The following appeared in a memo from the business manager of a chain of cheese stores located throughout the United States.
"For many years all the stores in our chain have stocked a wide variety of both domestic and imported cheeses. Last year, however, all of the five best-selling cheeses at our newest store were domestic cheddar cheeses from Wisconsin. Furthermore, a recent survey by Cheeses of the World magazine indicates an increasing preference for domestic cheeses among its subscribers. Since our company can reduce expenses by limiting inventory, the best way to improve profits in all of our stores is to discontinue stocking many of our varieties of imported cheese and concentrate primarily on domestic cheeses."
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 argument, a manager of a cheese store recommends that all of their stores should discontinue stocking many varieties of imported cheese and they should start stocking domestic cheeses. However, the manager concludes the argument based on three assumptions that dramatically weekend the argument.
First of all, will be the following year's consumptions of domestic cheese increase? The author assumes that the consumption of domestic cheese will be increase and the sales of their domestic cheese will be increased too. There is a potential that consumptions of cheese can be declining and sales of cheese too. The manager did not provide any evidence that consumption and sales of domestic cheese will increase. Therefore, the original conclusion that stocking domestic cheese rather than imported cheese is not easily persuasive.
Second of all, the author fails to provide any justification for the survey. He presumes that the survey represents everyone in the country. It is possible that the survey can include only ten or twenty people—it cannot represent everyone in the country. It is also possible that the survey only subsumes people who only like domestic cheeses. The manager fails to give any supportive evidence or a systematic study’s proof that can represent that, the survey is unquestionable. So, the original argument does not hold water.
Finally, the recommendation also leaves many unanswered questions. Is there no store in that area that does not sell domestic cheese? The writer of the argument also assumes that there are no stores selling domestic cheeses. He also assumes that the customers will willing to buy domestic cheese from their store rather than go to some reputed shops. The author could not provide any true just about any other stores or the willingness of the customers to abandon the reputed or current stores. If those are truly the original argument is considerably flawed.
In conclusion, as it stands now is considerably flawed due to reliance on three unwarranted assumptions. If the author can answer the above three questions (perhaps a systematic research study), then it will be viable to evaluate the argument fully.
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 4 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 349 350
No. of Characters: 1792 1500
No. of Different Words: 149 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.322 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.135 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.706 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 146 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 103 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 76 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 37 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 16.619 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.728 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.571 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.327 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.564 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.162 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5