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

In the letter, the author compares two real estate firms - Adams Realty and Fitch Realty – and avers that, Adams Realty is the superior one, and supports his claim by comparing number of employees, revenues and his personal experience. Unfortunately, there are few assumptions made without warrant in the argument, and thus the argument is not compelling unless any source is given for these assumptions.

First, the author cites the revenues and averages of home sales for the both firms and then, the author claims higher home selling average corresponds to selling a house with Adams will yield better prices. However, this may not be the case. It is not known if houses sold by two firms are analogous in the average. For instance, Adams’ could be specialized in selling bigger houses where Fitch has specialized in selling smaller houses which will explain the average gap between two firms. Therefore, the author must support his argument regarding equality of the houses that sold by the firms.

Finally, the author mentions that it took 4 four months to sell his home with Fitch ten years ago, whereas it took a month to sell his home with Adams last year. There are multiple leaps made by the author. First, there are nine years between the two experiences mentioned, and it is possible that some factors changed during the last nine years. Maybe, the demand for the real estates has been increased and selling a home was much easier last year than it was ten years ago. Moreover, it is possible that two homes the author sold wasn’t similar enough to compare the experiences. For instance, firs.t home can be bigger than the second and demand for the bigger houses can be higher at the town. Therefore, the difference in the duration that’s needed to sell the houses can’t be construed to difference in the firms’ performances. Secondly, the author makes two generalizations, the author’s experience is analogous to average experiences and the that aren’t necessarily true.
To sum it up, the author’s argument is rife with the stated and unstated assumptions, and argument will not be compelling unless these statements supported. The author must provide further evidence regarding his assumptions to bolster the argument.