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 the memo, the new vice president of the men’s clothing manufacturer company recommends resuming the alpaca overcoat production. To justify his recommendation, he makes some unwarranted assumptions that render the argument highly suspected. To evaluate the argument and the vice president’s recommendations more accurately, the company must examine more solid pieces of evidence.
First of all, the author assumes that the alpaca overcoat should sell very well because they have not offered this coat for five years, and their rival does not make this coat. There is no enough information and solid evidence that shows that if the company resumes producing the alpaca overcoat, they will make profit out of it and they will sell them very well. Its’ possible that after five years, the customers’ opinion have changed and they won’t show enthusiasm to buy this coat. Maybe, the weather condition of the region has become warmer due to the global warming, and therefore, people do not need to buy coats made of wools. The author should consider the possible changes in the weather conditions and temperatures. Also, the company should use a survey that asks the costumers whether they are willing to buy the alpaca overcoat or not. Without these pieces of evidence, the company will take a risk to resume the alpaca coat production.
Moreover, the author argues that the prices of most types of clothing have increased in the past five years, so customers will be eager to spend higher price of the alpaca overcoat. What is the relation between the fact that the prices of the most clothing types have risen and the assumption that people will buy the alpaca overcoat in higher price? The author fails to provide solid evidence for this cause-and-effect assumption. There is no guarantee that customers will pay higher price for the alpaca coat. Have people bought the high prices clothing during the past five years? What is the ratio of the profit of the company to their costs, in the past five years? The increasing in clothing’ price won’t guarantee that customers will buy the alpaca coat in higher price. Without providing evidence in statistics of the company’s revenue in the past five years, they cannot make a decision.
Finally, the company’s profit is based on other factors than just selling a specific kind of coat. The new vice president simply assumes that by producing the alpaca coat their profit will increase. He does not examine other factors that play the roles in the company’s profits. He should investigate about the past five years revenue and costs of the company. Also, he must examine the workers’ efficiency, the customers’ satisfactory and other important factors that are more effective in making profit.
All in all, the argument, as it stands now, is flawed due to the lack of evidence. The new vice president should consider examining some pieces of evidence and perhaps conduct a systematic study about the company and the men clothing’s market to able to provide a convincing recommendation for the company.
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: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 25 15
No. of Words: 507 350
No. of Characters: 2490 1500
No. of Different Words: 203 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.745 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.911 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.498 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 179 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 124 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 50 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.28 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.971 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.28 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.334 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.334 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.115 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 383, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... examine more solid pieces of evidence. First of all, the author assumes that th...
^^^
Line 2, column 365, Rule ID: YOURS_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: An apostrophe is never used to form possessive case pronouns. Did you mean: 'Its'?
Suggestion: Its
...f it and they will sell them very well. Its’ possible that after five years, the cus...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, finally, first, if, may, moreover, so, therefore, thus, well, kind of, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 9.0 19.6327345309 46% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 37.0 28.8173652695 128% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 57.0 55.5748502994 103% => OK
Nominalization: 19.0 16.3942115768 116% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2574.0 2260.96107784 114% => OK
No of words: 505.0 441.139720559 114% => OK
Chars per words: 5.09702970297 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.74048574033 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.66178980908 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 218.0 204.123752495 107% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.431683168317 0.468620217663 92% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 798.3 705.55239521 113% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 16.0 8.76447105788 183% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 40.1350520119 57.8364921388 69% => OK
Chars per sentence: 102.96 119.503703932 86% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.2 23.324526521 87% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.56 5.70786347227 62% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
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: 0.121884375539 0.218282227539 56% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0453883546156 0.0743258471296 61% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0554782337779 0.0701772020484 79% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0895666847661 0.128457276422 70% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0481387162195 0.0628817314937 77% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.7 14.3799401198 88% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.3 12.5979740519 98% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.76 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 100.0 98.500998004 102% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.