Argument1 处女作求拍砖

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Argument1  第1篇
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The following appeared in a memorandum written by the vice president of Nature's Way, a chain of stores selling health food and other health-related products.
'Previous experience has shown that our stores are most profitable in areas where residents are highly concerned with leading healthy lives. We should therefore build our next new store in Plainsville, which has many such residents. Plainsville merchants report that sales of running shoes and exercise clothing are at all-time highs. The local health club, which nearly closed five years ago due to lack of business, has more members than ever, and the weight training and aerobics classes are always full. We can even anticipate a new generation of customers: Plainsville's schoolchildren are required to participate in a 'fitness for life' program, which emphasizes the benefits of regular exercise at an early age.'
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This argument suffers from certain evident logical fallacies that undermine the reasonings, and several statistical fallacies that make the premise unconvincing any how. These fallacies are shown as follows.

As a threshold matter, the argument suffers a fallacy of faulty analogy between the current place where the stores of Nature's Way located and the city of Plainsville. The author reasons that the same stores will also be profitable in Plainsville because the current stores are profitable and that the denizens at both places are highly concerned with leading healthy lives. However, the author fails to consider the probable differences between the two sites. It is possible that the market condition of supply and demand in these two cities are different. Perhaps, in the current location it is because that the supply can not satisfy the demand that ensures the profits of the stores there; however, if the market in Plainsville is saturated with sports products, no matter whether the denizens enjoy sports or not, the profits of the new stores in that city can not be guaranteed due to competition.

Besides, the argument contains certain statistical fallacies that undermine the premises on which conclusions are based. First, the reliability of the evidence provided by the auther about the sales of running shoes and exercise clothing is open to question, since we are not informed how many merchants are surveyed, and therefore if the sample is not representative of the overall market concerned, any conclusion drew from that survey would be invalid or even misleading. Even if the sample is sufficient in size, the mere information of the sales of running shoes and exercise clothing may be a biased sample. Since no information has been provided about the sales of any other sports products, it is possible that the sales of other products is not good at all, while the profits from the sales of running shoes and exercise clothing may count for only a small portion of the whole incomes. If so, such an investment may not be a wise decision.

Also, the survey on the local health club is too vague to make any sense-- what we concern are exactly how much increase of profits than ever. Even if the survey itself is sound in precision, such survey amounts to nothing but an irrelevent evidence, since the stores of Nature Way seem having nothing to do with training like the weigth training and aerobic classes. People who enjoys training do not mean they are also fans of buying sports products. For example, those who engage in lossing weight are not required to buy any sports clothes or shoes.

Moreover, evidence related to Plainsville's 'fitness for life' program of schoolchildren is questionable for several reasons. First, such program does not mean a promising market, if , for instance, their activities do not require any of the products provided by Nature Way stores. Even if so, there is also no evidence to show that they will choose solely the products sold by Nature Way. Next, it is unclear that how long such program will last. Perhaps this program will merely last less than one year, if so, the new stores can probably only gain short-term profits from it. In addition, we are also not informed the demographic situation of that city, it is possible that the adolescents only consist a small portion of population of that city, thereby children involved in that program may too few in number to constitute a profitable market.

In conclusion, this argument is well presented, but seems poorly reasoned in certain aspects. This argument could be strengthened by providing direct evidence that demonstrates a causality between the citizens' concern of health and their desire to by products of Nature Way, and by ruling out the confounding factors that serve to undermine such casuality. It could be further strengthened by ruling out the differences, especially the supply and demand of the markets, that may upset the analogy between the two places.