15The 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"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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."
The argument, based on unfound assumptions and dubious evidence, lays a claim that the customers live in southwestern United States are satisfied with margarine instead of butter. To bolster the recommendation, the writer advocates that the result of the survey suggests that 98 percent of customers are happy with the change. The author also points out that even given margarine instead, the customers do not complain about it. Nevertheless, from a logical perspective, the argument is in effect hardly convincing due to several critical flaws after a close scrutiny, albeit it appears credible at a cursory glance.
In the first place, the author just simply owns all contributions to that the number of complain are equal to the number of unsatisfied customers. In this situation, there are only 12 percent of customers do not like margarine. It is entirely possible that there are more complain about this issue, but the customers fear of troubles and then they do not go to these restaurants any more. Meanwhile, the author also can not convince me because we do not know how many customers in this survey. If there are only ten people in this survey, 12percent will account for a considerable number. Hence, without ruling out as well as account for the other possible scenarios, the author can not come to the conclusion that the customers have little complain about butter has been replaced by margarine.
In the second place, even if the writer might be able to provide that there are large base number in this survey and the complain number equal to unsatisfied number, the argument still remains illconceived. The author rests on the further assumption that the customers who ask for butter do not complain when they are given margarine instead. There is no evidence to support that if the servers tell the truth. Even the spoken by servers may substantiate customers’ little complain, the author do not give our if the survey made by sign of random sampling nor specific way how the survey was conducted. What's more, there is another probability that the customers do not want to make more troubles . Therefore, the argument is definitely flawed unless the author can convince me if the servers tell the truth and if no complains represent for liking the margarine.
Before I come to my conclusion, I would like to point out the last flaw involved in this argument. Granted that the evidence turns out to substantiate the argument, the author suffers from the "either or" presumption. The author cites that these customers do not distinguish butter from margarine. The other possible reasoning is that they use the term "butter" to refer to both of them. The writer omits to inform us whether there are other possibilities. Maybe the customer can distinguish both of them ,but they like all of them, so they do not complain them .Pursing this line of reasoning, it proved to be the author’s responsibility to mull over the assumptions and then furnish it with cogent evidence so as to pave the way for tenable argument.
To sum up, it seem precipitous to jump to the conclusion that the customer can not distinction both of them. And even they can distinguish them, they do really not to complain. In order to draw an efficient conclusion, the author must provide more detailed statistics showing, take every consideration into account, and make the reason more convincingly. Therefore, if the argument had better evaluated the conclusion, I would to know more information about the base number in this complaint and about if there are no other possibilities in this survey beside not distinguish or misunderstand. Including given information discussed above, the argument would have more logically and thorough acceptable.
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发表于 2012-2-3 12:51:05
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