题目：ARGUMENT52 - The following appeared in a memo to the human resources manager at Baobob Inc., a large architectural firm.

"Several well-known, retired architects were interviewed in Architecture Today about changes in the field. Only one had earned a college degree in architecture. All others had come into the field at an early age by serving apprenticeships that required them to work under the direct supervision of an experienced architect. Several of the colleges that we recruit from report that many promising architecture students leave school early in their undergraduate career. Therefore, because finding talented architecture graduates is becoming more difficult, Baobob Inc. should start an aggressive apprenticeship program and hire students who express an interest in architecture directly out of high school rather than wait for them to get out of college."
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Author insists on the carrying out of the program and showed quite a few unconvincing reasons to persude readers.

First, there is no direct relationship between situation that graduates leave early for work and the apprenticeship program. The argument believes that it is harder to find talented graduates to be apprentices because of the former, which is not the truth. It is also the architect field that the graduates enter in, which means architect company can find the apprentices earlier than they have expected. They just result in a different time to enter the firm. It is obvious that the relative conclusion is unwarranted.

Second, it is recommended that students in high school should be hired in the article. Even though the program should be carried out, there is no reason to do. The students who would be hired by Baobob Inc. do not own enough professional knowledge, which is not a practical program. They just end up their basis studies in their lifes which take up a little to be compared with what would be studied in the college. However,The professional knowledge for an architect, as far as we all know, is a quite large quanlity and hard to learn, which is why the period of architectur major always covers 5 years instead of 4 years like other majors.
To be honest, not only the professional knowledge but also the living experiences and the skills to deal with persons in the field of business do the high students lack. Hiring the senior students in the college directly who may be not talented, thus, is a fairly wiser decision.

Third, the students, however, showing the interest in architecture do not approve the ability to insist on their interest thorough the high school and colleage. The passions might recess during the process they study owning to the bore of the architecture study.
Moreover, it seems too early to decide their careers during the period of high school. It could be the case that 500 students, for instance, show passion on the architecture at fist while 50 students remaining persist their dream of architecture at the end of high school and others are attracted in other field such as doctor, teacher and so forth because of lack of tuitor for the college or their girl or boy friends disinterests in architecure.

Then the example refers to at the beginning of the article seems to be little relative with situation. The retired architects served as apprenticeships at their ages and the word "change" indicates that it is a differet situation now. The report just shows a same one actually. There is not logical relationship between former and latter.
At the same time the amount of the colleges that author has surveyed is unknown, which should be satistically reliable. Unfortunately,as quoted in this argument little sign of such procedure is found. If the population is heterogeneous, then the sample needs to be large enough to represent the population's variability. To be honest, the more heterogeneous a population, the larger the sample required. There are, for example, 5000 colleges in USA while just 10 of them are estimated. Therefore it is unwarranted to conclude that lots of architecture students leave school early depending on such a small quality of colleges. As a matter of fact ,in face of such limited evidence, it is fallacious to draw any conclusion at all.

In conlusion, the reasons author suggests are too suspected to establish.

[ 本帖最后由 kalouling 于 2008-7-1 19:13 编辑 ]

题目：ARGUMENT151 - The following is a letter to the editor of the Atticus City newspaper.

"Former Mayor Durant owes an apology to the city of Atticus. Both the damage to the River Bridge, which connects Atticus to Hartley, and the traffic problems we have long experienced on the bridge were actually caused 20 years ago by Durant. After all, he is the one who approved the construction of the bridge. If he had approved a wider and better-designed bridge, on which approximately the same amount of public money would have been spent, none of the damage or problems would have occurred. Instead, the River Bridge has deteriorated far more rapidly over the past 20 years than has the much longer Derby Bridge up the river. Even though the winters have been severe in the past several years, this is no excuse for the negligence and wastefulness of Durant."
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Author has complaint a lot about Durant. The argument shows a rather absolute altitude to Mayor Durant,believing that he is the person in charge. Nevertheless it is not the case.

First, the policy about the bridge was created 20 years ago. The length or the width of the bridge was designed according to what Atticus city was and the amount of the presons included at that time. Mayor might have enlarged the scale of River Bridge in regard to the possibility concerning the expand of the city while Atticus city  is developing acceleratedly these years. None has the ability to predict exactly what could happen after 20 years . It is highly possible that Atticus city just included 5000 citizens, 100 high buildings and 3 parks and so on at that time, which is as large as what is included in one village of Atticus city nowadays.

Second, although Durant approved the construction of the bridge, he should be not the one to be condemned. The policy was made by the government which is a public organization consisting of quite a large number of staff instead of a private person. Durant may be just the leader of agreed group faced to the citizens in public who is actually innocent. Moreover, even if he was the one in charge, what he had done was signing his name in the document thanks to the trust in the bridge designer. It is the bridge designer who conducts the bridge project. It is the bridge designer who directly result in the damage suffered by human. It is the bridge designer owning the professional knowledge rather than Durant who is to be claim because the bridge was born with leak.

Third, the reason of the damage of River Bridge is unknown for readers. Is it the weak design or the width that causes problems? A too wide bridge can also contribute to damage. Nobody knows what would happen if it is the case that a wider and better-designed bridge is built, which might be even worse and a waste of money and effect.

Then the analogy between River Bridge and Derby Bridge seems unconvincing. The author judged that River Bridge should be deteriorated slower owing to its less length, which, in fact, does not affect the quality of the bridge. The factors such as geography location, weather, surrounding, persons crossing through the bridge and so forth have influence on the bridge. Author can not draw any conclusion unless all the factors are ruled out.

In concludsion, the paradox mistakes taking on Mayor Durant are somehow unreasonable.