An inference question asks you to finish a text’s reasoning with the smallest conclusion its clues support. Start with the words before the blank and the claim the text asks you to judge. For a reported change, ask what the evidence can actually show about its cause. If more than one explanation fits, the result alone can’t tell you which caused it. Check each part of the conclusion, because it must follow from the text rather than from an assumption about the cause.
Hints
- Hint 1
Read the report’s claim in the last full sentence. Ask how strong that claim is and what the earlier details would need to show to support it.
- Hint 2
In the sentence about the internal memos, check which offenses the statistics count. How did that rule change before the lighting project?
- Hint 3
Check what the numbers let you conclude. Does the passage tell you how many of the excluded offenses would otherwise have appeared in the report?
Step-by-step
Test what the reported drop can show
Step 1Read the claim at the blank
The report attributes the decline entirely to improved visibility from LEDs. What would that claim need to show? Since Therefore, introduces a conclusion, we have to judge the cause of the reported drop, not repeat how much it fell: the count fell, but why it fell still needs support.
- Step 2
Work out what the counting change could do
How could the count fall without fewer offenses occurring? The police reclassified some offenses one week before the lighting project began, and these were now excluded from the "crime" statistics used in the report. Even if those offenses occurred as often as before, they would no longer add to the total. The year-to-year comparison could show a drop because fewer kinds of offenses counted, so reclassification offers another possible cause of the reported decline.
- Step 3
Set the limit on the evidence
Does steady patrol time settle the cause? The text says the number of nightly patrol hours remained unchanged, which tells us patrol time didn’t change. It doesn’t undo the change in which offenses count as crimes. We also aren’t told how often the excluded offenses occurred, so we can’t measure how much of the drop came from lighting or reclassification.
- Step 4
Match the cautious conclusion
Which ending stays within what we know? The phrase could reflect, at least in part treats the counting change as a possible cause, not a proven cause of the whole drop. It questions whether LEDs explain the decline entirely while leaving room for the lights to have helped. Choice D.