3月23日A习作161

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161.  In a study of reading habits of Leeville citizens conducted by the University of Leeville, most
respondents said they preferred literary classics as reading material. However, a follow-up
study conducted by the same researchers found that the type of book most frequently checked
out of each of the public libraries in Leeville was the mystery novel. Therefore, it can be
concluded that the respondents in the first study had misrepresented their reading habits.





In this argument, the author intends to convince us that in the first study about reading habits that Leeville citizens
misrepresented their true reading habits.
To
substantiate this conclusion, the author
provides a study
result
of
a subsequent
study
showing that a dissimilar type of book is the one most frequently inspect from Leeville's
public libraries. Meanwhile, this argument contains several facets that are not
well‐reasoned.





First of all, the author ignore the possibility that people who responded the study may be not the same folk who borrowed the mystery novel. Admittedly, both groups are parts of Leeville citizens. However, there are other kinds of readers, some with high education like going to university's library or personal libraries which have more choices, some with habits like buying, and some like electronic books as convenience. It is high possible that respondents came from each of them, but the actually mystery novels' borrowers were not.





Secondly, even if both of two groups are the same one, she also fails to account for the probability that the first respondents preferred to read literary classics, and public libraries' collections did not contain them all, so they borrowed them from some places else and checked out those mystery novels without reading. The same researcher found out books checked out were mystery novels, which did not mean that those readers read them after borrowing, and also might mean they checked them out because of reasons for cheaper and more supplement, or they might just like their covers and brought them to home.

Thirdly, though the same group read novels they checked out,
the argument also does not point out how much time passed between the two studies. During a sufficiently long interim period, the demographic change and Culture might become diversity, or the reading habits of the form study's respondents might have changed. In other word, the more years past between those two studies, the less reliability of this conclusion that the first study misrepresented their reading habits.

Finally, the conclusion is weak without the statistical integrity, the author did not indicate what portion of the people surveyed, with no details, such as gender and age, the result of this argument is not reliable. Statistical samples needs general and big quantity, less of those, the conclusion of this argument is not reliable. The more special people surveyed are, or the smaller folks researched by, the less accuracy the result.

In sum, judging from all factors above, we can draw a conclusion that the result which the first respondents misrepresented their habits is untenable. A mistaken ending is easily to make with less data like time between two studies.