The following appeared in a memo from New Ventures Consulting to the president of HobCo, Inc., a chain of hobby shops.
"Our team has completed its research on suitable building sites for a new HobCo hobby Shop in the city of Grilldon. We discovered that there are currently no hobby shops in southeastern Grilldon. When our researchers conducted a poll of area residents, 88 percent of those who responded indicated that they would welcome the opening of a hobby shop in southeastern Grilldon. Grilldon is in a region of the nation in which the hobby business has increased by 300 percent during the past decade. In addition, Grilldon has a very large population of retirees, a demographic with ample time to devote to hobbies. We therefore recommend that you choose southeastern Grilldon as the site for your next HobCo Hobby Shop. We predict that a shop in this area will draw a steady stream of enthusiastic new HobCo customers."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The author of the memo claims that the president of HobCo, Inc. should open a new shop on southeastern Grilldon, and suggests several reasons that seem to uphold his/her claim. However, the memo is rife with holes and assumptions, which need to be eliminated in order for the author to uphold his/her claim with clear warrant. Such flaws will be discussed with further details below.
First of all, the author needs to provide substantial information about the type of poll that was conducted. Maybe the questions were mainly asking about the types of shops the residents would like to have instead of asking if they are willing to welcome a new hobby shop. Also, the lists of shops other than the hobby shop for the participants to choose were already redundant in southeastern Grilldon, and the poll did not accept any null choices. If so, then the residents would have had to choose the hobby shop even though they did not wish to. Also, even if the residents did choose the hobby shop according to their wish, it does not always indicate that they would become a customer of the hobby business. The poll should have asked if the residents feel the need of a hobby shop and are currently pursuing or wish to pursue a hobby.
Furthermore, the author needs to clarify exactly how many residents among the total number of residents participated in the poll. If only a hundred of people among millions of residents participated in the survey, then the result showing that 88 percent of the residents welcomed the new hobby shop seems negligible. There is also a possibility that the poll had been conducted only for a few hours, allowing only certain types of residents who does not work to respond to the poll. If this is the case, then the participants are inept to represent all the residents in the region.
Secondly, the author assumes that since Grilldon is in a region where hobby business increased extensively since a decade ago, Grilldon must be showing the same results. However, this is clearly a haste assumption. Maybe all the other regions except Grilldon are responsible to the increase in hobby business and Grilldon actually decreased or stayed just the same as before. The author would have to clarify if the increase in hobby business also increased in Grilldon just like the other places in the region.
Last but not least, the author indicates that because many retirees reside in Grilldon, the hobby business would prosper in Grilldon. However, being a retiree does not always lead to having enough time to devote in doing hobbies. Maybe the majority of the retirees in Grilldon are currently occupied in jobs that does not require any age limits, such as owning a store, doing private lessons to certain types of people, or volunteering. The author would have to be more precise in whether the retirees actually do have enough time to devote on hobbies instead of assuming in a haste.
To sum up, even though the author of the memo's claim seems plausible, through thorough investigation and reading the memo from various points of view, it is confirmed that the author's claim is unwarranted. For him/her to maintain the claim, he/she would have to eliminate the mistakes of making haste assumptions, lack of thorough investigation, and lack of substantial and clear information.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 6 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 567 350
No. of Characters: 2680 1500
No. of Different Words: 236 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.88 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.727 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.488 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 181 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 130 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 88 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 50 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.652 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.221 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.87 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.32 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.32 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.148 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 476, Rule ID: IF_WOULD_HAVE_VBN[1]
Message: Did you mean 'had had'?
Suggestion: had had
...null choices. If so, then the residents would have had to choose the hobby shop even though th...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, furthermore, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, such as, first of all, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 26.0 28.8173652695 90% => OK
Preposition: 83.0 55.5748502994 149% => OK
Nominalization: 5.0 16.3942115768 30% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2744.0 2260.96107784 121% => OK
No of words: 563.0 441.139720559 128% => OK
Chars per words: 4.87388987567 5.12650576532 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.87110059796 4.56307096286 107% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.57165391032 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 247.0 204.123752495 121% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.438721136767 0.468620217663 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 848.7 705.55239521 120% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 44.1010322064 57.8364921388 76% => OK
Chars per sentence: 114.333333333 119.503703932 96% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.4583333333 23.324526521 101% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.95833333333 5.70786347227 87% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 15.0 8.20758483034 183% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.200494104981 0.218282227539 92% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0651658558069 0.0743258471296 88% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0596577805957 0.0701772020484 85% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0971372663191 0.128457276422 76% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0515394005803 0.0628817314937 82% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.2 14.3799401198 92% => 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: 11.26 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.86 8.32208582834 94% => OK
difficult_words: 110.0 98.500998004 112% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 7.5 12.3882235529 61% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 8.0 11.9071856287 67% => The average readability is low. Need to imporve the language.
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.