A7. The following is a memorandum to the president of the EZ-Manufacturing Company from the manager of cafeteria services.
“Offering pizza in our cafeteria has proved extremely profitable. To further increase our profits from pizza sales, we should switch to PDQ Pizzeria to supply our pizza. PDQ pizza was twice voted the ‘best pizza’ in the neighboring town of Hamiltonia in on-line surveys of Hamiltonia Gazette readers. The PDQ branch in our town currently sells pizza for only slightly more than our cafeteria does and has begun offering free daily delivery. Switching to PDQ pizza will clearly improve satisfaction with our cafeteria and hence increase the cafeteria’s profits.”
According to the argument, the author recommends that the cafeteria should offer PDQ pizza to further profitability. The assumption underlying the argument is that pizza is responsible for the profit increase of the cafeteria. To buttress his conclusion, the author quotes on-line survey result showing people favor PDQ pizza. Moreover, the author claims that PDQ is highly popular in the neighboring town. The author's reasoning is biased for the following reasons.
To begin with, the author illogically assumes that offering pizza in the cafeteria causes profit increase. No information is offered to substantiate the crucial assumption. Many other factors, however, may help to explain the phenomenon. For example, the profit may increase because of the successful advertising strategy. Or, it is possible that people like this cafeteria because of its superior service. Any of the scenarios, is true, would invalidate the easy assumption offered.
Second, the author commits the fallacy of "all things equal". The success of PDQ in the neighboring town does not necessarily indicate a triumph in this town, because the two towns are not analogous. Virtually, the differences of the two towns apparently outweigh the similarities. It is possible that people in this town do not favor pizza. Or it is possible that PDQ pizza in this town is not well-known. Neglecting these potentialities, the author reaches an unwarranted conclusion.
Last but not lease, the author quotes the result of a on-line survey to solidify his claim that people PDQ is popular among all people. The representativeness of the survey, however, is open to doubt because the author fails to provide sufficient information to convince us that the respondents represents all people. If the people who always surf online are people more likely to eat PDQ pizza, the validity of the survey will be undermined. Besides, the author offers no information about the methodology of the survey. If the respondents are not credible, or if they are not selected randomly from the spectrum, the attitude reflected in the survey would be unrepresentative. These potential methodology problems, if true, would greatly undermine the credibility of the survey.
To sum up, it is unwise for a prudent manager to follow the proposal solely on the basis of the analysis presented above. To substantiate his recommendation, the author has to offer more concrete date to convince us that offering pizza will surely stimulate the profits. Moreover, I will still highly suspect the credibility of the conclusion unless the author finally rule out all the potentialities analyzed above
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