[GRE] Argument #3

3. The following appeared as part of a letter to the editor of a Central Plaza store owner.

Over the past two years, the number of shoppers in Central Plaza has been steadily decreasing while the popularity of skateboarding has increased dramatically. Many Central plaza store owners believe that the decrease in their business is due to the number of skateboard users in the plaza. There has also been a dramatic increase in the amount of litter and vandalism throughout the plaza. Thus, we recommend that the city prohibit skateboarding in Central plaza. If skateboarding is prohibited here, we predict that business in Central Plaza will return to its previously high levels.

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.

The author proposes that the city should prohibit skateboarding in Central Plaza in order to increase the number of shoppers in the plaza. There, however, are not sufficient evidence; and the rationales are weak. Three main holes are described as follows

First of all, the relation between the increase of the number of skateboard users and the decrease of the number of shoppers in the plaza was not demonstrated in detail in the passage. Thus, we cannot conclude if the impact of the increased skateboard users on the number of incoming shoppers in the plaza really exists. In other words, occurring two events simultaneously does not necessarily mean the one event affects to the other because the two events could have happened independently from each other just by chance. In this example, the event of skateboard user increment and the event of shopper decrement could be a mere coincidence. The causality cannot be determined.

Furthermore, high popularity of skateboarding does not mean skateboarding in public place such as Central Plaza is also popular. Maybe skateboarding is popular but only on streets or in parks. If the author wanted to insist that there were getting more skateboard users together in the plaza, the author should have presented the actual number of skateboard users in the plaza over the past two years in any form. For instance, the author could have added a sentence like “the number of skateboard users in 2014 was 100 on average while the number in 2016 is 1,000” Since the author vaguely expressed with the term “due to the number of skateboard users in the plaza,” we cannot know if the number was increased or decreased or neither.

In addition, although there might been a dramatic increase in the amount of litter and vandalism throughout the plaza, it is not definite that these were done by the skateboard users in the plaza. Perhaps, other people in the plaza could have massed up the place; or sweepers for the plaza could not have done their well during this period for some reason. We just do not know because the author did not explain enough the cause of dirty. If the messy environment in the plaza is really due to the skateboard users, the author should have shown some evidence. For example, vandalism such as damaging a public place is regarded to be illegal in most cities, there certainly exists a relevant police report about the misconduct that occurred in the plaza. If the author could have cited the criminal report and specify the perpetrator’s personal information which is identified as skateboard users in many cases, then his/her argument would be more persuasive.

To sum up, the recommendation does not fully describe the reason why the city should ban skateboarding in Central Plaza. In particular, the causal relation between the numbers of shoppers and skateboard users, the actual data about the number of skateboard users in the plaza, and the identification of the suspects who did wrongdoing should have been provided. (502 words)