Community Activist: If Morganville Wants to Keep its Central Shopping GMAT Critical Reasoning

Question: Community activist: If Morganville wants to keep its central shopping district healthy, it should prevent the opening of a huge SaveAll discount department store on the outskirts of Morganville. Records from other small towns show that whenever SaveAll has opened a store outside the central shopping district of a small town, within five years the town has experienced the bankruptcies of more than a quarter of the stores in the shopping district.

The answer to which of the following would be most useful for evaluating the community activist’s reasoning?

(A) Have community activists in other towns successfully campaigned against the opening of a SaveAll store on the outskirts of their towns?
(B) Do a large percentage of the residents of Morganville currently do almost all of their shopping at stores in Morganville?
(C) In towns with healthy central shopping districts, what proportion of the stores in those districts suffer bankruptcy during a typical five-year period?
(D) What proportion of the employees at the SaveAll store on the outskirts of Morganville will be drawn from Morganville?
(E) Do newly opened SaveAll stores ever lose money during their first five years of operation?

“Community activist: If Morganville wants to keep its central shopping”- is a GMAT critical reasoning topic. This GMAT Critical Reasoning topic has been taken from the book ‘The Official Guide for GMAT Review.’

This GMAT critical comes with five options and candidates need to choose the one which is correct. GMAT critical reasoning tests the logical and analytical skills of the candidates. To answer the question, a candidate can either find a piece of evidence that would weaken the argument or have logical flaws in the argument. Candidates get 65 minutes to answer 36 MCQ questions in the critical reasoning section of the GMAT.

Answer: C
Explanation
:
The author suggests that the opening of the saveall store causes bankruptcies to occur in 25% of the stores in the shopping district. If we were to know what the percentage of stores went bankrupt, independent of the effects of saveall. It would shed insight on whether or not saveall contributes to the effect, and thus help us evaluate the author's reasoning. Let's take a look at each of the options-

Option A

Have community activists in other towns successfully campaigned against the opening of a SaveAll store on the outskirts of their towns?- Incorrect. If this is true, it not necessary that the activist's reasoning is not true

Option B

Do a large percentage of the residents of Morganville currently do almost all of their shopping at stores in Morganville?- Incorrect. It does not affect the activist's reasoning about the records in other small towns

Option C

In towns with healthy central shopping districts, what proportion of the stores in those districts suffer bankruptcy during a typical five-year period?- Correct. It's useful to compare the records in the reasoning with the records of those towns in the typical period. This is to see if the relationship between the opening saveall in the outskirts and the bankruptcies of stores in shopping district is significant

Option D

What proportion of the employees at the SaveAll store on the outskirts of Morganville will be drawn from Morganville?- It's not relevant. Hence, incorrect.

Option E

Do newly opened SaveAll stores ever lose money during their first five years of operation?- The answer to this question is not useful to evaluate the relationship between the opening save all in the outskirts and the bankruptcies of stores in shopping districts. Hence, incorrect.

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