GMAT考试写作指导：Argument范文七八

　　12. The conclusion of this argument is that advertising the reduced price of selected

　　items in the Daily Gazette will result in increased sales overall. To support it, the author

　　cites an informal poll conducted by sales clerks when customers purchased advertised

　　items. Each time one or more of the advertised items was sold, the clerks asked whether

　　the customer had read the ad. It turned out that two-thirds of 200 shoppers questioned

　　said that they had read the ad. In addition, of those who reported reading the ad, more

　　than half spent over $100 in the store. This argument is unconvincing for two reasons.

　　To begin with, the authors line of reasoning is that the advertisement was the

　　cause of the purchase of the sale items. However, while the poll establishes a ion

　　between reading the ad and purchasing sale items, and also indicates a correlation,

　　though less significantly, between reading the ad and buying non-sale t does not

　　establish a general causal relationship between these events. To establish this

　　relationship, other factors that could bring about this result must be red and eliminated.

　　For example, if the four days during which the poll was conducted preceded

　　Thanksgiving and the advertised items were traditionally associated with this holiday,

　　then the results of the poll would be extremely biased and unreliable.

　　Moreover, the author assumes that the poll indicates that advertising certain sale

　　will cause a general increase in sales. But the poll does not even address the issue of

　　increased overall sales; it informs us mainly that, of the people who purchased sales

　　items, more had read the ad than not. A much clearer indicator of the ads effectiveness

　　would be a comparison of overall sales on days the ad ran with overall sales on

　　otherwise similar days when the ad did not run.

　　In sum, this argument is defective mainly because the poll does not support the

　　conclusion that sales in general will increase when reduced-price products are

　　advertised in the Daily Gazette. To strengthen the argument, the author must, at the very

　　least, provide comparisons of overall sales reports as described above.