The following appeared in a memo from the owner of a chain of cheese stores located throughout the United States.
"For many years all the stores in our chain have stocked a wide variety of both domestic and imported cheeses. Last year, however, all of the five best-selling cheeses at our newest store were domestic cheddar cheeses from Wisconsin. Furthermore, a recent survey by Cheeses of the World magazine indicates an increasing preference for domestic cheeses among its subscribers. Since our company can reduce expenses by limiting inventory, the best way to improve profits in all of our stores is to discontinue stocking many of our varieties of imported cheese and concentrate primarily on domestic cheeses."
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 asserts that the chain should stop stocking imported cheeses and focus on domestic cheeses so that the company can improve profits. The author provides several arguments to support the view. Nonetheless, the claim cannot be assessed in its current form and thus answers to the further questions should be provided.
To begin with, the author presumes that people prefer domestic cheeses than imported cheeses given that all of the five best-selling cheeses were domestic cheddar cheese from Wisconsin last year, but this argument for now doesn’t seem logical. The preference for domestic cheddar cheese from Wisconsin may be the temporary trend for last year. Last year, for instance, Wisconsin may have had an exceptionally outstanding environment to produce high quality cheeses. If this tendency does not persist and the quality of cheddar cheeses from Wisconsin significantly drops, the preference of people may change and domestic cheeses may no longer be their favorite. Hence, the evidence that people will still prefer Wisconsin domestic cheeses should be provided.
Moreover, the author assumes that the data provided by the recent survey by Cheeses of the World magazine is reliable, but this may not be the case. The sample size of the survey may not be sufficient, or the sample may contain a bias. If there were only 10 survey respondents, the sample size is too small to be a good representative of people from the USA. Moreover, if those who prefer domestic cheeses are of age over 30, and the majority of magazine subscribers are also of age over 30, then the survey does not adequately reflect the preference of people of age under 30. If any of above is true, the data from the survey become unreliable. Therefore, it should be proved that the sample quality is good enough to represent people from the USA.
Finally, the author argues that the reduction in expenses by limiting inventory will lead to the improvement of profits, which seems unreasonable. Even if people indeed prefer domestic cheeses, profits coming from imported cheeses may not be negligible. If the damage caused by discontinuing stocking of lots of imported cheeses outweighs the reduction of expenses caused by limiting inventory, the economic status of the company may become worse than before. For this reason, it needs to be verified that the cost reduced by limiting inventory is much higher than the cost lost by discontinuing stocking domestic cheeses.
In sum, the author’s claim is based on unproved assumptions which breaks the argument if prove unwarranted. Therefore, the questions such as the sample quality of the survey and the preference of people in the future need to be answered.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 443 350
No. of Characters: 2210 1500
No. of Different Words: 198 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.588 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.989 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.601 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 181 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 127 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 85 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 41 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.15 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.039 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.9 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.346 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.574 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.11 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 105, Rule ID: ALL_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'all the'.
Suggestion: all the
...heeses than imported cheeses given that all of the five best-selling cheeses were domestic...
^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, hence, if, may, moreover, nonetheless, so, still, then, therefore, thus, for instance, such as, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 18.0 28.8173652695 62% => OK
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2276.0 2260.96107784 101% => OK
No of words: 442.0 441.139720559 100% => OK
Chars per words: 5.14932126697 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.58517132086 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.68597300313 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 198.0 204.123752495 97% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.447963800905 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 701.1 705.55239521 99% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 15.0 8.76447105788 171% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
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: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 48.5489443758 57.8364921388 84% => OK
Chars per sentence: 113.8 119.503703932 95% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.1 23.324526521 95% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.45 5.70786347227 113% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.205519369857 0.218282227539 94% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.069554013092 0.0743258471296 94% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0814089344298 0.0701772020484 116% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.106326378637 0.128457276422 83% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0882570876186 0.0628817314937 140% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.9 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.59 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.94 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 90.0 98.500998004 91% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.