argument-170

It might seem logical, at first glance, to agree with the argument in the vice president’s memo that Appian Roadways have done a more superior work and can commit more on equality in paving access roads for shopping malls compared with Good Intentions Roadways (and perhaps even, by implication, that they should contract with Appian Roadways rather than Good Intentions Roadways to construct access roads). However, in order to fully evaluate this argument, an audience should be provided with additional evidence.

In fact, the most significant evidence – the overall road condition paved by the two roadway companies in the state, was ignored by the vice president. Statistically speaking, only comparing two specific roads can’t necessarily lead to a statistical conclusion – larger size of sample is required to make an accurate argument. It may be possible that despite Good Intentions Roadways failed on their building equality when competing with Appian Roadways regarding a section of Route 101 and a section of Route 40, in general, Good Intentions Roadways actually did a better job, for example having smaller average amount of potholes and cracks over all roads they built in the state.

The audience should know, before deciding conclusively about the work quality of the two companies, the traffic and weather condition of the area where the two access roads were located. These factors may cause a huge impact on road condition, undermining or even reversing the effect of building skills. If the audience know that the access road built by Good Intentions Roadways was frequently struck by extreme weather like heavy storms or hurricanes, which would certainly weaken the argument made by vice president. Additionally, what is unknown is that how large the flow of cars was running through the roads, which would also undermine the argument.

Further, in order to develop the decision of deciding which roadway company to cooperate with, a lot more evidence is still needed. The vice president claimed that superior work and commitment to quality of Appian Roadways was the main reason that supported his argument to contracting with it. For example, if we had evidence suggesting that the cost of road building would enhance greatly due to raised prime cost of Appian Roadways, caused by introduction of state-of-the-art paving machinery and newly hired stuff members. This would severely harm vice president’s suggestion of choosing Appian Roadways to work with.

Clearly, then, we need to have additional evidence in order to get a more complete understanding of the work qualities of the two companies. We need to know about the general condition of roadways in the state to decide an overall performance of each company. We also need to know the traffic and weather condition of the region where shopping centers located to help evaluate how those factors act on the road condition. Finally, we still required abundant information if we want to extend this result to deciding a better company to sign contracts with. It could be dangerous just making decisions merely relying on some narrow sights that based on restricted evidences.