"In a recent citywide poll, 15 percent more residents said that they watch television programs about the visual arts than was the case in a poll conducted five years ago. During these past five years, the number of people visiting our city's art museums has increased by a similar percentage. Since the corporate funding that supports public television, where most of the visual arts programs appear, is now being threatened with severe cuts, we can expect that attendance at our city's art museums will also start to decrease. Thus some of the city's funds for supporting the arts should be reallocated to public television."

In the recent economic downturn, decreased funding for the arts is usually the first of many severe cuts that occur in our public schools, and in this argument's instance, the city's public television corporate funding. In the preceding argument, the author argues that some of the city's funds for supporting the arts should be relocated to public television because the decrease in visual arts programs on television would decrease the number of people visiting the city's public museums. The author's claim may have merit, but he/she is presenting a poorly reasoned argument to substantiate his claim. The argument lacks sufficient evidence to prove that a decrease in visual arts programming from financial cuts would create a deficit in the number of visitors at the local art museum.

The author's first problem is not connecting the rise in people watching television programs to those visiting the museum. He claims that both people watching the arts programs and people visiting the city's museum have risen in the past five years but doesn't prove that it is the same people who are watching the television and also going to the museums. The occurrence of a rise in the popularity of the arts could have the same effect on the television programs and the increased visits to the museum without the cause and effect that the author is using as his argument for the reallocation of funds to public television from the city's art support program.

It could be possible that a new museum opened in the city five years ago before this survey was taken causing the abrupt rise in attendance and interest in the arts on television. If this is the case, the connection that the author is attempting to make would clearly become an assumption based on unsubstantiated evidence. Furthermore, the decline in funding for the arts in public television could cause more people to visit the city's museums instead of watching television from the comfort of their home. If the author stated that in the survey of public television viewers, he/she asked the question connecting the increased viewing of visual arts programming to the rise of people visiting the museum, the validity of connecting the two would be much more believable.

In sum, the argument provides no circumstantial evidence to connect the two points with which the author uses as the main evidence of his argument. The visual arts program viewers were not asked if their increased television time caused them to want to visit the museum. The museum-goers were not interviewed as to why they had increased their attendance either. Therefore, public funding for the arts should not be allocated to television because the connection between the two has not been made by the author of the argument.