The following appeared in a memo from a budget planner for the city of Grandview."When the Grandview Symphony was established ten years ago, the city of Grandview agreed to provide the symphony with annual funding until the symphony became self-sustaining

The budget planner suggests discontinuing funding of the Grandview Symphony owing to the fact that it has succeeded in finding audience. This statement is based on evidence which is connected with the conclusion by assumptions which ought to be carefully scrutinized in order to give a comprehensive estimation of the soundness of the argument.

The first evidence which is given to us is that two years ago the symphony hired a famous and well-known conductor who managed to lure other high-profile musicians. It is said that this fact has led to tripling private donations and skyrocketing attendance during summer. However, some other, unstated factors may lead to this result; for example, local educational institution from elementary school to university may introduce a compulsory educational program which forces students visit the symphony in order to participate to art. Moreover, perhaps the Grandview Symphony has done an effective and innovative advertising campaign which created a public interest to the symphony and its product. Consequently, the author's belief is not warranted.

Furthermore, we are told that private contributions to the symphony have increased three times. At the same time, despite the fact that such an enhancement in donations seems to be overwhelming, the real size of them may not be significant due to the fact that if initial amount of contributions was negligible, tripling of this small amount will not bring expected result. Also we know that attendance at the symphony's summer concert has been recording.. At the same time, what percent of this outdoor summer concerts is from the Grandview's annual revenue. The likeliness exists that the symphony has given a relatively small number of concerts in a short period of time and money from sales do not have a great effect on financial conditions of the symphony. However, even if we accept that the changes since the new conductor was hired are appreciable, perhaps it may not last forever and if the conductor or musicians who were attracted by him/her left the symphony the sales will fall dramatically.

Finally, the argument claims that today's symphony has succeed in finding an audience and thus city should cease its financial support of symphony. Even if we accept for granted supposed increase, the writer tends to equal "finding audience" with "become self-sustaining". Probably, the symphony still needs money even if it has managed to increase its audience. In other words we have not evidence that today's contributions and revenue for tickets are sufficient to fund the symphony.

In conclusion, the arguer asserts that the Grandview symphony does not need government's financial support; however, we do not have a strong support of this claim and evidence which was used connected with the conclusion by unwarranted assumptions and thus the conclusion is unwarranted as well.
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