argument117 smile-B 第六次作业 球狠拍，有拍必回

dychangfengUID: 2216148

TOPIC: ARGUMENT117 - The following is a memo from the business manager of Valu-Mart stores.

"Over 70 percent of the respondents to a recent survey reported that they are required to take more work home with them from the workplace than they were in the past. Since Valu-Mart has not seen impressive sales in its office-supply departments in the past, we should take advantage of this work-at-home trend by increasing at all Valu-Mart stores the stock of home office machines such as printers, small copy machines, paper shredders, and fax machines. We will also increase stock of office supplies such as paper, pens, and staplers. With these changes, our office-supply departments will become the most profitable component of our stores."
WORDS: 448          TIME: 0:40:00          DATE: 2006-8-2

In this argument, just according to a study about the quantity of work required to bring home from workplace, the manager comes to a conclusion that their office-supply departments will become the most profitable compartment of their stores. Well, this assertion seems logical at first glance. Yet it can not undergo thorough examinations.

To begin with, profit is a matter of revenue and expense. Yet the manager provides us no information about the revenue or expense, or the competition circumstances. We can equal imagine that the people in this place have less tendency to use office machines and that is why there the sales of office-supply department has not got an impressive increasing. It is also possible that the expenses of this department are too much higher contrasting with the revenue. Also, there is a possibility that the market of office-supply in that place has been saturated and it is no use to get more profits by increasing the store of them.  Without specific information like these, we can not draw any validated conclusion.

What's more, the management reaches a hasty conclusion that the office-supply departments will be more profitable than other departments. In order to compare the profits of two or more departments, we need the concrete information of these departments, such as the overall expenses and revenues, the number of employees and the hours they spend on work every week in departments we investigated. Apparently, we get nothing of these in addition to there is a possibility that office- supply will be more profitable. How can we compare the profits only with the knowledge of one aspect?

Last but not the least; regardless other aspects that affect the profit, the author's evidence lend little support to his or her assertion for the study upon which the conclusion relies is questionable. For one thing, lacking concrete information about the respondents and the size of this sample and how this research was conducted, we can not draw any useful conclusion from it. It may be possible that only 50 persons in one company respond to this research, and by coincidence, the company was one of those companies that need its employees bringing their work home. Another thing is that even this study is effective and representative to prove that there are more people bringing their work home. It is not necessary for them that they must use more office machines. Without ruling out all this scenarios, the study can not validate the manager's assertion.

To sum up, although seeming rational at first glance, the author's contention really needed more information to support. And I will not make any judgment before the author provide sufficient evidence about his conclusion.
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