The following appeared in a memo from the new vice president of Sartorian, a company that manufactures men's clothing.
"Five years ago, at a time when we had difficulties in obtaining reliable supplies of high-quality wool fabric, we discontinued production of our alpaca overcoat. Now that we have a new fabric supplier, we should resume production. This coat should sell very well: since we have not offered an alpaca overcoat for five years and since our major competitor no longer makes an alpaca overcoat, there will be pent-up customer demand. Also, since the price of most types of clothing has increased in each of the past five years, customers should be willing to pay significantly higher prices for alpaca overcoats than they did five years ago, and our company profits will increase."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument
In this memo, the new vice president of Saturnian claims that the company should resume production of alpaca overcoat, as a result, the company's profit will increase. To support her argument, she points out that the competitor no longer makes an alpaca overcoat and since the price of clothing has increased, the customers would be willing to pay the higher price and other evidence. Careful scrutiny reveals that this argument has several logical flaws.
Firstly, the author hastily assumes that the market condition is the same as five years ago. Common sense tells us, in the modern economy, the fashion of clothing and the favor of buyers is changing very fast. There is a possibility that even if the coat is vogue five years ago, it would be considered as old-fashioned now.
If she cannot present us the specified data about recent market condition, this argument is not cogent
Secondly, based on the fact Saturnian discontinue the production of the alpaca coat, she thinks the main factor of stopping the manufacture of the clothes is difficulties in obtaining raw materials. However, there could be another example. For instance, the net profit could be low because of the incompetent marketing team or even, the low quality of manufactured goods. if this is true, her claim is not persuasive.
Finally, even if we admit other problematic assumptions are true, there is still a critical problem. She said that the price of most clothing is higher than five years ago, the customers would be willing to pay those higher prices. In infinitely competitive capitalism, however, the price will be changed. For example, If other companies participate in the competition, the supply will increase, then, the price should be decreased to have more competitiveness. Until the author explains why she thinks the price will keep up, we cannot be convinced by this argument.
In conclusion, the memo by the new vice president of sartorial is dubious as it stands. To make this argument more precise, the vice president has to show us the data about the similarity between the recent market condition and earlier and explain the exact reason the company had to halt the production line. To evaluate better, we have to know why she thinks the price will maintain in the future.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
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: 380 350
No. of Characters: 1843 1500
No. of Different Words: 192 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.415 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.85 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.6 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 134 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 96 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 65 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 43 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.111 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.73 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.611 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.304 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.545 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.16 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 6, column 7, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...onsidered as old-fashioned now. If she cannot present us the specified data abo...
^^
Line 9, column 373, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: If
... the low quality of manufactured goods. if this is true, her claim is not persuasi...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
finally, first, firstly, however, if, second, secondly, so, still, then, as to, for example, for instance, in conclusion, in fact, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 38.0 55.5748502994 68% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1917.0 2260.96107784 85% => OK
No of words: 380.0 441.139720559 86% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.04473684211 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.41515443553 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.69340401866 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 197.0 204.123752495 97% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.518421052632 0.468620217663 111% => OK
syllable_count: 597.6 705.55239521 85% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 65.6887770635 57.8364921388 114% => OK
Chars per sentence: 106.5 119.503703932 89% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.1111111111 23.324526521 91% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.88888888889 5.70786347227 138% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => 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: 0.132111301334 0.218282227539 61% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0440095302018 0.0743258471296 59% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0419545862728 0.0701772020484 60% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0670402096078 0.128457276422 52% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0419487765041 0.0628817314937 67% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.9 14.3799401198 90% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.95 12.5979740519 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.58 8.32208582834 103% => OK
difficult_words: 94.0 98.500998004 95% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
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.