Deciding What the Passage Actually Claims
A student reads a short article about a town that installed 40 new streetlights along its two main roads. The article states that nighttime pedestrian injuries dropped from 18 in the year before installation to 11 in the year after, and that shop owners reported more evening customers. The article's headline reads: "New Streetlights Cut Nighttime Injuries by 40 Percent." The student must answer a test question asking which statement is best supported by the passage. She is torn between "The streetlights caused the drop in injuries" and "Injuries fell after the streetlights were installed." She also notices the article never mentions other changes, such as a new crosswalk or a lower speed limit introduced the same year.
1. Explain which of the two candidate statements is better supported, and why the headline's "40 percent" claim needs scrutiny.
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The better-supported statement is "Injuries fell after the streetlights were installed." The passage gives before-and-after numbers (18 then 11), which directly support a temporal association. It does not establish causation, because the article does not rule out other explanations, such as the new crosswalk or lower speed limit mentioned as same-year changes.
The headline's 40 percent figure also deserves scrutiny. The drop from 18 to 11 is 7 injuries. Seven divided by 18 is about 0.389, or roughly 39 percent, which rounds to 40 only loosely. More importantly, a percentage based on such small counts is unstable: one or two extra injuries would change it a lot. A careful reader should treat the headline as an attention-grabbing summary, not a precise finding, and prefer the cautious statement the data actually support.
2. The test asks for an inference, not a restatement. Write one defensible inference and explain what evidence in the setup supports it.
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A defensible inference is that the article's author may have overstated the effect of the streetlights by ignoring other simultaneous changes. Evidence: the setup says a new crosswalk and a lower speed limit were introduced the same year, yet the article credits the streetlights alone. Because those changes could also reduce injuries, attributing the entire drop to lighting is an overreach.
A good inference stays close to the text. It does not claim the streetlights had no effect; it claims only that the article's causal framing is not fully justified by what it reports. That distinction matters on a reading test: an inference must be supported but not explicitly stated, and it should not introduce facts the passage never provides.