In surveys Mason City residents rank water sports (swimming, boating, and fishing) among their favorite recreational activities. The Mason River flowing through the city is rarely used for these pursuits, however, and the city park department devotes litt

The author in this argument concludes that ,in this year’s budget the city government should increase more funds for recreational facilities as residents favorite recreational activity is known to be water sports from the survey. The argument is flawed based on assumptions, the result of the survey is not representing the entire water sports and no evidence of the entire population of Mason city residents are surveyed, the author uses ambiguous words like rarely and little which is not clear for river water not being used .Further, the author does not give details about the cause of bad quality and smell of water and any evidence to indicate that cleaning of river would increase the use of water for sports.

To begin, the author makes a strong assumption from the survey that the water sports is the favorite recreational activities. The assumption is flawed because only three water sports like swimming, fishing and boating are being named in the argument which cannot represent the entire water sports. There are other water sports like kayaking, etc which are not being named. Also, the author does not give any statistical evidence about the number of people being surveyed. So the author cannot assume that water sports being the favorite just considering swimming, fishing and boating.

The author uses ambiguous terms like rarely and little and does not define the terms clearly in the argument. The Mason River flowing through the city is rarely used for the pursuits of water sports. The term rarely is not defined it may be assumed that the river water is never used at all or may be used sometimes. The author leaves the reader to decide at the term rarely. The author uses another term little to indicate small amount of budget money is spent on these recreation facilities. Again the term little of budget may also imply that sufficient amount of money for maintenance of river water and also the information about budget of Mason City is not known. The use of ambiguous terms like rarely and little add some confusion to the reader with about the use of water and the amount spent on maintenance.

The author supports the argument that the residents of Mason City have been complaining about the bad quality and smell of water. The author fails to provide causes of the bad quality and odor of river water. There may be many reasons for the bad quality and smell of water. The author is confident that cleaning of river water for sure will increase the use of water for recreational activities. The conclusion is too strong which is unsubstantiated. The argument does not state any example of other states or cities where cleaning of river water increased the use of river water for water sports

The argument could be strengthened by more evidence about the statistics of people being surveyed and the kind of water sports being their favorite, the terms like rarely, little being defined accurately, the information about the cause of the bad quality and smell of river water and realistic evidence showing that cleaning of river water caused increase use of river water for water sports. However, increasing the amount of money in this year’s budget based on these assumptions made in the argument is flawed.