PrepTest 158, Section 4, Question 23

What we’re looking for

Working the answers

• A

  The argument doesn't mistake an effect of fewer violations for the cause of fewer violations. It points to the earlier fine increase as a cause. Our objection is that a different change—the garage opening—could explain the reduction. That's a competing cause, not an effect being put backward in the chain.

• B

  The official wants even fewer violations, not necessarily another reduction of at least 50 percent. A much smaller further decline would still satisfy that stated goal. B attributes a claim about the size of the next reduction that the argument never makes.

• C

  The city's revenue isn't what this conclusion seeks to improve. The official recommends another increase to reduce illegal parking. Whether the current fines also provide useful money doesn't establish that raising them caused, or would cause, fewer violations.

• D

  People needn't prefer legal parking for its own sake to respond to a fine. Someone could be indifferent to the rule yet dislike losing money. The argument doesn't require a general preference for obeying parking laws; it needs evidence that the fines affected behavior.

• E
  Correct

  The new garage provides additional legal parking spaces. If those spaces explain the decline, increasing fines again might not produce the further improvement the official expects. The argument hasn't separated the two changes before crediting one of them.

  We don't have to prove that the garage caused the entire reduction or that fines never deter anyone. The overlooked possibility is enough: the evidence doesn't yet establish which change explains the observed result.