Evaluating Arguments

Write a Critical Précis for the following passages. Include an argument diagram, and identify the argument type when appropriate. Additionally, evaluate the strength of any causal arguments, and justify your evaluation.

1. Recently researchers compared 286 depressed workers with 193 others who were not depressed. Since only the depressed workers had such problems as fatigue, lack of motivation, and trouble managing their usual workload, researchers concluded that depression was the cause of their problems at work.—American Journal of Health Promotion

Exercise 9.9.

For each of the following, state the source, target, and feature. Then evaluate the analogy by identifying the similarities between the source and target and determining whether those similarities are relevant or irrelevant to the feature.

1. The University of Hawaii at Manoa is a lot like the University of Colorado at Denver. They are both public, coeducational universities located in the capital city of their state, and they both have student populations of approximately 20,000 students. Since 64% of the students at the University of Hawaii are of Asian or Pacific Island descent, approximately the same number of students at the University of Colorado at Denver are of Asian or Pacific Island descent.

Exercise 8.9.

7. Among people who use multiple dietary supplements, fish oil/omega-3 supplements now top multivitamins in popularity. The conclusion is based on 6,012 responses collected in November from a sampling of subscribers to our free e-newsletter. Fish oil/omega-3 supplements were used by 74% of respondents, followed in popularity by multivitamins, which were used by 72%.—ConsumerLab.com

9. Since the sixteenth century, opium had been produced in India and carried by Dutch, and later, British traders. In fact, opium (derived from the poppy plant) was one of the very few commodities that Europeans could sell in China, and for this reason it became crucial to the balance of East-West trade.—Coffin and Stacey, Western Civilizations