Argument65 【CSMY作文互改小组】第三组第三次作业

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Argument65

The following appeared in a memo from the president of a chain of cheese stores located throughout the United States. "For many years all the stores in our chain have stocked a wide variety of both domestic and imported cheeses. Last year, however, the five best-selling cheeses at our newest store were all domestic cheddar cheeses from Wisconsin. Furthermore, a  recent survey by Cheeses of the World magazine indicates an increasing preference for domestic cheeses among its subscribers. Since our company can reduce expenses by limiting inventory, the best way to improve profits in all of our stores is to discontinue stocking many of our varieties of imported cheese and concentrate primarily on domestic cheeses."

提纲：
1。销量榜前五是国内的这一证据有问题，不能推出结论
2。调查的结果不可靠，也不能得出作者的结论。
3。要提高盈利，未必要放弃国外的奶酪，可以有其他办法


In this argument, the author recommends giving up the sale of imported cheeses and focus on domestic ones in order to improve the profit by reduce the cost of imported cheeses sale. His recommendation is based on a best-selling list on which the top five are all domestic ones and a survey of World magazine. However, his conclusion is not convincing because of the  questionable evidence as well as his groundless reasoning.

In the first place, it is too hasty to conclude that they should begin to stop the sale of imported cheeses due to the evidence that no imported cheeses are on that best-selling list. We should notice that the best-selling list just comes from a newest store, while the company has a chain of cheese stores in throughout US. The sales of this newest store probably are not  representative of the general preference of American people. It is entirely possible that the local people have a special preference of cheeses from Wisconsin or even the store does not serve imported cheeses at all. Without the evidence of the representativeness of store's report, it cannot be the reason to stop the sales of imported cheeses.

In the second place, the survey of the World magazine also suffers from several logical fallacies which make it unsubstantiated to lead to author's recommendation. Firstly, respondents of the survey are the subscriber of World magazine. These respondents may not be typical cheese customer even possibly some of them dose not know much about cheeses. Secondly, since the World magazine is not designed for cheeses, which mean its editors may not have certain expertise of cheeses. Thus, their questionnaire on cheeses is probably incomplete or inappropriate so that the result of it would be also biased. Thirdly, the result of this survey does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that people does not like imported cheeses. The respondents just grow a bit more preference of domestic ones. They probably like imported cheeses very much at the same time.

In the third place, even though the best-selling list and the survey are representative, it is still not necessary to discontinue stocking the foreign cheeses. Since the evidence and survey just reveal an increasing inclination of the preference of domestic cheeses, discontinuing the sales of imported cheeses would probably be detrimental to profits, if the sales of imported ones still occupy a large share of market. Maybe the best measure to improve the profit is to reorganize the types and quantity of imported cheeses according to the sales of them rather than giving it up totally.

Hence, it is unfair to lay all blames from the evidence cited in the argument on the sales of foreign cheeses. To justify the recommendation, the author should pay attention the representativeness of his evidences and broaden his mind to find the fundamental factor to improve the profit.