It has been determined that many people who live in Phoenixescape the heat durin

Question

It has been determined that many people who live in Phoenixescape the heat during the hot summer months by taking frequenttrips to the mountains or to the ocean. It has been suspected thatbecause so many families are away from their houses over the summermonths that the incidence of home burglaries increases over thesummer. A review of police records of reported burglaries showsthat over the period from Memorial Day to Labor Day, typically 26%of the reported burglaries for the year occur. What do you concludefrom this information?

Explanation / Answer

These are my thoughts in approaching a solution: We have 26% of the burglaries occurring during summer months, thus74% of the burglaries occur in the rest of the months. We know thisas a FACT from the information given in the problem. However, thekey word in the problem is "increases." We are not given themonth-by-month probability distribution of the burglaries so wecannot say with certainty that the burglaries increase during thesummer. For example, there could be 27% of the burglaries prior tosummer which would be a decrease in burglaries. Or, there could be25% of the burglaries prior to summer which would be an increase.We can't say with any certainty that the summer months have acorrelation with the burglaries.

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