You will map a full argument from a real report, article or proposal.
A two-page proposal lands in your inbox on Thursday with a note from your manager: "Thoughts by Monday?" You read it once, it sounds reasonable, and you are about to reply "looks good" when you realise you could not say what it rests on if someone asked. This exercise gives you a way to answer that in about twenty-five minutes, using the parts of an argument from lessons 1.1 to 1.3.
Pick something that asks a reader to believe or do something: an internal proposal, a business case, a consultant's recommendation, a news article that argues a position, or a report that ends with a conclusion. Updates and minutes are poor choices, because they report rather than argue. A short document with one clear request is best the first time, and if it comes from work, keep a copy only where your company's rules allow.
In a spreadsheet or on paper, make five columns headed claim, evidence, warrant, qualifiers and rebuttals, and notes. Each row will hold one claim.
The first row is the main claim, the thing the whole document wants from you, written in one sentence in your own words. Below it go the supporting claims, the smaller statements the main claim depends on. Most proposals have two to four, and they often hide behind words like "since", "because" and "this means".
For each claim, list the evidence the document offers. Lesson 1.2, Not all evidence weighs the same, gives you the words for the notes column: a single story, a hand-picked set, a count of an unclear group, a fair sample, or independent sources that agree.
Then write the warrant, which is the step people skip because documents almost never state it. Ask why this evidence should lead to this claim, and what you would have to believe for that step to make sense. Write that belief as plainly as you can, even if it sounds obvious once it is on the page.
In the qualifiers and rebuttals column, copy any words that limit a claim, such as probably, for most customers or in the first year, along with any place where the writer says when the claim would not hold. When there are none, write "none stated". Lesson 1.3, Qualifiers and rebuttals make a claim stronger, explained why an empty box here tells you something.
Now read across each row and ask where the argument would break first. It is usually a warrant and sometimes a piece of evidence. Mark that row as the weakest link, and in its notes write what would strengthen it: a before and after figure, a comparison group, a second independent source or a small trial.
Wei Ling, from lesson 1.2, gets a proposal from her manager Kumar to switch the warehouse to the new scanning system before the year-end peak. All the figures below are examples made up for this exercise.
Her main claim row reads: we should replace our scanners with the new system before the peak. The evidence is the three supporting claims, the warrant is that a system which cuts errors and pays for itself should go in before the busiest weeks, and the qualifiers box says none stated.
Supporting claim A is that the system will reduce picking errors. The evidence is a client quote saying errors "dropped overnight" and a vendor figure of over 200 warehouses as users, and the warrant is that what worked for those clients will work for this warehouse. In the notes she writes that the quote was chosen by the vendor and the user count leaves out anyone who stopped.
Supporting claim B says the system pays for itself within eighteen months. Its evidence is the vendor's savings calculator, into which Kumar typed an error rate from one month. The warrant has two parts: that this error rate is typical, and that the vendor's saving per error is realistic for them. The only qualifier is "based on current volumes", and her note says the month Kumar used was November, their busiest.
Supporting claim C is that installing before the peak avoids disruption later. No evidence is given. The warrant is that installation will go smoothly and staff will be fluent before volumes rise, and there are no qualifiers.
Wei Ling marks claim C as the weakest link, since it has no evidence and assumes a smooth rollout just before the hardest weeks of the year. Claim B comes second, because one busy month probably overstates the usual error rate and with it the savings. What would strengthen them is the vendor's typical installation and training time at sites of their size, and error rates from at least six ordinary months.
Finish with three sentences. The first says how much weight the argument can carry, the second names the weakest link, and the third says what you would check or ask for before deciding.
Wei Ling's verdict reads: "The case that the system reduces errors is plausible but rests on vendor-chosen evidence. The weakest link is the timing, which assumes a smooth installation just before peak with no evidence behind it. Before deciding, I would ask for six months of our own error data and the vendor's usual installation time, and consider installing after the peak instead."
Notice that she has not rejected the proposal. She has told Kumar exactly where it needs work, which is more useful to him than "looks good" or "I'm not sure".
A finished map fits on one page. Every claim has a row, every warrant is written out, empty qualifier boxes say so, one row is flagged as the weakest, and the verdict sits underneath. If you cannot write a warrant for some row, put that in its notes, because it usually means the step is doing more work than the document admits.
Pick your document now, while one is fresh in your inbox. The activity below asks you to map it and write your verdict.
Complete the argument map template for one real document and write a three-sentence verdict on how much weight it can carry.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).