The following appeared in an editorial in a business magazine Although the sales of Whirlwind video games have declined over the past two years a recent survey of video game players suggests that this sales trend is about to be reversed The survey asked v

Essay topics:

The following appeared in an editorial in a business magazine.

"Although the sales of Whirlwind video games have declined over the past two years, a recent survey of video-game players suggests that this sales trend is about to be reversed. The survey asked video-game players what features they thought were most important in a video game. According to the survey, players prefer games that provide lifelike graphics, which require the most up-to-date computers. Whirlwind has just introduced several such games with an extensive advertising campaign directed at people ten to twenty-five years old, the age-group most likely to play video games. It follows, then, that the sales of Whirlwind video games are likely to increase dramatically in the next few months."

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.

The author of an editorial in a business magazine contends that the sales of Whirldwind video games have great likelihood to increase drastically in the next few months. The author cites a recent survey of video-game players, and lists plans to tackle the issue. However, the author's claim is based on unsubstantiated assumptions.

First, the author assumes modifying the company's products according to the results of a recent survey of video-game players. However, it is entirely possible that those respondents are far from being the potential customers. Participants of a survey might reside overseas, or the survey might have taken from a different culture, which might not be applicable to the region that Whirlwind is targeting. Therefore, without providing more evidence regarding this issue, it is far-fetched to conjecture that the recent survey would be helpful in estimating future profits of the company.

Second, even if the recent survey turns out to be valid, the author supposes that two years decline of the company's sales will be resolved after introducing state-of-the-art graphics and computers. Nevertheless, there is a high potential that decline of the company's sales is due to other factors such as unreasonably high pricing, failed marketing tactics, or poor management. Unless those factors are remedied, it is hard to expect drastic change in sales of Whirlwind. The author further assumes that past poor advertising has contributed to the decline, but the author fails to suggest any evidence about this. Without clearly providing causes and how to tackle those causes, the author's claim will remain unconvincing.

Third, the author supposes that if the products of the company come out mainly targeting ten to twenty-five years old people, there will be an increase in profits of the company. Nonetheless, the author gives no evidence to support this assumption. Also, it is not evident that the sales will go up since people in that age range perhaps will have more difficult time purchasing game products that are too pricey. Merely liking the products does not necessarily lead to increase in sales. Plus, competing companies might produce games with similar features at an affordable price, which will steal customers. The author has to effectively rule out these possibilities in order to bolster the argument.

Lastly, the author assumes that with all of those modifications, the sales of Whirlwind video games will increase in the next few months. However, this prediction is unsound. Although the company's video games might be a hit, but not necessarily in the next few months. Additionally, game market could be highly seasonal, and if the next few months is the dark season, it is difficult to expect dramatic increase of the sales of the company. In addition, even if the author's estimation turns out to be right and the products hit in the next few months, the sales could drop drastically after that few months, thus making the company to go through another season of severe decline in sales.

All in all, because of aforementioned reasons, the author's contention is gratuitous. The author needs to provide more evidence regarding the issue after careful investigation and research of all of the possible variables that affect the sales of Whirlwind video game.

Votes
Average: 8.2 (4 votes)
Essay Categories

Comments

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 467, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...f the company. In addition, even if the authors estimation turns out to be right and th...
^^^^^^^
Line 11, column 52, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
... because of aforementioned reasons, the authors contention is gratuitous. The author ne...
^^^^^^^
Line 11, column 192, Rule ID: ALL_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'all the'.
Suggestion: all the
...r careful investigation and research of all of the possible variables that affect the sale...
^^^^^^^^^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, lastly, nevertheless, nonetheless, regarding, second, so, therefore, third, thus, as to, in addition, such as

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

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 78.0 55.5748502994 140% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2787.0 2260.96107784 123% => OK
No of words: 532.0 441.139720559 121% => OK
Chars per words: 5.23872180451 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.80261649409 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.83555544257 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 245.0 204.123752495 120% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.460526315789 0.468620217663 98% => OK
syllable_count: 859.5 705.55239521 122% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Interrogative: 0.0 0.471057884232 0% => OK
Article: 15.0 8.76447105788 171% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 6.0 1.67365269461 358% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 50.5691447426 57.8364921388 87% => OK
Chars per sentence: 111.48 119.503703932 93% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.28 23.324526521 91% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.6 5.70786347227 98% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.295690763633 0.218282227539 135% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0866800348289 0.0743258471296 117% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0696413579204 0.0701772020484 99% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.167630010211 0.128457276422 130% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0573038966146 0.0628817314937 91% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.9 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.11 12.5979740519 104% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.39 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 125.0 98.500998004 127% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => Linsear_write_formula is low.
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => The average readability is low. Need to imporve the language.
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 -- 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: 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.

argument 1 -- OK

argument 2 -- OK

argument 3 -- OK

argument 4 -- OK

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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 25 15
No. of Words: 533 350
No. of Characters: 2715 1500
No. of Different Words: 233 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.805 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.094 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.727 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 206 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 151 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 106 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 69 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.32 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.045 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.64 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.328 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.539 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.085 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5