City dog licensing records show that more cocker spaniels are registered to addresses in the Flynn Heights neighborho...

Naz on February 19, 2015

The conclusion of the argument is: it is likely that if an animal control officer finds a stray cocker spaniel anywhere in Flynn Heights, the dog belongs to someone in Flynn Heights.

Why? Because the city dog licensing records show that more cocker spaniels are registered to addresses in the Flynn Heights neighborhood than to addresses in all other neighborhoods combined.

Answer choice (E) states: "whether residents of Flynn Heights are more likely to license their dogs than residents of other neighborhoods are."

So, if Flynn Heights residents are more likely to license their dogs than the residents of other neighborhoods, then the information gathered from the city dog licensing records will be skewed towards residents of Flynn Heights.

For example, let's say there are 10 residents in neighborhood "A" (8 of which have cocker spaniels) and 10 in Flynn Heights (5 of which have cocker spaniels).

If the residents of Flynn Heights who own cocker spaniels have a 100% likelihood of registering their dogs, whereas those of neighborhood "A" who have cocker spaniels only have a 50% likelihood of licensing their dogs, then the records will show that neighborhood "A" only has 4 cocker spaniels, while Flynn Height has 5--making Flynn Heights seem like it has more cocker spaniels. But, that isn't the case.

So, it is very important to know whether the residents of Flynn Heights are more likely to license their dogs than residents of other neighborhoods because it directly affect our conclusion.

Hope that clears things up! Please let us know if you have any other questions.