The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of manufacturing
During the past year, Quiot Manufacturing had 30 percent more on-the-job accidents than at the nearby Panoply Industries plant, where the work shifts are one hour shorter than ours. Experts say that significant contributing factors in many on-the-job accidents are fatigue and sleep deprivation among workers. Therefore, to reduce the number of on-the-job accidents at Quiot and thereby increase productivity, we should shorten each of our three work shifts by one hour so that employees will get adequate amounts of sleep.
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
In this memo, the vice president concludes that Quiot Manufacturing should shorten its work shifts by one hour in order to reduce its on-the-job accidents and thereby increase Q’s productivity. To support this, the president points out that last year the number of accidents at Quiot was 30% greater than at Panoply, where work shifts were one hour shorter. In addition, the president cites certain experts who believe that many on-the-job accidents are caused by fatigue and sleep deprivation. This conclusion relies on several unsubstantiated assumptions, which render it unpersuasive.
To begin with, the vice president assumes that the Panoply’s shorter work shifts is the cause of its lower rate of on-the-job accidents. Based on this assumption, the president concludes that adopting the same shifts policy in Quiot could also reduce accidents. Nevertheless, the author fails to take into consider other possible cause for fewer accidents in Panoply, such as adequate security training for workers, or organized producing process. If either of such scenarios is true, the president’s assumption would be unwarranted, and the argument falls apart.
Secondly, even though Panoply’s shorter work shifts exclusively result in its low frequency of accidents, it is unfair to assume that Quiot could be analogous to Panoply, and could implement the same work shifts as Panoply’s. Because, excepting from work shifts hours and on-the-job accidents, the president fails to show more other information about two companies. Perhaps, Panoply’s manufacturing allows seven hours work shift, without producing any side effects on productivity, whereas Quiot must have more continuous manufacturing and longer work shifts. Therefore, without showing that the two firms are similar in all of related respects, the author cannot justify his assumption. And without the sound assumption, the conclusion about implementing Panopky’s work shifts strategy in Quiot is doubtful.
Last but not least, another assumption the argument depends on is that Quiot workers would use the additional hours of free time to sleep or rest. However, the author provides no evidence to support this assumption. It is entirely possible that workers would use that extra hour to engage in some other fatiguing activity, such as sports, or other social activities. Without ruling out this possibility, the assumption would be untenable and thereby the vice president cannot convincingly conclude that reducing Quiot work shifts would diminish Q’s accidents.
To sum up, the vice president fails to substantiate the conclusion that adopting shorter work shifts as the same as Panoply would result in the decrease of Quiot on-the-job accidents. To convince me, the vice president would have to provide more evidence with regard to the causality between Panoply’s work shifts and its on-the-job accidents. Additionally, he would have to justify his assumption that two companies are adequately similar. Furthermore, I would need more information concerning that employees at Quiot must avail the time saved to rest rather than to do other exhausting things.
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, furthermore, however, if, nevertheless, second, secondly, so, therefore, whereas, in addition, such as, to begin with, to sum up, with regard to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 33.0 28.8173652695 115% => OK
Preposition: 66.0 55.5748502994 119% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2702.0 2260.96107784 120% => OK
No of words: 478.0 441.139720559 108% => OK
Chars per words: 5.65271966527 5.12650576532 110% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.67581127817 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.04058033305 2.78398813304 109% => OK
Unique words: 230.0 204.123752495 113% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.481171548117 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 810.0 705.55239521 115% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 14.0 8.76447105788 160% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 5.0 1.67365269461 299% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 9.0 4.22255489022 213% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 39.5697953935 57.8364921388 68% => OK
Chars per sentence: 128.666666667 119.503703932 108% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.7619047619 23.324526521 98% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.38095238095 5.70786347227 129% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.313638504978 0.218282227539 144% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.101501931366 0.0743258471296 137% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0909805383203 0.0701772020484 130% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.193986413727 0.128457276422 151% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0882851058219 0.0628817314937 140% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.6 14.3799401198 115% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 40.69 48.3550499002 84% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.1 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.79 12.5979740519 125% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.76 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 122.0 98.500998004 124% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.