essay - GMAT: Argument3

Question:
The following appeared in a memorandum issued by a large city's council on the arts.

"In a recent citywide poll, fifteen 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."

Discuss how well reasoned ... etc.

Answer:
Since there's not necessarily a connection between an increase of people watching television programs about the visual arts and an increase of people visiting the city's art museums, the argument is flawed.

The argument just regards the same percentage as an evidence of the correlation between them, so there are other possibilities of the causes of the increase of people visiting the art museums. It's not necessarily the case that people who like to enjoy visual arts necessarily like to visit art museums. The people might like watching TV, because they don't like going out to a museum.

Therefore, what the city council is thinking might a wrong decision, resulting in the fact that the argument cannot convince people with authorities to go about the decision.