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Argument 47 The nation of Claria covers a vast physical area. But despite wide geographic differences, many citizens are experiencing rising costs of electricity. A recent study of household electric costs in Claria found that families who cooled their houses with fans alone spent more on electricity than did families using air conditioners alone for cooling. However, those households that reported using both fans and air conditioners spent less on electricity than those households that used either fans or air conditioners alone. Thus, the citizens of Claria should follow the studys recommendation and use both air conditioners and fans in order to save money on electricity. In this argument, the arguer recommends that Claria should advise its citizens to install both air conditioners and fans for cooling in order to reduce the cost of electricity. To justify this claim, the arguer provides the evidence that many citizens of Claria suffer from the rising costs of electricity. In addition, he cites the result of a recent study that using fans alone costs more than using air conditioners alone, and that using both air conditioners and fans costs less than either using fans or air conditioners alone. A careful examination of this argument would reveal how groundless the conclusion is. In the first place, the arguer fails to take into account the geographical factors in the analysis. While we are informed that there are wide geographical differences in the nation of Claria, and that many citizens are experiencing rising costs of electricity, the arguer fails to make clear the exact number of those citizens or their percentage in the national population, as well as the geographical distribution of these citizens. If only a small portion of the whole population are experiencing the rising costs of electricity while most families do not have similar experience, then the reason might be that the former do not use electricity sparingly. In this case, the rising costs of those families have nothing to do with what kind of electric appliance they use to cool their houses. Or if only families living in hot areas are spending more money on cooling, then it is unwise to require citizens living in temperate and frigid zones to install both fans and air conditioners. In the absence of all this information, it is impossible for us to evaluate the recommended policy that is intended to help every household nationwide to reduce their electricity cost. | 
