"为我所用"小组第八次作业argument65

rienziUID: 2402391

TOPIC: ARGUMENT65 - The following appeared in a memo from the president of a chain of cheese stores located throughout the United States.
"For many years all the stores in our chain have stocked a wide variety of both domestic and imported cheeses. Last year, however, the five best-selling cheeses at our newest store were all domestic cheddar cheeses from Wisconsin. Furthermore, a recent survey by Cheeses of the World magazine indicates an increasing preference for domestic cheeses among its subscribers. Since our company can reduce expenses by limiting inventory, the best way to improve profits in all of our stores is to discontinue stocking many of our varieties of imported cheese and concentrate primarily on domestic cheeses."

WORDS: 445          TIME: 00:30:00          DATE: 2008-4-2 11:21:25



    The arguer tells us that his stores stocked both domestic and imported cheeses in the past. He put out some evidences of a data in his store and a survey by a magazine to show that the cheese market today prefer domestic cheeses. By the evidences, the arguer concludes that their chain should stop stocking imported cheeses in order to improve profits. Through careful scrutiny, it is not difficult to find some fatal fallacies from the arguer's discussion.
    First of all, last year's data which shows that the five best-selling cheeses of the arguer's newest store are all domestic cheddar cheeses is not sufficient to show that the cheese market prefer domestic ones in the future. Because the data is from only one store of the chain and the selling conditions in other stores are unknown, it is highly likely that other stores in the chain did not sell domestic well. Given that the one newest store is from a single State of Wisconsin, the dietary habbits in other states are also unknown, which make the evidence more ineffective. Even if other stores took the same selling condition as the newest one, we can not make a similar conclusion as the arguer because the data is from the last year. The selling results of one year can not determine all the years in our future. From this point, the first evidence also failed to support the arguer's conclusion.
    Second of all, the arguer's second reason which is from the survey by Cheeses of the World magazine can not firmly support his conclusion either. Any detail of the survey is not presented by the arguer. We do not know the aim of the survey. We do not know what kind of people took part in the survey and we do not know how many persons participated in it. We can make an extreme hypothesis. If the magazine took an aim to improve domestic cheese market and all of those people who took part in the survey are fans of domestic cheeses and only a few of people participated, in this case, the result means nothing.
    Third of all, the arguer's conclusion also includes fallacy. There is not any evidence to show that the cost of imported cheeses is higher than those domestic ones. The arguer did not give us the data to show this. If domestic cheeses cost more than imported ones, which contradicts to our commonsense, the arguer's suggestion will lead an opposite result to his original view.
    Given my discussion above, the arguer failed to convince us his conclusion. More data and result of surveys should be presented by him to support his conclusion.