The following appeared in an e-mail sent by the marketing director of the Classical Shakespeare Theatre of Bardville.
"Over the past ten years, there has been a 20 percent decline in the size of the average audience at Classical Shakespeare Theatre productions. In spite of increased advertising, we are attracting fewer and fewer people to our shows, causing our profits to decrease significantly. We must take action to attract new audience members. The best way to do so is by instituting a 'Shakespeare in the Park' program this summer. Two years ago the nearby Avon Repertory Company started a 'Free Plays in the Park' program, and its profits have increased 10 percent since then. Therefore, I recommend that we start a 'Shakespeare in the Park' program of our own. If we do so, I predict that our profits will also see a significant increase."
The author states that the introduction of 'Shakespeare in the Park' program could significantly increase the profits to rise since the Avon Repertory Company that started a 'Free Plays in the Park' program saw an increase in profits of 10 percent two years ago. Before we evaluate this conclusion, there is a need to answer three questions.
Firstly, can we be sure that the results obtained by Avon Repertory Company would be replicated at the Classical Shakespeare Theatre of Bardville by the introduction of the new program? The author provides no evidence as to how the situations of both the companies are comparable. It may be the case that this particular solution that worked for Avon Repertory might not work for the Shakespeare theatre. It could also be the case that the rise in profits at the former was due to the plays by other writers and the plays written by Shakespeare had no effect, or worse, might have had a negative effect. If that was the case, not only would we not see any profits from the new programme, there is a chance that they may incur losses.
Secondly, is the 10 percent increase in profits at Avon Repertory solely because of the introduction of the 'Free Plays in the Park' program? The company might have made other changes which could also have contributed to the increase in profits. Perhaps, the company started a different programme that is in no way related or might have renovated the place, that attracted most of the audience. The increase in profits, 10 percent, is also not a significant amount to come a conclusion based on the data the prompt reveals. If that is the case, the time and effort put into the introduction of this new program would go in vain.
Thirdly, is the drama industry still in the shape that it was two years ago? It may be the case that the people who were interested in plays two years ago might not be as much willing now. In the present social media influenced world, it is common for 'trends' to appear out of no-where and also dissappear overnight. To use the same remedy that was used two years ago seems lazy. The audience might have shifted to a much convinient and cost effective way of consuming entertainment online. The company should be trying more relevant and innovative ways to help their profits, and not the solution discussed in the prompt.
The argument as it is presented, is flawed and the author needs to answer the above mentioned questions before we can conclude. The presence of more evidence on the matter would help us into drawing a better solution to the problem, instead of presenting an argument based on incomplete statistics.
Comments
e-rater score report
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: 20 15
No. of Words: 460 350
No. of Characters: 2123 1500
No. of Different Words: 201 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.631 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.615 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.562 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 142 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 111 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 70 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 46 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.694 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.6 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.306 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.526 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.098 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 1, 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.
...he solution discussed in the prompt. The argument as it is presented, is flawed ...
^^^
Line 9, column 129, 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.
...ioned questions before we can conclude. The presence of more evidence on the matter...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, if, may, second, secondly, so, still, third, thirdly, as to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 20.0 12.9520958084 154% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 30.0 28.8173652695 104% => OK
Preposition: 56.0 55.5748502994 101% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2176.0 2260.96107784 96% => OK
No of words: 460.0 441.139720559 104% => OK
Chars per words: 4.73043478261 5.12650576532 92% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.6311565067 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.63727103039 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 207.0 204.123752495 101% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.45 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 684.0 705.55239521 97% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 44.6228640945 57.8364921388 77% => OK
Chars per sentence: 108.8 119.503703932 91% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.0 23.324526521 99% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.3 5.70786347227 75% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.101695765196 0.218282227539 47% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0283497531582 0.0743258471296 38% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0397973544645 0.0701772020484 57% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0535637938956 0.128457276422 42% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0338497997221 0.0628817314937 54% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.3 14.3799401198 86% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 56.59 48.3550499002 117% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.45 12.5979740519 83% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.97 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 93.0 98.500998004 94% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.