GMAT Essays (AWA)

The argument claims that city's funds for supporting the arts should be reallocated to public television. This claim is since there has been 15 percent increase in watching television about visual arts and number of people visiting city's art museum in past five years.

Stated in this way, the argument manipulates the fact and presents a distorted view of situation. It reveals example of leap of faith, poor reasoning and ill-defined terminology.
The argument fails to mention several key factors based on which it could be evaluated.

First the argument readily assumes that the citywide poll is true representation of population. This statement is stretch as we do not have any information about the sample size of poll. Only one information is available about poll which states that the poll was citywide, but it does not state what was the sample size. For example, the poll may have been citywide but the number of person responding in different areas of city could have differed. One more aspect which is open to debate is that it compares the respondents increase with poll conducted five years. But the argument does not provide any information about the respondents five years ago. Whether the respondent of last poll and this poll are same or entirely different. Clearly the argument's assumption of the poll to be true representative of entire population is open to be debate. The argument would have been much more assertive if it had given more information about the poll conducted this time and five years ago.

Secondly the argument claims that decrease in corporate funding for public television will lead to decrease in attendance at city's art museum. This again is rather weak and unsupported in argument as it does not provide any evidence to support the correlation between decrease in corporate funding and attendance at city's art museum. To illustrate this the author has not given any evidence or fact to support this claim. While there has been increase in the percentage of number of respondent watching television about art and attending art museum in last five years but there is no evidence to support the correlation between decline in corporate funding and decrease in attendance at art museum.

Finally, the argument does not give any answer to the following question:
1. Number of respondent in poll this year has increased or decreased in comparison to poll five years ago?
2. How is the funding of public television related to attendance at art museum?

Without convincing answers to above question, one is left to assume that the argument is more of wishful thinking than substantive thinking.

In conclusion, the argument is flawed for above mentioned reasons and is therefore unconvincing. The argument could have strengthened considerably, if the author had mentioned all the relevant facts about the poll.
To ascertain merits/demerits of situation, it is pertinent to have complete knowledge about all contributing factors. However, we do not have any information about how one event could lead to other.
Without above information, argument remains unsubstantiated and open to debate.