Let us consider a possibility that two years ago the proportion of the Greenville Times's total revenue generated by advertising sales was 40%. In these 2 years economy grew at a very rapid rate pushing all kinds of revenues up. Therefore, although revenue generated by advertising sales has gone up in number, the proportion of the Greenville Times's total revenue generated by advertising sales still remains 40%. This clearly indicates that reorganization played no role. It was the boom in economy that caused the increase. However, had the proportion of the Greenville Times's total revenue generated by advertising sales gone up to 60% it would have meant that reorganization played a vital role. So, option A looks relevant......
two things are very wrong in this reasoning.
1)
it doesn't really appear that you understand the way these questions work. when you say that some factor X is relevant to some other factor Y, this means that a change in factor X
by itself indicates something about Y.
if X is conflated with some other factor(s), then this proves nothing about the relevance of X.
in your example, you have commingled the effect of the percentages with the effect of the booming economy, yet concluded that the percentages themselves must be relevant. this is bad logic; if there are two factors combining to produce an effect, then either of the two factors alone might be responsible, so nothing specific is indicated about either of the individual factors.
analogy:
your reasoning here is like saying "i started eating a bunch of grapefruits
and lifting weights every day, and i got stronger as a result; therefore, eating the grapefruits must have contributed to making me stronger."
2)
you are using percentage figures both before and after the reorganization, while choice (a) is concerned only with the percentage before the reorganization. you cannot hypothesize the presence of additional data that are not mentioned.
On the other hand, I cant see a relation between increase in workforce and reorganization.
again, two things wrong here.
1)
you're misinterpreting the word "turnover".
this word doesn't mean "increase"; it means "substitution of new things/people for old things/people". in this situation, "turnover" means that old employees are being replaced by new ones.
2)
if advertising sales go up after a completely new advertising force is hired, you definitely cannot ignore the possibility that the new people, rather than the reorganization, are responsible for the new results!
