161. The following is a recommendation from the personnel director to the president of Acme Publishing Company.
"Many other companies have recently stated that having their employees take the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course has greatly improved productivity. One graduate of the course was able to read a 500-page report in only two hours; another graduate rose from an assistant manager to vice president of the company in under a year. Obviously, the faster you can read, the more information you can absorb in a single workday. Moreover, Easy Read would cost Acme only $500 per employee—a small price to pay when you consider the benefits. Included in this fee is a three-week seminar in Spruce City and a lifelong subscription to the Easy Read newsletter. Clearly, Acme would benefit greatly by requiring all of our employees to take the Easy Read course."
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 recommendation, the personnel director of Acme Publishing company claims that Acme company would improve its productivity by mandating all employees to take the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course in Spruce City. To support her argument, she cited reports of other companies which say that the course is helpful for their productivity. And she says there is a person who improved his reading skills through the course and another person who promoted from an assistant manager to a vice president in under a year. And she reasons that another reason for recommending the course is a small fee, $500. Careful scrutiny reveals that this argument has several logical flaws.
To begin with, she thinks the fee, $500 is relatively cheeping comparing with advantages that can be gotten by enrolling the course. However, this may be expensive or not efficient. For example, $500 does not include the cost of going to Spruce city and as I will mention down, there is no such guarantee that one can develop his reading skills after including the course. If she cannot explain why she thinks the fee is small, this argument is not persuasive.
Secondly, based on the real example of two-person, she thinks a simple time sequence as meaningful causality. This could not be true. For example, the reason for improving reading skills is not because of the course, but he read many books to improve his skills. And the reason for the promotion of another person could not be because of the course or fast reading, because of competence in work or social skills. Even if the cause of this case is the course, it could be a unique case. Until she explains the exact reason for these examples, this argument is not cogent.
Finally, if we concede other problems is true, there is another critical problem. Based on the reports of other companies, she hastily assumes that the reading course would also positively affect to Acme company. Common sense tells us that all companies have their own different characteristics of employees and work conditions or trait of work. For example, other companies could do jobs which need reading skills but, in Acme company, the work could do not need reading skills. If this is true, we cannot be convinced by this argument.
To summarize, this argument is still dubious as it stands. To make this recommendation more plausible, the personnel director of Acme Publishing company have to explain why she thinks that the benefit of the course of only two people could represent of all graduates of the course and have to give us data in which all possible cost is included. To evaluate better, we must know why she thinks other companies’ situation is similar to the Acme Company
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 459 350
No. of Characters: 2185 1500
No. of Different Words: 208 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.629 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.76 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.516 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 163 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 117 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 66 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 45 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.957 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.98 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.522 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.31 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.499 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.193 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 347, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...in which all possible cost is included. To evaluate better, we must know why she t...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, still, for example, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 48.0 28.8173652695 167% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 49.0 55.5748502994 88% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2254.0 2260.96107784 100% => OK
No of words: 459.0 441.139720559 104% => OK
Chars per words: 4.91067538126 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.62863751936 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.64592263377 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 219.0 204.123752495 107% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.477124183007 0.468620217663 102% => OK
syllable_count: 690.3 705.55239521 98% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 12.0 4.96107784431 242% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 9.0 4.22255489022 213% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 58.3062769191 57.8364921388 101% => OK
Chars per sentence: 98.0 119.503703932 82% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.9565217391 23.324526521 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.04347826087 5.70786347227 71% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.265468492913 0.218282227539 122% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0700194905386 0.0743258471296 94% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0914730680368 0.0701772020484 130% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.158962271545 0.128457276422 124% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.101536646247 0.0628817314937 161% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.7 14.3799401198 81% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 60.65 48.3550499002 125% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.5 12.197005988 78% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.2 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.81 8.32208582834 94% => OK
difficult_words: 94.0 98.500998004 95% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.