argumen186【FF小组】 by duyuan3377 第九次模考

duyuan3377UID: 2415765

TOPIC: ARGUMENT186 - The following is a recommendation from the director of personnel to the president of Professional Printing Company.

"In a recent telephone survey of automobile factory workers, older employees were less likely to report that having a supervisor present increases their productivity. Among workers aged 18 to 29, 27 percent said that they are more productive in the presence of their immediate supervisor, compared to 12 percent for those aged 30 or over, and only 8 percent for those aged 50 or over. Clearly, if our printing company hires mainly older employees, we will increase productivity and save money because of the reduced need for supervisors."
WORDS: 410          TIME: 00:29:23          DATE: 2008-12-15 9:24:56

In the argument, the arguer recommends that the printing company should hire mainly older employees in order to increase productivity and save money because of the reduced need for supervisors. The argument is mainly based on a telephone survey of automobile factory workers. Although the argument sounds quite reasonable at first thought, yet a series of logical flaws might seriously undermine the argument.

The threshold problem of the argument is that the survey is questionable. How many workers are surveyed by telephone? Are they representative enough for all workers in that automobile factory? It is entirely possible that a lot of workers without telephone might be ignored in this survey. And they only constitute an sufficiently small sample. Also, the sample might be unrepresentative of the workers' conditions. Even if the survey is statistically reliable, the arguer may commit a fallacy called "false analogy" between the automobile factory and Professional Printing Company. The arguer assumes that the survey drawn from the automobile factory is applicable to Professional Printing Company. However, he fails to provide any evidence to support this assumption. Thus, in the face of questionable survey, the arguer cannot convince me to accept his recommendation.  

In addition, the arguer groundlessly assumes that workers have the same productivity regardless of their age. But there is no guarantee that this is the case, nor does he provide any evidence to substantiate the assumption. It is highly possible that the older the worker is, the lower his productivity would be. Without considering and ruling out the possibility, the arguer cannot draw any firm conclusion.

Last but not least, whether this recommendation can lead to high productivity and low expense is not reliable. Even assuming that workers have the same productivity, this method is unsure to save money. The arguer fails to provide information about the cost of supervisors and the revenue because of increasing productivity. It is likely that the cost of supervisors is much lower than the cost of hiring older workers.

To sum up, the argument lacks credibility because the evidence cited in the analysis does not lend strong support to what the argument recommends. To solidify the argument, the arguer would have to do a more scientific survey and to provide more information about the different productivity between different kinds of workers. Besides, in order to increase productivity and save money, there are other effective methods to take, such as buying new facilities, more qualified training and building new plants.