38: The following appeared in a memo from the new vice president of Sartorian, a company that manufactures men's clothing
"Five years ago, at a time when we had difficulties in obtaining reliable supplies of high quality wool fabric, we discontinued production of our alpaca overcoat. Now that we have a new fabric supplier, we should resume production. This coat should sell very well: since we have not offered an alpaca overcoat for five years and since our major competitor no longer makes an alpaca overcoat, there will be pent-up customer demand. Also, since the price of most types of clothing has increased in each of the past five years, customers should be willing to pay significantly higher prices for alpaca overcoats than they did five years ago, and our company profits will increase."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
new fabric supplier can supply high quality wool fabric without any sufferings. High quality wool fabric leads to production of alpaca overcoat. The workers in the company has good skills in making alpa overcoat.
Alpaca coat will sell well. For five years, the demand for the alpaca coat and the fad for alpaca coat remains the same.
Company profits will increase. Customers should be willing to pay significantly higher prices for alpaca overcoats. Their willingness will lead to actual purchase of the coat. Costs will not be a significant amount.
In the above statement, the author contends that company profits will increase due to the change in the supplier for the wool fabric. While supporting the argument, however, the author makes numerous assumptions which cannot be taken for granted. Thus the argument remains largely unconvincing without further evidence to verify unjustified assumptions.
Firstly, the author assumes that new fabric supplier can make the company's profit to increase. The new fabric supplier can supply high quality wool fabric is assumed. However, it may not be the case. Even though, the new supplier can obtain the fabric easily, there could be such high costs that follows from having the fabric. Moreover, the workers who are making the alpaca coat have a knack for making the coat is assumed as well. Therefore, although there is a fine supply of alpaca, it could not lead to the well-made coat made out of alpaca because of the poor skills for making the coat in the production process. In addition, the costs could have surged due to the new supplier's contract with the company. Thus, further evidence pertaining to the new fabric supplier helping the company's profit to increase is needed to support the claim.
Secondly, the assumption that the alpaca coat will sell well is not conclusively proven. The author's latent assumption for claiming the argument is that the demand for the alpaca coat has not weaken and the trend for alpaca coat remains. However, there could be an alternative source of coats that rises in the fashion industry which is cheap and warm that catches shopper's attention. As such, more detailed data needs to be considered whether the alpaca coat actually sells well should be warranted.
Lastly, the higher willingness to pay for the alpaca coat will lead to the increment of the company's profit is not a plausible assumption without any corroborated evidence. Although the shoppers are willing to buy the coat for the high price, they could be in a financial constraint due to severe nationwide economic condition. In other words, their willingness could not lead to the actual purchase. In addition, we do not have any evidence that how many consumers have high willingness to pay for the coat. If it is only a mere number of consumers, it will not be of a big help to the company. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the evidence for the high willingness of buying coat leading to higher profit for the company.
In conclusion, the author's claim is not very well supported in its current form. Further evidence pertaining to the costs for changing to a new fabric supplier, how much the alpaca coat will actually sell, and whether the willingness to buy leads to actual buying should be determined to validate the claim.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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flaws:
The content with the outlines (first three paragraphs) may bring wrong evaluations by e-grader.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 32 15
No. of Words: 552 350
No. of Characters: 2688 1500
No. of Different Words: 212 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.847 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.87 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.481 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 211 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 139 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 95 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 50 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.25 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.846 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.594 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.306 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.554 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.093 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 8 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 1, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: New
new fabric supplier can supply high quality...
^^^
Line 7, column 248, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Thus,
...ions which cannot be taken for granted. Thus the argument remains largely unconvinci...
^^^^
Line 11, column 193, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[2]
Message: Possible agreement error -- use past participle here: 'weakened'.
Suggestion: weakened
... the demand for the alpaca coat has not weaken and the trend for alpaca coat remains. ...
^^^^^^
Line 15, column 82, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Further,
...ery well supported in its current form. Further evidence pertaining to the costs for ch...
^^^^^^^
Discourse Markers used:
['actually', 'first', 'firstly', 'however', 'if', 'lastly', 'may', 'moreover', 'second', 'secondly', 'so', 'therefore', 'thus', 'well', 'while', 'in addition', 'in conclusion', 'in other words']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.244262295082 0.25644967241 95% => OK
Verbs: 0.15737704918 0.15541462614 101% => OK
Adjectives: 0.101639344262 0.0836205057962 122% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0606557377049 0.0520304965353 117% => OK
Pronouns: 0.016393442623 0.0272364105082 60% => OK
Prepositions: 0.0967213114754 0.125424944231 77% => OK
Participles: 0.0393442622951 0.0416121511921 95% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.56266504891 2.79052419416 92% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0426229508197 0.026700313972 160% => OK
Particles: 0.0 0.001811407834 0% => OK
Determiners: 0.122950819672 0.113004496875 109% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0393442622951 0.0255425247493 154% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.0114754098361 0.0127820249294 90% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 3316.0 2731.13054187 121% => OK
No of words: 552.0 446.07635468 124% => OK
Chars per words: 6.00724637681 6.12365571057 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.84713113593 4.57801047555 106% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.391304347826 0.378187486979 103% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.266304347826 0.287650121315 93% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.188405797101 0.208842608468 90% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.105072463768 0.135150697306 78% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.56266504891 2.79052419416 92% => OK
Unique words: 217.0 207.018472906 105% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.393115942029 0.469332199767 84% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
Word variations: 45.7778130503 52.1807786196 88% => OK
How many sentences: 32.0 20.039408867 160% => OK
Sentence length: 17.25 23.2022227129 74% => OK
Sentence length SD: 45.4019806148 57.7814097925 79% => OK
Chars per sentence: 103.625 141.986410481 73% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.25 23.2022227129 74% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.5625 0.724660767414 78% => OK
Paragraphs: 8.0 5.14285714286 156% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 3.58251231527 112% => OK
Readability: 43.8804347826 51.9672348444 84% => OK
Elegance: 1.62237762238 1.8405768891 88% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.25736400199 0.441005458295 58% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.127973227752 0.135418324435 95% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.100491824369 0.0829849096947 121% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.587440768411 0.58762219726 100% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.137228361689 0.147661913831 93% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.113019907586 0.193483328276 58% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0606973190342 0.0970749176394 63% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.39740462325 0.42659136922 93% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.178445102517 0.0774707102158 230% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.171455436978 0.312017818177 55% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0674121251184 0.0698173142475 97% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 20.0 8.33743842365 240% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.87684729064 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.82512315271 104% => OK
Positive topic words: 13.0 6.46551724138 201% => OK
Negative topic words: 4.0 5.36822660099 75% => OK
Neutral topic words: 4.0 2.82389162562 142% => OK
Total topic words: 21.0 14.657635468 143% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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Note: This is not the final score. 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.