Q21 - If the city starts requiring residents

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Inference (which logically follows from the information)

Stimulus Breakdown:
If people have to sort their recycling, they'll just throw more into the trash, resulting in more recyclables ending up in the landfill.
And if the sorting requirement is NOT implemented, then the sanitation dept. will exceed its budget.

Answer Anticipation:
Since Inference questions test our ability to combine multiple facts in order to derive some other truth (usually through Conditional, Causal, or Quantitative language), we should think about how the Causal chain in the first two sentences interacts with the Conditional in the third sentence.

It looks like they start with opposite triggers:
"if people have to sort -> more R's in trash -> more R's in landfill",
and
"if people don't have to sort, sanitation dept will exceed its budget".

Whenever we have multiple conditionals, we need to see if they chain together (often, contraposing one is needed to see the chain). Indeed, we could say
"if SD doesn't exceed budget -> ppl ARE required to sort -> more R's in trash/landfill".

Correct Answer:
D

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Too Specific: "most". We have no idea if 51% vs. 49% will recycle.

(B) Too Strong: "all". We have no way to guarantee that ALL people act in a certain fashion.

(C) Unknown Comparison: We have no way to compare the yearly cost of sending trash to the landfill with that of sorting R's.

(D) Yes! If the SD stays within budget, we know that the sorting requirement was implemented, which means that more R's will end up in the landfill.

(E) Illegal negation of "if we DON'T do sorting, they WON'T stay in budget".

Takeaway/Pattern: Almost all correct answers to Inference questions combine multiple facts to arrive at the answer choice. This one happened to combine all the facts, but there's no obligation for it to do so. Make sure you noticed the Causal wording like "this will result in" and the Conditional wording like "If, then" and "unless".

#officialexplanation

[ivanau12]

I chose the wrong answer C when I did this question, so I'm going to take a stab at the explanation now - any further clarification is super helpful.

We know that: requirement --> more recyclables w/ regular --> more recyclables in landfill. This will incur some sorting cost, but then the prompt concludes that
-requirement --> -stay within budget
(CP: stay within budget --> requirement)

Combining both statements above, we know that
stay within budget --> requirement --> more recyclables w/ regular --> more recyclables in landfill, which is basically what (D) says.

Incorrect Answer Choices:
(A) We have no information on what most city's residents will do when the sorting requirement is implemented.
(B) We have no information on what the residents who continue to recycle will do.
(C) I got tripped up by this because it compared costs which I thought was relevant to staying within budget. Looking back now, however, just because the city stayed within budget doesn't give us any information on the comparative cost of sending garbage to landfill and sorting recyclables. Maybe it's the other way around, but the budget is still within plan. We have no idea which way they're "staying within budget".
(E) Illegal reversal of logic.

[ohthatpatrick]

Great explanation!

I think part of your confusion with (C) sprung from the reversed logic of (E).

If you were thinking, "requiring residents to sort --> stays within budget", then (C) becomes close to the inference you were describing.

It rules out a potential way the city would go over budget.

But of course, as you said, in reality the information we're given is that "stays within budget --> require residents to sort", so we don't have to assume that implementing the sorting requirement means that the city has stayed under budget.

For me, it's helpful to know that when Inference questions give us conditional claims, the correct answer is almost always testing whether we've properly diagrammed them (in our heads or on paper) and chained together any that could be.

Hence, since this one gave us a chain, you can have a strong suspicion that the correct answer will test the chain (and usually in contrapositive form, as (D) does).

Nice work!

[abkrusemark]

I originally picked B, but now see that it isn't necessarily supported. Just because there's a policy / law / mandate doesn't necessarily mean people will follow it. Also, it could be people other than residents who are doing the sorting (robots, etc.). Also, they could be recycling by other means (re-use or private recycling companies). Are those good reasons to eliminate B?

[zen]

I originally picked B, but now see that it isn't necessarily supported. Just because there's a policy / law / mandate doesn't necessarily mean people will follow it. Also, it could be people other than residents who are doing the sorting (robots, etc.). Also, they could be recycling by other means (re-use or private recycling companies). Are those good reasons to eliminate B?

I think that's a good reason. As it even mentions in the prompt: if that requirement is enacted, many residents will just put more of their recyclables in the trash as opposed to taking the time to sort the stuff out. There's no reason to believe just because the requirement is enacted that people will follow it to the T.

Hope that helps

[ch3014]

Is C and E basically saying the same thing? Implement plan ---> stay within budget.