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12. The conclusion of this argument is that advertising the reduced price of selected items in the Daily Gazette will result in increased sales overall. To support it, the author cites an informal poll conducted by sales clerks when customers purchased advertised items. Each time one or more of the advertised items was sold, the clerks asked whether the customer had read the ad. It turned out that two-thirds of 200 shoppers questioned said that they had read the ad. In addition, of those who reported reading the ad, more than half spent over $100 in the store. This argument is unconvincing for two reasons. To begin with, the authors line of reasoning is that the advertisement was the cause of the purchase of the sale items. However, while the poll establishes a ion between reading the ad and purchasing sale items, and also indicates a correlation, though less significantly, between reading the ad and buying non-sale t does not establish a general causal relationship between these events. To establish this relationship, other factors that could bring about this result must be red and eliminated. For example, if the four days during which the poll was conducted preceded Thanksgiving and the advertised items were traditionally associated with this holiday, | 
