永不言弃小组第七次作业argument161 by 水孩子

cuttlefishwangUID: 2592092

TOPIC: ARGUMENT161 - In a study of reading habits of Leeville citizens conducted by the University of Leeville, most respondents said they preferred literary classics as reading material. However, a follow-up study conducted by the same researchers found that the type of book most frequently checked out of each of the public libraries in Leeville was the mystery novel. Therefore, it can be concluded that the respondents in the first study had misrepresented their reading habits.
WORDS: ***          TIME: 00:30:00          DATE: 2009-2-10 21:41:35

By comparing two different study about the readers' interests of books among Leevile citizens, the speaker claims that the respondents in the first study is not accurate. To substantiate the conclusion, the speaker cites that the those testers in the first study claims the books they like is different from those borrowed by readers from each of the public libraries. The argument has several critical flaws for three reasons.
To begin with, no exact information about the total number of the sample was mentioned, and that we have no idea about the tester's background, their knowledge structure, and what are they, which play a important role in the answers. That is to say, the answer of a worker who don't have much literary knowledge will be totally different from a university student who loves literature very much. Without providing samples' information, taking the study's result seriously would be unwarranted.
Secondly, whether there are the same people take part in the two studies is vague in the argument. It is entirely possible that the first time who participate in the study prefer literary classic books while those who take part in the second study like mystery books at the same time, since they are different groups. Even those people in the first study are the same as the in the second study, there exist some possibilities that they have some special progress about mysteries and in order to know more about it, they borrow more mystery books during particular a period of time. In addition, what makes the larger number of mystery books can due to the content itself. That's to say, many people like to buy literary classic books while just borrow mystery books from library to scan and turn them back in a short time. Or that reading mystery books takes a relatively short time compare to reading literary classic books.
Secondly, the speaker misleadingly distinct literary classic from mystery. Admittedly, there are many differences between them in a larger scale in some progress, however, the speaker fail to provide what the standard of the two different kinds of books is and thus make the result unsure . In this case, perhaps those people who consider their books as literary classic one while library classify it into mystery books in which condition certainly lead to the increase rate of mystery books borrowed.
To sum up, the argument fail to convince me that those people in the first study provide wrong information due to the exact number of mystery books and literary classics books. To support his conclusion, the speaker should provide more comprehensive information about the actual number of mystery books and literary classics books library lent out ,and that the number of the samples, and that if they are the same group.