The following appeared in a memo from the owner 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

The author, although having enumerated data from two different sources, seems almost reluctant to provide anything concrete to support his argument on. It should be pointed out that the author has in fact quoted the data in complete honesty by unequivocally stating their limited nature. However, the same weakens the author's basis on which he later puts forth his suggestions.

First of all, while the author is referring to a survey by a magazine to support the increasing preference for domestic cheeses, that that the author has mentioned that the survey was conducted only among the subscribers of the magazine, would make anyone sceptical of the thoroughness of the survey. While it can be argued that those that subscribe to a magazine dedicated to cheeses would be more ardent afficianados of the product, it does not guarantee that their taste would be universal. The subscribers could belong to a particular demographic or culture whose traditional or preferred dishes require cheddar cheese that are produced locally, than the more exotic varieties. Whereas the connoisseurs of other varieties could be more widespread, or even more in number and influence than the subscribers of the magazine quoted.

The same argument also applies to the data that the author has quoted from the newest store. The author has picked, more like cherry-picked, the data from a single store in the chain. Do the results from others, ideally all, of the stores across the country show a similar trend? It is possible that the newest store did not have enough inventory management facilities to house the more exotic cheeses, and could only offer the local variety. Top 5 cheeses would always be of the local variety if all the store offered were local cheeses.

Additionally, owing to the fact that the exotic cheeses tend to be more expensive than the local variety, may be the locality of the shop whose data has been quoted preferred the cheaper, local variety. Hence, a more lucid and expansive data would be required to be valid for any assertion to be made.

The gaps in the evidence provided by the author are so wide that it would now be futile to discuss even the viability of the suggestions put forward by him. Nevertheless, if he does succeed in buttressing his claims more appropriately, there are a lot of questions waiting for him before the suggestions become patent enough.