While it might be expected

Answer choices

1. A

   Bad Evidence Match0% picked this

   attempts to support its conclusion by making an appeal

   The evidence is statistics, nothing relating to emotions. This answer describes one of the 10 famous flaws, Inappropriate Appeal to Emotion.

   0%
2. B

   Bad Objection1% picked this

   fails to consider the possibility that criminals may commit crimes in more

   Since this begins with "fails to consider", we evaluate it like a Weaken answer. Would it hurt the author to say, "Hey criminals might commit crimes in more than one neighborhood!" No. First of all, that's a crazy weak idea, but more importantly, it has nothing to do with helping us argue that police presence DOES decrease crime.

   1%
3. C

   Bad Evidence Match4% picked this

   draws a general conclusion from too small a sample

   This answer describes a Sampling Flaw (one of the 10 famous flaws). The evidence here is not a small sample of data. It's a statistic that accounts for all neighborhoods, because in order to talk about the neighborhoods that have the most crime / most police, you need to have records on all neighborhoods. A Sampling Flaw would be more like, "Since increased police presence didn't make a difference in neighborhood X, we can conclude that increased police presence doesn't make a difference anywhere."

   4%
4. D

   Correct94% picked this

   fails to consider the possibility that police presence in a particular area is often a response to the relatively high

   Why this is right

   Does it weaken the argument if we say, "Hey, author, the police presence is a RESPONSE to the high crime rate"? Yes, because it offers an alternate explanation for why most cops and most crime could be correlated. It's not because cops are useless at thwarting crime; it's because we allocate more police resources to the areas that have the most crime. To put it another way, the author is acting like the presence of police did nothing to stop an area from growing to be #1 in crime. And our objection is, "no, no, no -- the huge police presence wasn't there while it was growing to be #1 in crime. It's there now because we're trying to work on the areas that are #1 in crime."

   Skill tested: Flaw · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   94%
5. E

   Not Assumed1% picked this

   takes for granted that public resources devoted to police presence could be allocated in another manner that would be

   Since this starts with "takes for granted", we evaluate it like it's Necessary Assumption. Did the author have to assume that we could be using public money in a better way than spending it on "useless" cops? No, not necessarily. If you negate this and say, "Hey, author, there's actually nothing else we could spend money on that would be a better deterrent than police", it doesn't weaken the argument. The author could freely accept that we have no viable way of stopping crime. They could say, "I agree there's no other way to spend money that would be a better deterrent. Unfortunately, cops don't help decrease crime and nothing else we could spend money on helps either." The negation doesn't keep the conclusion from still being a true statement.

   1%