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15) The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants.
Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. This change, however, has had little impact on our customers. In fact, only about 2 percent of customers have complained, indicating that an average of 98 people out of 100 are happy with the change. Furthermore, many servers have reported that a number of customers who ask for butter do not complain when they are given margarine instead. Clearly, either these customers do not distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine.
Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.
The memorandum said that butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southeastern United States, has had little impact on customers. In order to support his argument, the arguer cites only 2 percent od customers have complained about the replacement, and a number of customers who ask for butter do not complain when they are given margarine instead. However, under careful examination, this memorandum reveals several fallacious flaws, and also many alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation. They are analysed below.
To begin with, we are not given much more clear information about number of the survey. Maybe, samples are not so representative to whole people, or the number of samples are too small to represent. If they just had 50 people investigated, only one of them complained about the replacement, the conclusion that "an average of 98 people out of 100 are happy with the change" is not so cogent. The arguer just generalize the survey without enough rationality and scientific. More clear and cogent information is needed to support the conclusion of survey.
Secondly, the reason why only 2 percent of customers have complained need to be ask. Maybe, there were more people who complained about the replacement, but only very few of them were recorded by Happy Pancake House's stuffs, so we just see only "2 percent of customers have complained". Another reason for this few complaint is though many people do angry about the margarine's replacement, they do not know how and where to complain. They endure this replacement unintentionally. Once they are told about the information how to complain, and the place to complain, very heated critics and complaints are followed.
Thirdly, many alternative explanations are available, when to solve the question why only few people who ask for butter do not complain, when they are given margarine instead. It may not because of they do not distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine. It is more likely that getting margarine from Happy Pancake for many people is their first time. They just want to taste some thing new, so there is no complaint. Moreover, the arguer's words using "a number of customers" is not a clear expression. Two people is "a number of customers" ,and three five six are also. We can not know the real number about the people who do not complaint, more or less, and fail to recognize the whole image. "A number of customers"is an confusing and useless expression.
To sum up, this memorandum from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants, is fallacious and untenable. In order to give us a cogent argument, the arguer needs to take alternative explanations into consideration, and constitute some reasonable relationship between fact and conclusion. To better strength the argument, offering much more information which is more rational and clear is needed. |
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发表于 2012-3-6 18:16:27
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