The following appeared in a memo from the vice president of a company thatbuilds shopping malls around the country.
"The surface of a section of Route 101, paved just two years ago byGood Intentions Roadways, is now badly cracked with a number of dangerouspotholes. In another part of the state, a section of Route 40, paved by AppianRoadways more than four years ago, is still in good condition. In ademonstration of their continuing commitment to quality, Appian Roadwaysrecently purchased state-of-the-art paving machinery and hired a newquality-control manager. Therefore, I recommend hiring Appian Roadways to constructthe access roads for all our new shopping malls. I predict that our Appianaccess roads will not have to be repaired for at least four years."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to beanswered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have thepredicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions wouldhelp to evaluate the recommendation.
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In this memo, the vice president avers that we should choose AppianRoadways rather than Good Intentions Roadways to construct the access roads forthe new shopping mall. To support it, the author provides evidence such as thecomparison between Route 101 and Route 40, the newly paving machinery of Appianand so on. These are seemingly good and persuasive, but there are manyquestions remained to be answered, otherwise the argument can be easilyweakened.
In the first place, the vice president claims that a part of the roadpaved by Good Intentions was badly cracked in two years while another part byAppian is pretty good now. By now, readers will ask whether the milieu that thetwo roads are in is the same. It's quite likely that the section badly crackedin Route 101 is always under tough or extreme weather conditions but thewell-being part of Route 40 is always not. It's also probable that Route 101 isalways run over by big and heavy trucks while Route 40 isn't. Furthermore, theauthor also doesn't say something about the repair for the road, what if theRoute 101 has never been repaired in these four years, but Route 40 has justbeen repaired recently. Unless the author answers these questions and excludesall the possibilities that can weaken the argument, his suggestion in this memocan be easily repudiated.
Furthermore, the author of this argument also says that Appian Roadwaysbought a new state-of-the-art machinery and hired a new quality-control managerrecently, so Appian is better than before. This evidence is really weirdbecause it cannot clarify anything to us. Will the new machinery be used in thepaving process of the shopping mall? Is this newly hired quality-controlmanager more efficient and effective than the former one? Doesn't GoodIntentions Roadways buy some new machines better than Appian? These questionsare all need to be answered, otherwise, the basic assumptions this deductionbased are totally wrong. And we'll not take his suggestion any further.
In addition, even though the company Appian is better than Good Intentionsin route-paving, there is no reason to believe that Appian can also do betterin paving access roads of shopping malls. Maybe Appian is only apt at pavingfreeway which is always run over by big trucks, but it's not so experienced inpaving roads by tiles. And we don't know whether there are other better choicesother than only these two companies. To improve his argument, the author has toprovide more information to argue against these doubts and only in this way canwe consider his recommendation and take it into practice.
In retrospect, the author's argument seems good. However, when wescrutinize it, we will find quite a lot of flaws, and based on these flaws wecan ask many questions. If these questions are not answered by providing moreinformation, the whole argument will become less convincing and we will notconsider his suggestion any more. | 
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发表于 2013-1-9 15:40:18
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