ARGUMENTATION - 5

Source: Economist - carenini@cs.pitt.edu

SPECIFIC EVENT: death of commerce secretary Ron Brown

SPECIFIC VARIABLE: % black voters for Democrat

SPECIFIC QUESTION: "What will the loss of the administration's most prominent black do to its appeal among black voters?"

SPECIFIC ANSWER: "The chart shows why this question is so little debated. The black vote is astonishingly loyal to the Democratic party."

GENERIC QUESTION: will an event change a variable significantly?

GENERIC POSSIBLE ANSWERS

• Yes, similar events have changed it in the past....
• Yes, such an event has never occurred and ......
• No, similar events have not changed it in the past
• *No, the fact that it has been constant for so long and so much has happened in the period considered shows that nothing can change it (at least non a single event)*
• others?

COMMENT: this chart raises the question of what constant means. the percentage of black voters voting democrat changes a lot in the interval 80%-100%, but these changes are not considered in the article. This shows that "constant" can have (be used with) different meanings in different contexts.