Argument159 [大杀四方第三次作业]

yanglcUID: 2265921

TOPIC: ARGUMENT159 - The nation of Claria covers a vast physical area. But despite wide geographic differences, many citizens are experiencing rising costs of electricity. A recent study of household electric costs in Claria found that families who cooled their houses with fans alone spent more on electricity than did families using air conditioners alone for cooling. However, those households that reported using both fans and air conditioners spent less on electricity than those households that used either fans or air conditioners alone. Thus, the citizens of Claria should follow the study's recommendation and use both air conditioners and fans in order to save money on electricity.
WORDS: 389          TIME: AM 12:16:43          DATE: 2007-1-22

Before the recommendation of the study taken into action, the evidence given in the argument should be examined from several angels. The researcher who conducted the study seem to have assumed that the way the households use to cool their houses has a lot to do with the cost of electricity without examining other possible factors that have affected on the usage of electricity.

First of all, there might be other electric devices in the families in Claria, such as television, refrigerator and wash machine. However, the arguer provides nothing about the condition of the households participating in the study. Hence, the validation of the study is doubted and nobody can get the conclusion that using both air conditioners and fans can reduce the cost of electricity based on the poor organized study.

Admitted that the cooling electricity makes up most of the whole use of electricity, it is also arbitrary to draw a recommendation according to the study. As we offered, the nation of Claria covers a vast physical area, so the temperature and humidity of different part of Claria maybe totally different. In other words, we do not know about the specific climate condition of the three kinds of households mentioned in the study---- maybe the families which use fans alone to cool their houses locate a place where is extremely hot and wet, so they need to have the fans run the whole day. The argument neglects the very important reason of the difference of cost on electricity.

Another fallacy the argument suffers is that the arguer does not consider anything about the price of electricity. As everyone know, the way people use to cooling their houses are always accustomed in a place and do not change sharply with the time. Therefore, the arguer fails to prove that why the cost of electricity rose. It might be the case that the local government raised the price of electricity year by year because of the rise of price of the fuel or the cost of electric transport and uphold rose continuously. The speaker only focuses on the consumers but ignores the producers, which makes the argument questionable.

In all, a successful study should focus on ever aspects of the related affairs in order to get a reliable conclusion, but the study in the argument fails to do that.