【0710G 五一互助小组】作业 A17

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17The following appeared in a letter to the editor of the Walnut Grove town newspaper.

"Walnut Grove's town council has advocated switching from EZ Disposal (which has had the contract for trash collection services in Walnut Grove for the past ten years) to ABC Waste, because EZ recently raised its monthly fee from $2,000 to $2,500 a month, whereas ABC's fee is still $2,000. But the town council is mistaken; we should continue using EZ. EZ collects trash twice a week, while ABC collects only once. Moreover, EZ—which, like ABC, currently has a fleet of 20 trucks—has ordered additional trucks. Finally, EZ provides exceptional service: 80 percent of respondents to last year's town survey agreed that they were 'satisfied' with EZ's performance."

In this argument, the speaker recommends that Walnut Grove’s town should continue using EZ. In support of the conclusion, the speaker points out that the EZ collects trash twice a week, while ABC collects only once. Moreover, EZ has ordered additional tucks. Plausible as it may seem, the argument is unconvincing for several critical flaws.

The major problem of the argument is that the speaker assumes that it is really necessary for the trash company to collect trash twice a week. The speaker provides no evidence to substantiate that the town has numerous trash and must be collected twice a week. It is entirely possible that collecting once a week is enough. If choose EZ to collect trash, there might be a waste of money. Lacking such evidence to provide the need frequency of collecting trash, the speaker cannot justifiably draw any firm conclusion whatsoever.

Another flaw that weakens the logic of the argument is that the speaker observes that EZ has ordered additional tucks, and then concludes that the town should choose EZ instead of ABC. However, there is no cause-and-effect relationship between ordering additional trucks and providing better service. Perhaps the additional trucks might be used in other department of EZ, not the collection of trash. And maybe the additional trucks can be used in another city’s service, not the Walnut Grove’s town. Without ruling these scenarios, the speaker cannot reasonably rely on these statistics to conclude that EZ can provide better service than ABC.

In addition, the argument depends on the data form last year’s town survey, and the speaker cites that 80 percent of respondents agreed that they are satisfied with EZ’s performance. First, the speaker does not provide the total number of people who participate in the survey. If the number of survey is not large enough, the survey cannot representative of the town. The smaller the sample, the less reliable the survey’s conclusion. Second, the speaker provides no evidence that the survey’s respondents are representative of the overall group of people. Lacking such evidence, it is entirely possible that people incline to respond are more willing to respond to the survey than other people are.

In sum, to lend credibility of the conclusion, the speaker should provide more sufficient evidence and establish more useful cause-and-effect relationships. Moreover, it would be necessary for the speaker to rule out all abovementioned possibilities before we could better evaluate the argument.