The following appeared in a memo from the vice president of a company that builds shopping malls around the country."The surface of a section of Route 101, paved just two years ago by Good Intentions Roadways, is now badly cracked with a number of dangero

The argument recommends that Appian Roadways should be hired to construct roads that connects to all the new shopping malls. The recommendation is proposed based on the evidence that Route 101 which was built by Good intention roadways has got damaged in not more than two years time and the Route 40 which was built by Appian roadways is still in good conditon even after four years. Also as Appian Roadways has recently hired a new quality control manager and purchased state-of-art machinery further corroborates the arguments recommendation. However, the argument is unconvincing as it fails to provide substantial evidences needed to evaluate the recommendation.

Firstly, the author does not provide any statistical evidence that shows how frequently each Route is used by people. It could be possible that Route 40 is hardly utilized by people for travel, which could be reason of no damage from past 4 years. On the other hand route 101 is utilized for everyday travel by several people, hence that would have caused the pot holes and resulted in the degeneration of the route in the last two years. Also the quality of material would have been similar to what Appian roadways has used, but to due overuse it has caused the impairment of the road. Hence the author needs to do further research to find out how frequently each route is used before implementing its recommendation.

Further, even if Appian roadways has recently purchased state-of-art machinery, it does not vouch for the good condition of roads for atleast 4 years. The author has not provided any evidence that shows that the new machinery will provide equally good quality of strength to the roads as built by Appian previously. It is highly probable that the new machinery might not be as robust compared to the old one. Hence the author needs to substantiate its claim by comparing the advantages of the new machinery in comparison to the old.

Morever, it could be possible that good quality of Appian roadways was due to the perspicacity and judiciousnes of old quality control manager. The new quality control manager might not live up to that expectation. It could be possible that new manager foils the entire process due to lack of planning and judgement which was shown by the old manager in the implementation of roads. Hence this would lead to an outcome contrary to the one predicted by the recommendation. Hence the author needs to find out whether the new manager is equally capable as the old one in building good roads before making any implementation decision.

In sum, the argument is based on several unwarranted assumptions that undermines the validity of the recommendation. Indeed if these assumptions do not hold true, than the recommendation totally falls apart.