argu241~马上就要考试了~求好心人狠拍~鞠躬~~

wljffUID: 2616881

ARGUMENT241 - The following appeared in a memo at the XYZ company.

"When XYZ lays off employees, it pays Delany Personnel Firm to offer those employees assistance in creating resumés and developing interviewing skills, if they so desire. Laid-off employees have benefited greatly from Delany's services: last year those who used Delany found jobs much more quickly than did those who did not. Recently, it has been proposed that we use the less-expensive Walsh Personnel Firm in place of Delany. This would be a mistake because eight years ago, when XYZ was using Walsh, only half of the workers we laid off at that time found jobs within a year. Moreover, Delany is clearly superior, as evidenced by its bigger staff and larger number of branch offices. After all, last year Delany's clients took an average of six months to find jobs, whereas Walsh's clients took nine."

In the argument, the author get the conclusion that using less expensive Walsh Personnel Firm in place of Delany would be a mistake according to the performance of Walsh before and Delany's bigger staff and larger number of branch offices. At first glance, the reasoning seems to be appealing. However, after a close scrutiny of the evidence, this argument is unconvincing for several critical fallacies in their evidence.
When talking about Walsh, the author tells us that only half of the workers found jobs within a year 8 years ago and the author holds that this is a low percentage. Nevertheless, the author does not give us any information of the performance of Delany and the whole industry at that time. So we have no idea to evaluate whether the performance of Walsh is good or bad. And without the information this claim could not be evidence proving the Walsh is not superior to Delany.
Besides, this data was the information 8 years ago. Even if Delany is superior to Walsh that time, it does not mean that Walsh could not be better than Delany at present because it is very possible that Walsh developed itself much faster than Delany during 8 years. As a result without ruling the possibility, we still cannot assure the conclusion.
Then the author tells us that Delany is clearly superior for its bigger staff and larger number of branch offices. Maybe bigger staff and larger number of office have something related to better service, but they do not in fact determine that. On the contrary, the bigger staff may make us have some doubt on the effectiveness of the company for the reason that it requires such a big staff. There is no causal relationship between the number of staff and offices and the quality of service. So we still cannot say that Delany's performance is superior to Walsh.
And for the last evidence that Delany's clients took an average 3 months less than those of Walsh to find jobs, I still cast some doubt on it. The author does not inform us their clients' information. Maybe the jobs that the clients of Walsh find are more difficult and the requirement of the Walsh is higher. Without exclude these possibilities, we cannot get the conclusion, either.
In sum, the argument is logically questionable as it stands. To make the evidences more persuasive, the speaker should give us more information about the comparison between these 2 companies. And the author should talk more about the present performance of the 2 companies. Then the best choice would be made for the XYZ.