The "suicide wave" that followed the United States stock market crash of October 1929 is more legend than fact. Caref...

Emil-Kunkin on June 1, 2022

Hi Jing Jing,

The argument proceeds by stating its conclusion, that the suicide wave is a legend, and support this by citing statistics that the suicides were lower in the months after the crash than they were in the months before the crash.

This is a weaken question, so we are looking to undermine this argument.

Before looking at the answer choices, I would immediately think about year to year trends. Sure suicides were lower in the winter, but maybe in previous winters suicides had been even lower! If it were true that suicides were higher in the october and november of 1929 than they had been in previous years, that would indeed weaken the argument.

A Would likely strengthen the argument, as it supports the idea that the market crash did not lead to an increase in suicide.
B Would also strengthen the argument, as it would imply that suicides were lower in fall of 1929 than they had in previous years.
C Directly matches our prephrase, and is correct.
D Is not relevant to the argument as we know nothing about the rates at the beginning of the year, only in the summer and fall
E Offers us some reason to think that there are seasonal differences, but it does not give us any detail about what those changes are. This is essentially a weaker version of C.