- Athe two figures count different things — a house with brick walls under a thatch is outside the first count and inside the second — so the rise may record a widening of what the word was made to cover rather than any change in how the district is housed
- Bthe report does not state which agency took each of the two counts
- Cthe report gives no separate figure for the district's rural and its urban households
- Dthe second count was taken in a year in which the state was giving a grant for house building
Step-by-Step Solution
A change between two figures means something only where the two are figures of the same thing, and here the second count admits a whole class of house — brick walls, thatched roof — that the first count excluded. Every such house could have stood untouched through the interval and the share would still have climbed, so the twenty-seven points may belong entirely to the wording. Which agency counted and how the rural and urban households divide would be worth knowing but leave the two definitions just as unlike; and a house-building grant is a reason why some of the rise might be genuine, which is a defence of the report rather than a criticism of it.
Answer: A) the two figures count different things — a house with brick walls under a thatch is outside the first count and inside the second — so the rise may record a widening of what the word was made to cover rather than any change in how the district is housed