argument138 fantasy 互改群 jiajiajia

jiajiajiaUID: 2128160

138The following report appeared in a memo from the vice president of the Southside Transportation Authority.
485 words 大家多拍啊
"We should abandon our current five-year plan to purchase additional buses to serve the campus of Southside University, because students there are unlikely to use them. Consider the results of the recent campaign sponsored by the Environmental Club at Southside University: in a program on the campus radio station, the club asked students to call in and pledge that they would commute to school by bus instead of by automobile at least one day per week. Only ten percent of the students called in and pledged. In view of the campaign's lack of success, we can assume that the bus service we currently offer will continue to be sufficient to serve the university."

------------------------------
In this argument the author concludes that the bus service they currently offer will continue to be sufficient to serve the Southside University and they should abandon their current five-year plan to purchase additional buses to serve the campus of the university. To justify this conclusion the author conclude that the students there are unlikely to use them base on the results of the recent campaign sponsored by the environmental club at Southside University, which asked students to call in and pledge that they would commute to school by bus instead of by automobile at least one day per week ,but only ten percent of the students called in and pledged. This argument is flawed in several critical respects.

     First of all, the author falsely concludes that the failure result of the campaign can lead to the consideration that they should abandon their current plan. Usually, it is the university administration not the environmental club that knows the use of the buses of the entire university. Only the administration knows weather the campus need more buses and the bus service company should enquire the information from them. Thus, without giving the authoritative information about the use of the buses, I simply cannot accept the vice president’s conclusion.

     Secondly, even assume that the program sponsored by the environmental club knows what the university concern about. The author provides no evidence that the survey’s result is statistically reliable. It is entirely impossible that not all the students listen to the program and even the students who listen to it not are a sufficiently large sample of all the students or they can not representative of the whole. Besides, since we are not informed the percentage of the students who participate in the program, ten percent of the students could not be a valid data. Thus, lacking fully describing the sample, the author cannot make a convincing argument based on that program.  

     Finally, even if the data is valid, weather the students would commute to school by bus instead of by automobile at least one day per week is not the only reason why they abandon their plan. Perhaps additional uses would be required. For instance, perhaps there are more requirements in the bus because of the increasing number of students who live at home, and perhaps the university recently holds many important competitions or large-scale conferences, which need more buses. In short, without sufficient evidence that the requirement of the buses to serve the campus is enough, the Author cannot confidently draw any general conclusion that the bus service they currently offer will continue to be adequate to serve the university.

    In sum, as it stands, the argument is wholly unpersuasive. To strengthen it, the author must enquire the information about bus service from the university administration and provide the reliable data about the use. Also, they should find out enough and all-around information concerning other use of the bus service.

[ Last edited by staralways on 2005-8-22 at 14:30 ]