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3) The following appeared as a letter to the editor from a Central Plaza store owner.
Over the past two years, the number of shoppers in Central Plaza has been steadily decreasing while the popularity of skateboarding has increased dramatically. Many Central Plaza store owners believe that the decrease in their business is due to the number of skateboard users in the plaza. There has also been a dramatic increase in the amount of litter and vandalism throughout the plaza. Thus, we recommend that the city prohibit skateboarding in Central Plaza. If skateboarding is prohibited here, we predict that business in Central Plaza will return to its previously high levels.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The recommendation of the owner of the Central Plaza store to stop the decreasing business of them seems quite unwarranted. The letter attributed the the skateboard players to the reduction,and assumed that it is them who brought about the litter and vandalism throughout the plaza. The process of this reasoning is questionable and vulnerable.
To begin with, one could raise his or her question fairly about what the average number of the skateboard users in the Central Plaza everyday. A list of specific numbers are needed to make the phrase "dramatic increase" clear enough. In another word, dramatic increase could have occurred in a quite small overall number. For example, the number of the skateboard users can be risen from 5 to 15, which is also a "dramatic increase". But such a small sum number will largely weaken the claim that the skateboard users should be primarily responsible for that decrease. Hence the recommendation could result in vain by prohibiting the skateboard in the Central Plaza.
However, it can be argued that sometimes individual can make a difference in the process of history, let alone a small group of people. Thus the probability that the users of skateboard deteriorate the business environment of the Central Plaza remains. Another question needed to evaluate the recommendation is what the skateboard users actually do in the Central Plaza. It is natural to assume that the skateboarding is taken place in the plaza due to their shared interest. But what else? The fact present in the letter fail to provide enough evidence to correlate, the litter, vandalism or other factors that could do harm to the business atmosphere, to the activities of the skateboard users. Maybe it is the stereotype of the store owners to make this judgement. Moreover, the owner is blind to other possible positive effect of the skateboarders' activity. It can be reasonably inferred that those skateboard players are the potential customers of these stores in the plaza and therefore, on the contrary, they may contribute to sustain the business of these complaining store owners. So it will be unwise to ban their activity in the plaza, which can even make things worse.
More importantly, besides the prohibition which may be useless or counterproductive, other considerations are desperately needed to help the business in Central Plaza to return to its previously high level. For instance, how does the economic environment going, both in global and local? Any turbulence of economy in global or local scale are generally assumed to have some influence on the business of every seller in the globalized market. Should the store owners been insightful enough to keep track of the economic environment and able to make adjustments to their business, it ought to be much better than focusing on the trivial, possibly irrelevant things such as skateboarders, litter or vandalism.
To sum up, the recommendation does give possible accounts for the decrease of the business in Central Plaza. Whereas there is too insufficient evidence to build up certain relations between the prohibition and the recovery. In addition, other factors and possible solutions are not considered in the recommendation. Considering my questions above and adding more specific evidence shall make this recommendation more reasonable and convincing. |
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发表于 2012-3-3 22:06:22
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