"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. Moreover, Adams' revenue last year was twice as

The author of the statement believes that Adams Reality (A.R) is superior to Fitch Reality (F.R). This conclusion is based on the premise that some features of A.R is regarded as its advantages over F.R: more full-time employees, higher revenue, and seemingly the ability to sell the house faster than F.R. In enumerating the advantages of the A.R, the author makes several unsupported assumptions.

First, the author has taken for granted that the mere higher quantity of the employees of the A.R can stand for its superiority. As there are no further details of the employees, the mere numbers of employees may not be accounted as a merit. The advantage which is needed in every realty is more a matter of quality than the quantity. Although F.R has fewer personnel, they may be more educated, have more expertise and they may be more successful than the employees of the A.R. Therefore, the possibility that employees of the F.R are more qualified casts doubt on the superiority of A.R.

Secondly, the author assumes that the greater revenue of A.R signifies the greater success of this realty. Of course it can be a sign of success for a company to have a greater profit, however, there is no information about how such greater revenue is gained. It is possible that such a revenue is earned by an exorbitant service charge for selling each home. If this is the case, then it is even a repulsive feature rather an attractive one, since the clients lose more money for the service charge.

Finally, the author had the F.R and A.R to sell the homes, and as it seems the A.R was quite faster in selling the house. As the argument lacks evidence showing that the situation of two sold houses were corresponding the comparison is questionable because: First, the time interval between the sales is long. A decade ago, the town might not be populated as it is in the recent years. Then, the demands for buying houses might as well be lesser in then time. Maybe it would take longer time for the A.R to sell the same house back in that time, who knows? Secondly, the houses might be too different to be compared; while one of the houses might be favorable for buyers, the other which took a long time to sell, might have problems like being near uproarious zone and that made the sell harder. If these are the case, then the longer time for selling the house is unfairly imputed to the inefficiency of F.R by the author.

In short, as discussed, the author made the conclusion via taking for granted several unsupported assumptions. With each enumerated assumption being potentially unwarranted, the conclusion which is based on such an inconclusive argument cannot be tenable.