Argument15~求批改~~

zyq645

ARGUMENT 15

"Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States.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.

提纲：
1.2% customers complain & not complain  攻击数据：因果性，不喜欢不一定要表达出来
2.Conducted by Servers  攻击：数据来源可能有问题,服务员不一定上报
3.Not distinguish or mistake 攻击：抽样问题. 有的人很敏感，但是就是喜欢人造黄油，觉得比较健康，没有饱和脂肪酸。(= =这段写得最痛苦了,很容易和第一段重叠)

The author concludes that replacing butter with margarine have limited negative influence on Happy Pancake House's customers by reciting several statistics, such as the proportion of customers that dissatisfies with the replacement. However, the evidence presented is far from sufficient to justify the manager's assertion because of negligence on alternate explanations.

Firstly, the manager speculated that the majority of customers are delighted to the change, grounded on the data that merely 2 percent of customers expressed dissatisfaction with the substitute with margarine, which erroneously ignores other plausible explanations. Psychologically, there exists an invisible but remarkable gap between what people express and what people really think, indicating that the customers, who did not complain, were still likely to be discontent with the replacement. One reasonable explanation is that they were intended to hurt the waiters or waitresses feeling. Similarly, the author are not conscious that they repeated the identical mistakes in citing that fewer costumers complained while giving margarine instead. To preclude these possible explanation, the author are supposed to provide more persuasive evidence to substantiate that people are not concerned about the change from butter to margarine.

Additionally, the conclusion is bound to be undermined if the author cannot exclude the following possibility: that not all servers informed the manager when receiving complaints as required could be attributable to the small number of reports. It's because that the primary information source, from whom the speaker obtained the feedback concerning butter, was the servers, which is far from suffice to guarantee the credibility of the survey. It is highly possible that several servers did not report all complaints regarding butter because they were unwilling to incur unnecessary trouble. If so, the statistics do not precisely reflect consumers' responses to the measure of using margarine. Consequently, the manager are obliged to executive more surveys to affirm the information rendered by servers.

Eventually, in the memorandum the manager mistakenly applied an either-or statement without considering other rational explanations that is doomed to challenge the argument. Logically, selecting margarine as surrogate for butter could bring about positive impact on customers rather than having little influence. The sample chosen presumably includes those who believe that margarine, containing unsaturated fat, is healthier and preferable. This group of respondents, though being sensitive about the difference between margarine and butter or understanding what the term "butter" stands for, will still not complain about the replacement. Besides, there exists some people just not minding what Happy Pancake House use. Therefore, it is imprudent to state that either these customers do not distinguish butter from margarine or they misuse the term "butter".

Conclusively, to consolidate the argument, the manager are compelled to offer more persuasive evidence and perform more surveys to acquire accurate comments about the alteration. Any slapdash statement could breed a great loss in consumer, especially in such a competitive industry, which is absolutely not favorable.

zyq645

文中author 和manager后面，你都用了are，不知道是无意的还是错误。
这种alternative explanation的题目，感觉不太好写，跟其他的类型界限不太清晰，因为像指出assumption的题目，或者evidence的题目，最后同样也有指出其他的可能性的表述，所以在本题中，是否只需写其他的解释而不再推理质疑题目的推理，我不敢确定，但我建议这步最好还是写上去。LZ的体会是怎样的呢
另外，文章语言表达上进步较大，加油

-- by 会员 竹林中人 (2012/11/12 22:22:39)

感觉还是写上去比较保险= =不然太凶险了

竹林中人

文中author 和manager后面，你都用了are，不知道是无意的还是错误。
这种alternative explanation的题目，感觉不太好写，跟其他的类型界限不太清晰，因为像指出assumption的题目，或者evidence的题目，最后同样也有指出其他的可能性的表述，所以在本题中，是否只需写其他的解释而不再推理质疑题目的推理，我不敢确定，但我建议这步最好还是写上去。LZ的体会是怎样的呢
另外，文章语言表达上进步较大，加油