The following appeared in a memo from a budget planner for the city of Grandview.
"When the Grandview Symphony was established ten years ago, the city of Grandview agreed to provide the symphony with annual funding until the symphony became self-sustaining. Two years ago, the symphony hired an internationally known conductor, who has been able to attract high-profile guest musicians to perform with the symphony. Since then, private contributions to the symphony have tripled and attendance at the symphony's outdoor summer concert series has reached record highs. Now that the symphony has succeeded in finding an audience, the city can eliminate its funding of the symphony."
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.
According to the conclusion of the argument, the city of Grandview can stop his financial support to the city’s symphony because the symphony has finally acquired an audience. Despite such a conclusion seem well supported, it is necessary to explore the reasoning and the implicit assumption on which it relies.
The author mentions the fact that the private contributions to the symphony has incraesed since the symphony hired a famous conductor two years ago. A first assumption is that this contributions are sufficient for the sustaining of the symphony. However, this may be not the case. First, we do not know how much money this financial support is amount to: the author only cites that it is tripled and this is surely insufficient: the current contribution could be insignificant if the initial one was low. Moreover, the cost of the new conductor and the other musicians he has attracted could be high: they are after all extremely famous.
It is true that the author cites the fact that summer concerts have recently reached record highs. The tacit idea is that these record highs are significant for the income of the symphony. However, it is possible that these concerts are economically disadvantaged. Perhaps, they are free; maybe the cost of their organization is greater than the amount of money earned.
For the sake of argument we can concede that the company is NOW well sustained. The author implicit assumes that this condition will be permanent. What about the conductor will not be appreciated by the audience anymore? What if he will decide to quit because of a more tempting offer? There is also no guarantee that the audience will be steady. Maybe, people will decide not to attend the symphony anymore thanks to a change of tastes. Perhaps, there will be an economic crisis and the audience will no longer be solvent.
The author also assumes that there is no negative consequence with the curtailing of the founding. However, this is may be not the case. By not supporting the symphony, the current major will no longer be supported by the people who have voted him. Maybe, eliminating the support of the symphony involves a drastic reduction of tourism or a significant decrease in the amount of money Grandview receives from the state.
In conclusion, the author’s recommendation can turn out convincing only after a careful examination of the assumption of his reasoning. First, it is necessary to identify the income of the symphony and figuring out whether it is sufficient. Second, it is necessary to understand whether this income can be steady in the future. Third, it would be wiser to carefully examine the possible negative ramifications of the elimination of financial support given to the symphony.
Comments
Essay evaluation 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: 26 15
No. of Words: 457 350
No. of Characters: 2234 1500
No. of Different Words: 204 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.624 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.888 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.759 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 163 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 128 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 94 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 56 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.577 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.868 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.654 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.28 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.28 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.08 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 176, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[1]
Message: Did you mean 'these'?
Suggestion: these
...o years ago. A first assumption is that this contributions are sufficient for the su...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, however, if, may, moreover, second, so, third, well, after all, in conclusion, it is true
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 34.0 19.6327345309 173% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 39.0 28.8173652695 135% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2300.0 2260.96107784 102% => OK
No of words: 457.0 441.139720559 104% => OK
Chars per words: 5.03282275711 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.62358717085 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.87102223936 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 210.0 204.123752495 103% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.459518599562 0.468620217663 98% => OK
syllable_count: 735.3 705.55239521 104% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 10.0 4.96107784431 202% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 26.0 19.7664670659 132% => OK
Sentence length: 17.0 22.8473053892 74% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 43.3881783862 57.8364921388 75% => OK
Chars per sentence: 88.4615384615 119.503703932 74% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.5769230769 23.324526521 75% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.46153846154 5.70786347227 78% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => 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: 0.125416400634 0.218282227539 57% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0333303247854 0.0743258471296 45% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0647164148916 0.0701772020484 92% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0729422943051 0.128457276422 57% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0619279151976 0.0628817314937 98% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.1 14.3799401198 77% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 54.22 48.3550499002 112% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.6 12.5979740519 92% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.07 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 104.0 98.500998004 106% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.8 11.1389221557 79% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.