An inference question about a decision tests what someone’s choice shows about their thinking. Read the words before the blank so you know what to explain, then find the evidence behind the decision. Put each clue in a few words, asking how the evidence helps explain that choice. Predict the smallest conclusion the clues support, keeping every clue without adding certainty the text doesn’t give. Wrong choices often sound reasonable but claim more than the evidence shows.
Hints
- Hint 1
The blank follows the council’s decision, so look at its vote and the evidence it cited.
- Hint 2
Compare the seventeen years without a major flood with the engineers’ longer record. What does the usual gap between severe floods add?
Step-by-step
Use the vote and the flood record
Step 1Find whose belief the blank asks for
The council voted to fund the levee upgrades anyway, even though residents called the work a waste of money. Whose thinking does the blank ask us to explain? We need the council’s belief, so let’s follow the engineers’ analysis that the council cited.
- Step 2
Put the time spans together
What do the engineers add? Residents point to seventeen years without a major flood, while severe floods have tended to recur every fifty to seventy years. Those usual gaps are much longer than seventeen years, so a quiet stretch can still fit a history of severe flooding. The record gives the council reason to prepare for future floods, but it doesn’t tell us when the next one will arrive.
- Step 3
Test claims about timing and history
Which endings go beyond the clues or clash with a fact? The ending will happen soon adds a forecast the engineers didn’t make. The claim that upgrades can wait clashes with the fact that the council voted to fund the levee upgrades anyway, while has never had severe floods contradicts the floods recorded over the past three centuries.
- Step 4
Choose the limited claim about safety
The ending does not mean Riverton is safe rejects a guarantee of safety without predicting a date. It explains why the council voted to fund the levee upgrades anyway: the city still has a reason to prepare for severe flooding. Choice A.