[求助]4天后考试，随便拿了OG12的一个题目练手，写得很差，请NN指教

gerryho

题目：

The following appeared as part of an annual report sent to stockholders by Olympic Foods, a processor of frozen foods:

 

“Over time, the cost of processing go down because as organizations learn how to do things better, the become more efficient. In color film processing, for example, the cost of a 3-by-5-inch print fell from 50 cents for five-day services in 1970 to 20 cents for one-day service in 1984. The same principle applies to the processing of food. And since Olympic Foods will soon celebrate its 25th birthday, we can expect that out long experience will enable us to minimize cost and thus maximize profit.”

Discuss how well reasoned ... etc.

文章：

  

    In this argument, the author concludes that the food processing cost of Olympic Food will be minimized thus the profit will be maximized in 1984. To support this conclusion, the author points out that the film processing cost fell from 50 cents in 1970 to 20 cents in 1984. In addition, the author reasons that Olympic Food has experienced a long history which is able to help the company in lowering the cost. However, this argument will suffer from the following critical flaws.

 

    First, the author rest on the assumption that food processing is analogous to film processing in all respects. This assumption is weak, since although there are points of comparison between food processing and film processing, there is much dissimilarity as well. For example, new technology in film processing enables everyone to develop their own photos in photo stores, even in convenient stores. However, since the technology was not mature, the price was relative hight in early 1970s. In 1980s, due to the technological improvement in film processing itself and large scale production of raw materials used for film processing, the price of film processing went down dramatically. But unfortunately the food processing industry hasn’t experienced such improvement since 1974, and the processing cost didn’t go down during the 1970 to 1984. What’s more, the Prices of raw material of food, including crops and meats, were influenced by the price of agricultural commodities both in the stock market and in the future market, where the prices were highly unpredictable.

    On the other hand, food processing is and ancient technology when compared to film processing and had already passed through its fast growing period. So it is unwise to expect that the food processing cost go down significantly during the last decade.

 

    In conclusion, the author fails to consider the difference between the food processing industry and the film processing industry. To strengthen the argument, the author needs to demonstrate more information about factors that affect the cost of food processing of Olympic Food, including historical data of the past few years that specifically showed the variance of the food processing cost.

[此贴子已经被作者于2009/8/1 14:55:57编辑过]

ann110726

第三段少了点吧

xzhou25

In this seemingly plausible argument, the author contends that Olympic Foods will be able to minimize cost and thus maximize profit after it celebrates its 25th birthday. However, the author provided a reasoning that is flawed in a number of respects.

First of all, the author claims that the cost of processing goes down as organizations learn to perform more efficiently. Using an example from the film processing industry, the author claims that because the film industry was able to become more cost-efficient during 1970 to 1984, a similar principle should be applicable for the food processing industry. This reasoning is flawed because the author failed to recognize some potentially crucial differences between these two industries; specifically, the author might have failed to recognize that the rate of efficiency improvement might differ depending on which stage of development it is on. For example, the color film processing industry might be at a beginning stage when it experienced the dramatic improvement of efficiency during 1970 to 1984. In the meantime, the food processing industry might be in its maturity at the time when Olympics Foods was founded; therefore, the improvement in terms of efficiency could be much less in comparison.

In addition to his failure in recognizing crucial differences between two distinct industries, the author’s argument also involves overgeneralization. Even if the food processing industry is identical to the color film processing industry, it still is not necessarily true, that a particular company will be able to develop at the same rate as the industry overall. Olympic Foods might be a lagger in the food processing industry and therefore, the 25 years of history may not bring any improvement in its efficiency even if the industry overall has improved.

Moreover, the author fails to differentiate between efficiency and costs.  While the Olympic Food might have become more efficient in its processing, the costs of running the business may not have decreased. The author fails to consider the possibility that Olympic Foods might need to incur higher costs to hire competent employees to maintain its efficiency. Also, Olympic Foods may need to make additional capital expenditure for such enhancement in efficiency.  

Last but not least, the author made a direct relationship between cost and profit; however, everyone with a basic sense of economics knows this relationship is not necessarily valid. In a competitive market, no industry can make unreasonable amount of profit over a long period of time. If by improving efficiency and reducing costs, Olympic Foods becomes an extremely profitable business, other competitors will naturally enter the market and therefore, decrease the sales and profitability of Olympic Foods.  The author’s argument did not address such a possibility.

Overall, the passage is poorly reasoned as the author failed to address a number of important aspects in the case. Each of them can severely undermine the author’s conclusion and derail his argument. The ones presented above were merely the tips of the iceberg. Therefore, before addressing the above-mentioned counterarguments, one should be cautious in concluding that Olympic Foods will be able to minimize cost and thus maximize profit simply because it has celebrated its 25th birthday.

xzhou25

you need to write faster; i finished writing the one you put out in around 20mins. It would be very tough to get above 5 without writing 500 words. You certainly know the logic flaws, but your speed is gonna inhibit your performance.

gerryho

以下是引用xzhou25在2009/8/2 5:46:00的发言：
you need to write faster; i finished writing the one you put out in around 20mins. It would be very tough to get above 5 without writing 500 words. You certainly know the logic flaws, but your speed is gonna inhibit your performance.

感谢xzhou25的指点，第一次写，难免不足，希望得到更多NN的指教，下次掐表练习的时候一定加快速度！