The following was written as a part of an application for a small-business loan by a group of developers in the city of Monroe."Jazz music is extremely popular in the city of Monroe: over 100,000 people attended Monroe's annual jazz festival last summer,

The author of the above argument writes in favor of establishing a jazz music club in Monroe and predicts that it will be quite successful by citing certain facts, which seemingly support the author's assumption regarding the popularity of jazz in Monroe. However, in reality the author's argument is rife with numerous instances of poor reasoning and unstated assumption which serves only to lower it's overall cogency and render it unsubstantiated.

First of all, the author, to support his opening remark regarding the popularity of jazz in Monroe, provides the data regarding the number of people who attended the preceding summer's jazz festival. However, Monroe may be a quite big metropolis, whose population may very well be in the millions. Therefore, not much can be inferred from the data related to the number of people. Rather the percentage of the population who attended the festival would serve as a better estimate for gauging the popularity of jazz in the city. In this context the author has also failed to consider another very important point. Monroe's annual jazz music festival may be one of the biggest jazz events of the year, and as such, it would tend to attract huge audiences from other cities as well. Thus the 100,000 strong audience may not be comprised only of Monroe citizens, and thus cannot constitute proper evidence for judging the popularity of jazz among Monroe citizens.

The next evidence that the author provides in support of his argument is the "popularity" of the radio program- "Jazz Nightly". However, the radio may not be the preferred form of entertainment among the majority of Monroe citizens, and may be popular only among a few. The majority of the folks may use the television and the computer as the popular entertainment media, and jazz programs there may not enjoy a high viewership. Such an occurrence would then tend to belie the author's claim.

The fact that majority of jazz musicians own homes in Monroe does not, in the slightest, prove the popularity of jazz among the city dwellers. Monroe may be famous for its scenic locations, or it might be considered as a halcyon community which might have attracted many celebrities to set up residence there, jazz musicians being among them.

Finally the remark made by the author regarding how the expenditure of a typical jazz fan proves that setting up a jazz club in Monroe will be a success, is also spurious and fraught with pretentious assumptions. One has to know exactly what percentage of the expenditure by a typical jazz fan goes towards music club spending. It may so happen that the jazz fan uses most of his spending on jazz instruments or on jazz lesson or even in jazz concerts. Thus, this assumption by the author also falls rather flat.

In conclusion therefore, it may be inferred that the author's argument, in it's current unmodified form, is unconvincing at best. Some of the pertinent questions raised above needs to answered before carefully re- evaluating the amended argument in order to determine whether setting up a jazz music club in Monroe will be profitable or not.