【clover】Argument117 习作 by 小g

gc1030255UID: 2550033

TOPIC: ARGUMENT117 - The following is a memo from the business manager of Valu-Mart stores.

"Over 70 percent of the respondents to a recent survey reported that they are required to take more work home with them from the workplace than they were in the past. Since Valu-Mart has not seen impressive sales in its office-supply departments in the past, we should take advantage of this work-at-home trend by increasing at all Valu-Mart stores the stock of home office machines such as printers, small copy machines, paper shredders, and fax machines. We will also increase stock of office supplies such as paper, pens, and staplers. With these changes, our office-supply departments will become the most profitable component of our stores."
WORDS: 534



Based on the recent survey, and assuming that the demand for work-at-home equipments will increase, the manager accordingly concludes that the company Valu-Mart should increase the stock of home office machine and office supplies. Nevertheless, the argument requires more reasoning in several aspects, I will discuss them by turns.

To begin with, a threshold problem with the argument involves the statistical reliability of the survey. The manager provides no information about how the survey was carried out, if the survey relied on self responses or the questions of the survey were oriented, the results may be open to doubt. In addition, no information concerning how broad the survey was. If the survey was limited to a few struggling employees in a certain depressed companies, or perhaps the survey mainly contained IT companies whose employees are likely to work at home rather than in offices, ignoring other kinds of companies, such as business and services, the results might be attributed to those particular individuals and particular companies. Even though I accept the selection of members who take part in the survey is reasonable and they are representative for the whole society, the manager also equate the respondents with total people who took the survey. Normally, the respondents are likely to be people who have interest to the topic of the survey. Thus it is entirely possible that only
a small portion of people are required to work home then respond the survey, and the majority remain in silence. Without ruling out such factors that can explain the survey results, the generalization of the survey is undermined.

In addition, even assuming the survey is actually valid, there is certainly a trend of working at home, the manager's suggestion about increasing the stock of home office machines and office supplies is still questionable. The argument assumes that the correlation between the work-at-home trend and home office machine need increase, while the manager fails to provide sufficient evidence to support the conclusion. After all, such stock of office machines is very expensive that few employees could afford. In fact, in modern companies, most home work is based on networking computer, such as writing reports, sending e-mails, electronic commerce, there is no need for any additional home office machines.

Finally, even if there really exists the work-at-home trend which will create an increase in the need of office machines and supplies, the conclusion rests on an additional assumption that workers will prefer Valu-Mart over other office machine suppliers. The manager mentions that Valu-Mart has not seen impressive sales in the past, but fails to explain the reasons. A myriad of possible occurrence, such as unfavorable economic conditions or high price or quality or poor sales management or a couple of comparatively formidable competitors in the same area, might prevent potential buyers consuming from Valu-Mart. Furthermore, without providing the profit of other departments of Valu-Mart, it is unfairly to claim that office-supply department will become the most profitable component of the stores.

In sum, the conclusion reached in this argument is invalid and misleading. To strengthen, the manager should offer more detail information about the survey and clear evidence that employees do prefer to buy home office machines from Valu-Mart.

mintshUID: 2460474

~~刚刚改完~~呵呵

gc1030255UID: 2550033

辛苦猫猫了~
经过修改滴~

九天揽月UID: 2737667

小G的语言很好啊~