The following appeared as a letter to the editor from a Central Plaza store owner.

“Over the past two years, the number of shoppers in Central Plaza has been steadily decreasing while the popularity of skateboarding has increased dramatically. Many Central Plaza store owners believe that the decrease in their business is due to the number of skateboard users in the plaza. There has also been a dramatic increase in the amount of litter and vandalism throughout the plaza. Thus, we recommend that the city prohibit skateboarding in Central Plaza. If skateboarding is prohibited here, we predict that business in Central Plaza will return to its previously high levels.”

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.

The author indicate that the decrease of business of Central Plaza stores was related to skateboard users in the plaza. However the author did not give any proof to this argument. Actually, to answer if prohibiting skateboarding here would help business in Central Plaza grow back to its previous level, there are several questions need to be answer first.

First, in the past two years, the decrease of business of the Central Plaza may be influenced by many factors, such as the economy of the whole country or area, the popularity of the Central Plaza, even the quality of service or goods that stores of Central Plaza changing… However, the dramatically increasing popularity of skateboarding and decreasing of business are independent events. The author may need to provide more evidence to show the relationship between growth of skateboarding and dropping of business of stores.

Second, the increasing skateboarding may help on business of stores in Central Plaza, in contrast of the store owners opinion. Because skateboarding users could be customers of the stores. And their activity in the Central Plaza might attracted more people to watch them playing skateboarding. And thus, if the city prohibit skateboarding here, the business of Central Plaza may become even worse than the past two years.

Third, the dramatic increase in the amount of litter and vandalism of the Central Plaza may not been caused by these increasing skateboarding. Prohibiting skateboarding in the area may not help on decreasing the amount of litter and vandalism.

Therefore, the presupposition of prohibiting skateboarding will bring back the level of business of stores on Central Plaza is preposterous.