AA013第一次写AA希望大家提意见

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Date: 2005-7-9

Time: 10:30:21

Argument No.13

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Question:

The following appeared as part of a campaign to sell advertising time on a local radio station to local businesses.

`The Cumquat Cafe began advertising on our local radio station this year and was delighted to see its business increase by 10 percent over last year's totals. Their success shows you how you can use radio advertising to make your business more profitable.~

Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.

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The local radio station asserts that businesses can make  more profit by using its radio advertising. It cites as evidence that The Cumquat Cafe, which advertised on the radio, increase business by 10%. The station's argument sounds very interesting and compelling. However, after serious considersations, we know the argument suffers from its fallacy of reasoning, unwanranteed assumption and doubtful statistics annd therefore is groundless.

First of all, the local radio station attributes the business increase of a cafe to the cafe's advertising on the radio. It commits a fallacy of casual oversimplification. We can't simply reason that the occurance of business incrase is the effect of the cause of cafe's putting advertisements on radio. There are many other factors that can influence the Cafe's busiess. For example, the cafe can easily increase its business by making a new type of tasty coffee.

Secondly, the station makes unwarranted assumptions. Why businessess other than cafe can make more profitable by advertising on the radio? There is no study that other business target the same consumers as the Cafe and therefore can make more money likfe the Cafe. What happens if the major audience of the radio are not the targeted consumer of a certain business who advertises on the radio? Apparently It will definitely loss profit by spending money on useless adertisement.

Last but not least, the station's statistics of 10% increase by advertisting is at least doubtful. It doesn't provide any detailed statistics that indicates the 10% increase of business were contributed by consumers who listened the radio and advertisement and then spent money in that Cafe.

To sum up, the radio station's claim that businesses can make more money through its advertisement is not convincing at all. We can only consider its offer if it provides more detailed information such as its major audience, their preference of spending money,  numbers of customers that it can attract for businesses and so forth, to rule out our major concerns on the logical fallacy, gratuitous assumption and doubtful statitics.

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第一次写，没用摸板，提前了五分钟完成，但个人感觉论点不是很清晰，用词造句比较有限。希望大家提提意见。另外，象这种质量大概是个什么水平？

怎么AA和AI 问的问题一样呢？第三个论点要展开一下。提前3分钟就好了，五分钟浪费了。我看的不是特别仔细，因为觉得没有什么大问题而且以你的水平应该都是比较马虎的问题。加油啊！GG可不可以多参加下提纲讨论呢？感觉你很有经验，可以给我们提供些例子呵呵。