Argument Topic: "The following is taken from a memo from the advertising director of the Super Screen Movie Production Company. "According to a recent report from our marketing department, during the past year, fewer people attended Super Screen-produced

The author of the argument has failed to convince us that the problem for lower attendance of Super Screen-produced movies lies not with the quality of the movies produced by Super Screen Movie Production Company but with the public's lack of awareness of good quality movies availability. The argument, as it stands, is based on a questionable assumptions and a faulty line of reasoning, a fact which renders it over-simplistic and unconvincing.

First of all, the author does not provide any relative numerical data about the number of people who have attended Super Screen-produced movies in the last years or of the available movies that the company has produced. Since there is no information whether the movies are actually played in cinemas or in television, one can assume that because last year no new movies were produced, the cinemas did not play any movie of that specific company thus, justifying the lower attendance. Moreover, the author assumes that the percentage of positive reviews is high enough that it must have a positive impact on movie attendance. However, this is once again a flimsy assumption not based on any given data. The average rating of the company's movies could be too low in contrast to the market ratings, a fact that suggests that the company should invest a greater share of its budget in improving the movie quality and not in advertising the low rated movies.

Next, another assumption of the arguer has engaged in the "after this, therefore because of this" reasoning. The only reason offered for believing the fact that positive reviews do not reach enough of their prospective viewers caused the movie attendance rate to drop is the fact that the former preceded the latter. No additional evidence linking the two events is offered in the argument, thus leaving open the possibility that the two events are not causally related but merely correlated. For instance, the Super Screen Movie Production Company did not produce any new movies last year, giving no tenable option to the company to attract new customers and increase the movie attendance. Another possible scenario is that, in general, people do not tend to read or write reviews for movies but they just pick one after reading the movie's terse scenario, which of course does not reveal anything about the quality of the movie itself. In addition, the opposite direction is also possible, implying that the movie ratings, although the percentage of positive reviews has increased, dissuaded people from watching them because they are too low.

Last of all, the author's speculative conclusion that the company should allocate a greater share of its budget on advertising is untenable. There are no financial evidence that can prove the company's solvency and capability for such an investment in advertising. There is no past data regarding the expenditure on advertising and the impact, if any, that it had in movie attendance. A possible scenario that cannot be rebuked, due to lack of evidence, is that the company may have already spent last year a large proportion of its budget in advertising but unfortunately did not pay off at all. Thus, the real problem of lower movie attendance could indeed be the quality of the movies. It would be wiser for the company to invest in better actors, direction or special effects than squander the budget for the shake of fancy assumptions.

To sum up, based on unsubstantiated assumptions and poor evidence, the arguer's reasoning does not provide concrete support for his/her conclusion. If the argument had included, apart from the author's frivolous interpretation on the given data, more numerical information about how the attendance dropped over the last year, more statistics about the movie ratings and more financial figures on the company's spending on advertisement over the last years it would have been more thorough and convincing.