ANALYSE AN ARGUMENT

QUESTION:
In surveys Mason City residents rank water sports (swimming, boating, and fishing)
among their favorite recreational activities. The Mason River flowing through the city
is rarely used for these pursuits, however, and the city park department devotes little of its budget to maintaining riverside recreational facilities. For years there have been complaints from residents about the quality of the river's water and the river's smell.

In response, the state has recently announced plans to clean up Mason River. Use of
the river for water sports is, therefore, sure to increase. The city government should
for that reason devote more money in this year's budget to riverside recreational
facilities.

Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the
argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and
what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.

In this argument, as per surveys Mason city residents rank water sports among their favourite recreational activities, but deciding based on the surveys alone is wrong because surveys are usually done on few thousands of people, comparing this with lakhs of people residing in Mason city, it is very less and one more point that has to be considered is, in any city different cultured people reside in different places, if so this survey is based on a persons from a particular locality then it is completely wrong to assume that entire city residents favourite is water sports.

In this argument, author has stated that, for years there have been complaints from residents regarding the river's water quality, hence state has recently announced plans to clean up the river. It will definitely be appreciated by the city residents but it is wrong to claim that use of river for water sports will increase because people may have complained, since the water was dirty and they could not use the water for any household purpose or even enjoy the beauty of river.

Another mistake the author has made is, he has said that city government should devote more money in this year's budget to riverside for recreational facilities. Cleaning the river is the important but devoting more money for recreational facilities, without knowing whether, it will be useful to people or not is wrong. Government has to conduct a survey on a larger scale and include different cultured people and then based on the results of survey they can decide whether to alot more money for it or not.

Summing it up, trusting the surveys is to be appreciated but without blindly deciding based on the surveys, they have to first study the survey like how many people has taken part in the survey, has it involved different cultured people from different environments and based on all this, if the survey has involved reasonable amount of people then they can decide based on the survey.