请大家忙里偷闲看看这篇argument吧~~

杨姝云

题目：

The following appeared in a letter from a firm providing investment adviceto a client.

"Homes in the northeastern United States, where winters are typicallycold, have traditionally used oil as their major fuel for heating. Last yearthat region experienced twenty days with below-average temperatures, and localweather forecasters throughout the region predict that this weather patternwill continue for several more years. Furthermore, many new homes have beenbuilt in this region during the past year. Because of these developments, wepredict an increased demand for heating oil and recommend investment inConsolidated Industries, one of whose major business operations is the retailsale of home heating oil."

Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed toevaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthenthe argument.

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While it might be true that an investment in Consolidated Industries aboutretail sale of home heating oil should be made, the adviser doesn't make cogentinference to validate it. We can easily tell that people need to keep warmduring the winter, but this argument is rife with holes and weak assumptions.Some specific evidence is needed be evaluated because of several existingalternative explanations of the evidence.

The author cites the fact that northeastern region experienced twenty dayswith below-average temperatures, and he wants to bridge this fact with demandfor heat oil. Nevertheless, only by saying the number of days below-averagetemperature doesn't make any sense in showing days which are pretty cold aremany. It's possible that extremely cold days years before were always more than20 and this number is dropping annually. Therefore, on the contrary, adecreasing trend of this number indicates less and less necessity of using heatoil for homes. To eliminate this possibility, the author has to add some moreinformation about previous years, especially some statistical data aboutbelow-average-temperature days. Otherwise, this inference seems groundless andunpersuasive.

In addition, the author also says that the local weather forecast'sprediction implies that this number of cold days will still last for severalyears. For this seemingly convincing reason, we still cannot believe too muchin it. This assertion holds because we cannot always trust the weatherforecast. As we know, the longer period of time the forecast covers, the lesscertainty it has due to butterfly effect. It's not rare to see weather forecastmake mistakes or even predict the totally opposite result. If this forecast iswrong and the world is happening in the different direction, people will onlybuy less heat oil. Hence, heat oil producers will confront a surplus of productand finally make an economic loss. To strengthen the argument, this advisor hasto fix this problem undermining his recommendation by providing more convincingevidence to exclude other likely happening things.

Last, by talking about the newly built homes last year, the advisor wantsto show a promising increase demand for heat oil. It might be true, but notnecessary, that number of homes in this region increases this year. But newlybuilt homes may take some more state-of-the-art heating equipment, such asbrand-new and super-duper air conditioners. It's also possible that these newresidents are hardy enough to stand cold weathers due to reasons such as theirgrowing up in California. The above things are likely to happen and therefore,a prediction about increasing heat oil consuming will be ramshackle. Unless theauthor of the argument provides a result from something like a survey about thecomposition of new people here, we can hardly accept his suggestion and take afurther step.

A booming and prospective Consolidated Industries is needed so we shouldtake some actions to improve its market status. But whether we are supposed toinvest money in producing heat oil still needs to be discussed. Although theauthor provides several reasons to explain the necessity of doing it, some moreevaluations have to be made and much specific evidence should be improved. Onlyby taking some more information into account can the argument be less likely tobe undermined or even toppled.

普渡哥

Some specific evidence is needed be evaluated because of several existingalternative explanations of the evidence.

发现语法问题。