The following appeared in a letter from a homeowner to a friend.“Of the two leading real estate firms in our town—Adams Realty and Fitch Realty—Adams Realty is clearly superior. Adams has 40 real estate agents; in contrast, Fitch has 25, many of whom work only part-time.

The following appeared in a letter from a homeowner to a friend.“Of the two leading real estate firms in our town—Adams Realty and Fitch Realty—Adams Realty is clearly superior. Adams has 40 real estate agents; in contrast, Fitch has 25, many of whom work only part-time.

In the letter, the author concludes that Adams, one of the leading real estate firms in his/ her town, is better than Fitch. To support the conclusion, the arguer points out that Adams has more employees, Adams receive higher income last year and Adams sold house quicker last year than Fitch sold house ten years ago. With a series of unwarranted assumption, however, the argument fails to be entirely convincing as it stands.

First of all, the arguer assumes that the more estate agents a company owns, the higher capacity of selling house it has. Although it is entirely possible, the author offers no evidence to substantiate the crucial assumption. It is highly likely that Adams need to hire more estate agents because Adams’ estate agents’ efficiency is lower than Fitch’s, or the Fitch’s employees are more professional than Adams’s. If either of the scenarios turns out to be true, the arguer’s reasoning will be disproved.

In addition, the arguer assumes that Adams and Fitch sell the same kind of house so that their revenue is comparable. Nevertheless, there is no guarantee that it is necessarily the case, and the arguer does not supply any evidence to confirm the assumption. It is quite possible that Adams mainly sells large houses while Fitch sells small house mostly, so Fitch earn less money by selling each house; in this case, the total revenue cannot stand for ability of selling house of each company. If the possibilities is true, the arguer’s assumption will be weakened.

Even if the evidence turns out to support the foregoing assumptions, the author just simply assumes that there are no changes in the past ten years so that the time two companies used to sell house is comparable, and neither any conclusive scientific evidence nor any anecdotal one is provided to affirm the assumption. It is of equal probability that Adams uses less time to sell the house last years because the economic condition is better last year than ten years ago. An appropriate example is not far to seek. With the development of society, people earn more money now than ten years ago and they are more willing to spend more money to buy house in order to lead a better live; consequently, it is much easier to sell house now . Without accounting for and ruling out these and other alternative explanation, the author cannot bolster the conclusion.

To sum up, there are many doubtful assumptions and unsound evidence that need to be addressed. In order to draw a better conclusion, the author should cite some more persuasive evidence and take every possible consideration into account.