Argument130,求拍～～～

lukeyu

The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants.

"Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. Only about 2 percent of customers have filed a formal complaint, 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 cannot distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine. Thus, to avoid the expense of purchasing butter, the Happy Pancake House should extend this cost-saving change to its restaurants throughout the rest of the country."



Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.



In the memorandum above, the manager intend to substitute butter for margarine in order to save the cost of the restaurants and to extend this measurement to the rest restaurants of the country. However, the assumptions that the argument is based on are unreasonable and not warranted.


In the memorandum, the manager assumed that the majority of customers are happy with the change that the butter is replaced by margarine for the evidence that there are only 2 percent of customers has complained about the change. However, it is reasonable to conclude that 98 percent of customers have not show their compliment about the change at least, but, in fact, they may not be pleased about the action of the restaurant for the reason that they have not enjoyed the service they want and there are no alternative options to choose. So the compliant is useless to the current circumstance.


Besides, the manager implies that the customers are not able to distinguish butter from margarine for the evidence that what the customers have received is margarine rather butter and that there is no customer complaining about the substitution. It is common sense that no complain does not mean that there is satisfaction and that no customer is idiot; consequently, it is counterpart that actually there is existing complain among customers who just do not prefer to embody it for some reasons, anyway. Put another way, the assumption is just trick and superficial, which may compromise the trust and honor of the restaurant in the mind of customers in the future; so there is no adequate evidence to be able to prove that it is warranted to conclude that the change is accessible to extend.


Moreover, the argument that the change will be extended to other restaurants in the country is base on the assumption that the customers in other regions would accept the change. Actually, the change has only been operated as experiment in one region of the country. It is clear that the practice of consuming is probably aberrant in different area. Even though the experimental result is reasonable and accountable, there is still no enough evidence to conclude that the change is accessible in other regions of the country and to ensure that the extension will be successful.
In retrospect, there is no evidence and warranted assumptions to ensure that the change and the extension will be really accessible in the future. The worst result that may be led by the change would be the decline of the amount of the customers which may deeply influence the business performance of the restaurants negatively.

ppguo

welcome back!

lukeyu

哈哈，其实一直都在，这两天潜心备考，始终在潜水～～

ppguo

攻击点都找到了，但是第二段和第三段阐述得不够完全。第二段，题目中说只有百分之二的人提交了书面的complaint, 没有提到多少人是口头complaint. 还有可能客人不满意，没有说，但是以后不选择这个餐馆了。
第三段，客人要butter, 却上人造黄油，这本身是一种cheating, 不管客人有没有尝出来。客人有权力知道他们吃的是什么。而且题目中说可能很多客人分辨不出来黄油和人造黄油的区别，这个是没有根据的。这是两种不同的东西，对于吃黄油很多年的人来说，是很容易分辨的。

继续加油。

lukeyu

多谢ppguo，解释的太深刻了～～唉，一卡时间就不大行了，继续加油～～

ppguo

practice makes perfect. 加油加油~~

lukeyu

嗯嗯，一定一定，大家共勉～～