“In a recent citywide poll, fifteen percent more residents said that they watch television programs about the visual arts than was the case in a poll conducted five years ago. During these past five years, the number of people visiting our city’s art

The argument states that the increase in the number of people watching TV programs about visual arts caused the same increase in visiting of city’s art museums. Hence, in order to maintain at least the same number of visitors, the author suggest to relocate some funds to public television. Stated in this way, the argument manipulates facts and conveys a distorted view of the situation. The argument is unconvincing because it suffers from two critical flaws.

First, the author’s conclusion is based on the assumption, that as more people watch TV as more people visit museums. Clearly, the author claims that the watching of TV programs stimulates people to go to the museums. The cause-effect connection is not clear from the given information. In fact the situation could be opposite: people started visiting the museums more and therefore TV programs about art became more popular. If the proposed scenario is true, then relocation of the funds to public television will not affect the popularity of museums. Therefore the author’s claim is unsupported and weak.

Second, the author compares two groups by using relative change in the numbers of members of the groups. If one number increased by 15% and another number increased by the same value, then we cannot assume, that the absolute increase was also identical. For instance, 1000 people visited art museums and 100 people watched TV programs 5 years ago, then after the 15% increase the city has 150 more museum visitors and only 15 more TV viewers. In this scenario the claim that those who start watching art programs also join the art museum audience is not logical.

In conclusion, the argument is flawed for the above-mentioned reasons and is therefore unconvincing. To strengthen the conclusion that the popularity of art program increases the audience of art museum, the author would have to provide data in absolute numbers and also explain how one event affected another one.