Argument117 决战830拍砖组™" 8月高频

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写完直接贴了。
提纲：一个survey；两个casual relationship；一个alternative cause
大家有空帮忙好好拍拍，刚开始写的第二篇！

117.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."

最近一次调查超过70％的回应者报告说他们被要求回家完成的工作量比以前多。由于Valu-Mart在过去并没有发现办公用品部销量的显著上升，我们应该利用这种在家办公的趋势，在所有Valu-Mart商店增加家庭办公机器比如打印机、小型复印机、碎纸机和传真机的存货。我们也将增加办公用品比如纸笔和钉书机的存货。通过这些变革，我们办公用品部将会成为我们商店中盈利最多的部门。
In this memo the business manager of Valu-Mart(VM) stores recommends increasing the stock of home office machines and the stock of office supplies. To support this recommendation, the evidence provided is that the results of a recent survey reported that over 70 percent of the respondents are required to take more work home with them from the workplace than they were in the past. on the basis of this line of reasoning the manager concludes that VM’s office-supply department will become the most profitable component of our stores with above changes. The argument, while it seems logical at first, contains several logical flaws,which render it unconvincing.
A threshold problem with the argument is that the reliability and generalizability of the survey are open to question. One must consider how broad the survey was. If the survey was limited a few employees of a certain corporation ,the results might be unreliable. It might be the case that the survey respondents tend to be the kind of people who excessively fits to work at home, perhaps they are the employees of an advertising agency, or perhaps the survey was conducted by internet. If so ,this fact would undermine the survey’s reliability.Hence,the generalization drawn might not apply to most people.
Even if the survey makes a sense, the argument remains questionable. For the survey results, the manager reasons further that people need more home office machines and office supplies than they were before .However, no evidence has been offered to establish the causal relationship between two events .It is possible that the employees might share the office machines by internet. Thus, they don’t need any home office machine or more office supplies.
In addition, the argument unfairly assumes that the correlation between the demand of home office machines and the profits of VM’s office-supply departments means that the demand of home office machines will necessarily increase the profits of VM’s office-supply departments. But the argument fails to provides the sufficient evidence to support the conclusion.
Finally, even if the manager could substance all of the foregoing assumption,the conclusion that VM’s office-supply department will become the most profitable component of our stores with above changes is still unwarranted .The manger never mention the profits of each department of VM stores. Furthermore, The manager even never mention other department in the argument. Therefore ,the conclusion is unconvincing unless the manager rule out the alternative causes.
In sum, the recommendation is not well supported. To strength it the manager must provide better evidence that the survey is reliable and generalizable . The argument could be improve by providing evidence that the correlation is indeed a causalrelationship.It could be further improved by ruling out he alternative causes.

[ Last edited by staralways on 2005-8-17 at 01:06 ]

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