A mid-sized city tested a bus-priority pilot: painted dedicated lanes on three of its busiest corridors during rush hour and adjusted signal timing. GPS logs show average bus travel times on those corridors dropped by 12 percent, with variability halved; on control corridors without changes, no improvement was detected. A rider survey taken during the pilot found 60 percent of respondents on the treated corridors reported arriving on time more often; on untreated corridors, responses were unchanged. Due to budget limits, officials must decide how to scale the program. The available evidence establishes benefits only on the corridors where changes were made, so in choosing next steps, the city can conclude that _______.

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To test whether applying a thin layer of moss to residential roofs cools homes in summer, researchers instrumented sixteen houses: eight with north-facing, dark-shingle roofs were partially inoculated with a maintained moss layer; eight similar roofs were left untreated. Over six weeks of clear weather, afternoon roof-surface temperatures on treated sections averaged 5 degrees lower than adjacent untreated sections; attic air temperatures showed no consistent differences between houses. Electricity consumption varied widely with occupancy and air-conditioner settings. The team notes that lower surface temperatures may precede interior effects but did not detect them here. Based on these results, any claim about home energy savings would be premature, but the researchers can reasonably conclude that _______.

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Engineers tested twenty pairs of identical smartphones to study how storage temperature affects battery aging. In each pair, one phone was stored for eight weeks at a cool, controlled 15 degrees Celsius, and the other at a steady 30 degrees. All other conditions (charge level, usage cycles, and charging hardware) were held constant. Across all pairs, the cooler-stored phones lost less capacity than their warmer-stored counterparts, a pattern that repeated in three separate trials conducted months apart. The team also opened several batteries and found more degradation by-products in the warmer group, consistent with known heat-accelerated chemistry. Consequently, if two otherwise identical phones differ only in storage temperature, then, at the end of the storage period, _______.

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City Art Museum introduced a blockbuster exhibit in mid-May. Monthly attendance for the prior year fluctuated with school holidays and weather, but averaged about 40,000. Marketing spending, ticket prices, and hours remained unchanged from April through August, and staffing did not increase. From mid-May through August, attendance rose to roughly 55,000 per month, while two comparable museums in the region, which changed nothing and ran routine exhibits, saw no similar bump. Survey responses at our museum cited the new exhibit as the main reason for visiting, and the rise was concentrated on days the exhibit was open. Given that the exhibit was the only new feature during this period, it follows that _______.

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To evaluate a downtown delivery pilot, city staff compared parcel drop-offs completed by cargo bikes with those completed by vans across three weekday mornings in the same 10-block zone. In total, 200 parcels were tracked with identical routes and delivery windows; vehicle type was the only variable changed. When couriers used cargo bikes, average time per parcel was 22 minutes, versus 28 minutes with vans. Missed deliveries declined from 12 to 4 during the cargo-bike runs. Noise-complaint calls from the zone fell by 30 percent relative to the prior week, while incident reports remained at two per day under both methods. From these data, the soundest inference is that _______.

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Over a four-week June trial, the MetroLink transit agency lowered weekend fares from $2 to $1 but kept service frequency, routes, and schedules unchanged. Weather was typical for the season, and the city hosted no major events during the trial. The agency compared boarding counts to the four weekends immediately prior. Average weekend ridership rose from 48,000 to 67,000 boardings during the trial, while average weekday ridership in June stayed within 2 percent of May's baseline. Marketing consisted only of small platform signs announcing the temporary fare. Because the fare change was the only planned difference on weekends during the trial, the ridership data show that, relative to the May weekends, _______.

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To boost bus ridership, a city transit office simultaneously reduced fares by 20 percent for one month and launched a saturation advertising campaign. During that month, ridership rose 15 percent compared with the recent monthly average, after having been flat for the prior six months. When the month ended, both the fare and the ad spending returned to their previous levels, and ridership returned to roughly the prior average. The office now claims that the advertising was the primary cause of the temporary ridership increase. However, it collected no rider surveys about motivation and did not stagger the initiatives to test their separate effects. With only the described evidence, the appropriate conclusion is that _______

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During a Saturday promotion at a boutique vegan bakery, a market research firm offered customers a small discount to complete a brief survey about dessert preferences. Of the 250 respondents, 84 percent reported preferring plant-based desserts over traditional ones. The firm is considering using this figure to claim that most city residents prefer plant-based desserts. However, the respondents were drawn entirely from customers who chose to visit a vegan bakery on a promotional day and who accepted a discount to participate. Many residents do not patronize such bakeries, and the incentive may have influenced who responded. Based only on this survey, the only justified inference is that _______

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At Bayview College, the library piloted two extra evening hours for two weeks. Before the change, the average daily visit count was 300; during the pilot, it rose to 340. Hourly entry logs show no meaningful difference from opening until 6 p.m. compared with the prior month. In contrast, during the new 6-8 p.m. window, staff recorded, on average, 40 more entries than the library typically received during those hours when it previously closed at 6. Security gate data, not self-reports, determined the counts, and no other policies or events changed during the pilot. Morning and afternoon program attendance remained flat. The director cautioned that reasons for the increase could vary, but the timing of the added visits was unambiguous, indicating that _______.

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Researchers studying the navigation of a coastal moth species simulated moonlit conditions in a wind tunnel. When the light field included the polarization pattern typical of moonlight, moths oriented consistently toward a fixed direction. When the pattern was removed by a polarizing filter, while overall brightness was kept the same, the moths lost their orientation. Restoring the polarization pattern without changing brightness immediately returned their directional behavior. In separate trials, researchers increased and decreased brightness twofold without altering polarization, and orientation persisted. Because air flow, odor cues, and geomagnetic conditions were held constant, the team concluded that visual features of the light field were responsible for the observed changes. Taken together, the trials show that _______.

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