Smoking in bed has long been the main cause of home fires. Despite a significant decline in cigarette smoking in the ...

shunhe on May 27, 2020

Hi @jingjingxiao11111@gmail.com,

Thanks for the question! So let's take a look at the stimulus. We're told that smoking has long been the main cause of home fires. But although there has been less cigarette smoking in the last two decades, the number of people killed in home fires is about the same.

Now we're asked a resolve the paradox EXCEPT question. In other words, four of these answer choices will help to resolve the discrepancy in some way, and one of them won’t. Let's take a look at (B), which tells us that such deaths usually occur after everyone has gone to sleep. This doesn't help us understand why less smoking would fail to decrease deaths by home fire; in fact, it makes it even more puzzling, since it seems more likely to die by fire while asleep than while awake. Thus, since (B) doesn't help resolve the discrepancy, it's the right answer.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.