscure the actual results.

(E) is correct. The age's of immigrants could obscure the data from the number of births. Both will affect the total population, and therefore to determine whether birth numbers affected the average population, you need to separate out the effect from immigration.

(A) is incorrect. The weight of the package as a whole would not affect the calculation of the weight of the contents of the passage.

(B) is incorrect. The monetary value would not alter/obscure the number of coins.

(C) is incorrect. The magnification of a lens does not alter/obscure the shape of an object seen through it.

(D) is incorrect. This statement is almost the reverse of the one at issue. If you didn't take the number of false crime reports into account, then you would have an incorrect calculation of the number of real crimes. In contrast, you must exclude the effects of El Nino to determine the true effects of a volcanic eruption.

Kyland on November 4, 2021

Definitely see how E is correct but a little foggy as to why D is not. Failing to account for the El Nino or the false crime reports would obscure the data and they both mimic the actual effects, Temperature change and real crimes.

The big difference that I can see is that fake crimes can only influence the data one way (make it appear that the real crimes are more common than they are) while the immigrants age could swing the average in the opposite way if that were the case. That is more similar to the El nino because it has the possibility of making it appear warmer (during the warm period) or emphasize the cooling effect (if the El nino is just ending its warm period at the same time). Even though is the answer it is pointing to its effects in the direction of immigrant age decreasing the average it could also be increasing the average

Ravi on February 8, 2022

@Kyland, D is incorrect because it's not dealing with measuring a change. D is dealing with measuring the average number of crimes in a city, not determining why the annual number of crimes changes each year. Additionally, failing to take into consideration the total number of false crime reports would just result in someone overestimating the number of crimes in that city because they would be including fake crimes in the measurement. Failing to account for El Niño could lead someone to over or underestimate the effect that volcanic eruptions had on the earth's climate, so we can eliminate this answer choice.