The following appeared in an article in the Grandview Beacon."For many years the city of Grandview has provided annual funding for the Grandview Symphony. Last year, however, private contributions to the symphony increased by 200 percent and attendance a

Essay topics:

The following appeared in an article in the Grandview Beacon.
"For many years the city of Grandview has provided annual funding for the Grandview Symphony. Last year, however, private contributions to the symphony increased by 200 percent and attendance at the symphony's concerts-in-the-park series doubled. The symphony has also announced an increase in ticket prices for next year. Given such developments, some city commissioners argue that the symphony can now be fully self-supporting, and they recommend that funding for the symphony be eliminated from next year's budget."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.

While the recent increase in private contributions and attendance, in addition to plans for increased ticket prices, are certainly positive signs for the Grandview Beacon, these recent developments alone are insufficient to support a recommendation of eliminating city funding for the symphony. In order to substantiate this claim, the city should first understand the Symphony’s current breakdown of revenue/funding, conduct market research to understand whether these positive trends are likely to persist for years to come, and consider the consequences of increasing ticket prices.

In order to understand whether the symphony can truly run without the city’s funding, the city should seek to understand the breakdown of its revenue sources. It is possible that in spite of positive trends in private contributions and ticket sales of the concert-in-the-park series, the majority of the symphony’s funding and revenue comes from the city’s contributions or other unmentioned sources. In other words, if private contributions and concert-in-the-park series only comprised a small majority of the symphony’s revenues in previous years, doubling these figures would be insufficient in making the symphony self-sufficient. Moreover, there may be other unmentioned sources of funding that are concurrently decreasing or staying flat, such as other concert series, partnerships, and private commissions; it is thus important to understand the myriad of sources that the symphony uses to cover its costs to better contextualize recent trends.

Even if private contributions and ticket sales were to constitute the majority of Symphony funding, it is crucial for the city to evaluate whether these positive trends are likely to continue in upcoming years. The city should look to conduct market research to understand future potential of private contributors and ticket sales, as well as considering the shifting cost landscape. While this year’s numbers were certainly favorable, they do not signal that these trends will continue in future years. It is possible that in order to sustain these trends, the Symphony may have to invest more money to attract donors and audience members, which may generate higher costs in the short term. Thus, there should be ample consideration about the shifting revenue/cost trends based on the local economy and the Symphony market as a whole, as this year’s numbers alone cannot serve as a predictor for the future.

Finally, while certain initiatives like raised ticket prices may appear to be a means of increased revenue, the city should also keep in mind that these initiatives may not result in a revenue boost. The city should investigate whether the increase in price would ultimately produce a higher gross revenue in spite of the lost audience members who may be priced out due to the increase. The increase in price alone cannot signal a boost in revenue; a net increase would require that the loss in volume be relatively lower. This fact, compounded with the lack of knowledge of how much ticket revenues actually account for total revenues, generates a need for further analysis and research, as it is possible that increased ticket prices may actually put the Symphony at a greater financial disadvantage.

Ultimately, the facts at hand are highly insufficient in substantiating the claim that the Symphony can run without city funding. In order to support this recommendation with reliable facts, the city must investigate the full scope of the Symphony’s funding, understand future market trends, and consider the unintended revenue consequences of initiatives like ticket increases. Only after these questions have been answered can the city comfortably withdraw funding from the Symphony in good faith.

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Average: 5.5 (3 votes)
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Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 506, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...unding from the Symphony in good faith.
^^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, finally, first, if, look, may, moreover, so, thus, well, while, in addition, such as, as well as, in other words, in spite of

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 24.0 12.9520958084 185% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 30.0 28.8173652695 104% => OK
Preposition: 77.0 55.5748502994 139% => OK
Nominalization: 7.0 16.3942115768 43% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3227.0 2260.96107784 143% => OK
No of words: 582.0 441.139720559 132% => OK
Chars per words: 5.54467353952 5.12650576532 108% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.91168771031 4.56307096286 108% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.16374164992 2.78398813304 114% => OK
Unique words: 252.0 204.123752495 123% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.432989690722 0.468620217663 92% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1000.8 705.55239521 142% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 32.0 22.8473053892 140% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 61.1592991829 57.8364921388 106% => OK
Chars per sentence: 179.277777778 119.503703932 150% => OK
Words per sentence: 32.3333333333 23.324526521 139% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.11111111111 5.70786347227 142% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.23439809339 0.218282227539 107% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.082751558639 0.0743258471296 111% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0620911717433 0.0701772020484 88% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.146263527456 0.128457276422 114% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0753899134502 0.0628817314937 120% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 20.8 14.3799401198 145% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 30.54 48.3550499002 63% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 17.0 12.197005988 139% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.44 12.5979740519 123% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.91 8.32208582834 107% => OK
difficult_words: 136.0 98.500998004 138% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 19.5 12.3882235529 157% => OK
gunning_fog: 14.8 11.1389221557 133% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => 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.

Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 586 350
No. of Characters: 3115 1500
No. of Different Words: 237 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.92 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.316 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.881 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 249 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 184 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 126 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 74 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 32.556 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.506 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.722 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.393 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.604 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.15 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5