The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of Quiot Manufacturing.
"During the past year, Quiot Manufacturing had 30 percent more on-the-job accidents than at the nearby Panoply Industries plant, where the work shifts are one hour shorter than ours. Experts say that significant contributing factors in many on-the-job accidents are fatigue and sleep deprivation among workers. Therefore, to reduce the number of on-the-job accidents at Quiot and thereby increase productivity, we should shorten each of our three work shifts by one hour so that employees will get adequate amounts of sleep."
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.
The vice president of Quiot Manufacturing claims that reduction in shift hours by one hour will help to reduce the number of on-the-job accidents. Vice president reaches at this claim after several assumptions of sleep deprivation, tiredness, and comparison with nearby Panoply Industrial plant. However, before vice president's assumptions are accounted as a fact for his argument, we should consider several other alternative assumptions too.
To begin with, there is a 30 percent increase in job accidents compared to Panoply Industrial plant. What was the number of accidents at both plant last year? what was the number of Quiot Manufacturing this year compared to last year? Here vice president considers just percentage of accidents. It may happen that there were 10 accidents last year, and this year there were 13 accidents. Also, on the other hand, Panoply Industrial plant may have 20 accidents last year and this year it had 25 accidents, so this is an increase of 25 percent but the number accidents are 2 more than Quiot Manufacturing. If above is true, the vice president’s assumption of increase in accident compared to Panoply Industries plant does not hold water.
Moreover, what are the safety guidelines at Quiot Manufacturing? Are they giving enough rest to workers during shift? As per experts, contributing factors in many on-the-job accidents is fatigue and sleep deprivation. Maybe during the manufacturing, there are some noxious gases which are in turn working in insidious manner to reduce sleep of workers and due to lack of safety measures at industry, workers are not wearing masks. Also, workers might not be given enough break during their shift to regain energy for work, as company wants more productivity. If above is true, then reducing one hour from shift will not help in increasing workers productivity and on-the-job accidents, consequently weakening the vice president's assumption.
Finally, what if workers are not utilizing one hour of reduction in work for sleep? For instance, it may happen that workers who have been given extra one hour for sleep, will not use it to rest or sleep. They may do some other household chores for example cooking, cleaning the house, which will not help them to rest and will make workers even more tiring. If above assumptions hold water, then the vice president's assumption of reduction in one hour from shift will not help to reduce on-the-job accidents.
TO recapitulate, vice president of Quiot Manufacturing offers a flawed argument and has failed to consider several other assumptions for his claim. Had he provided more fact, his argument would have been persuasive. As it remains, vice president's argument is too weak to be true. Hence, I remain unconvinced.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 11 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 445 350
No. of Characters: 2247 1500
No. of Different Words: 196 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.593 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.049 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.768 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 147 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 117 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 87 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 67 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.348 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.416 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.565 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.32 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.535 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.127 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 160, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: What
...r of accidents at both plant last year? what was the number of Quiot Manufacturing t...
^^^^
Line 5, column 640, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'workers'' or 'worker's'?
Suggestion: workers'; worker's
... from shift will not help in increasing workers productivity and on-the-job accidents, ...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, consequently, finally, hence, however, if, may, moreover, so, then, for example, for instance, to begin with, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 59.0 55.5748502994 106% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2315.0 2260.96107784 102% => OK
No of words: 445.0 441.139720559 101% => OK
Chars per words: 5.20224719101 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.59293186426 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.86016836222 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 207.0 204.123752495 101% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.465168539326 0.468620217663 99% => OK
syllable_count: 705.6 705.55239521 100% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 2.0 8.76447105788 23% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 50.0967813337 57.8364921388 87% => OK
Chars per sentence: 96.4583333333 119.503703932 81% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.5416666667 23.324526521 79% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.75 5.70786347227 101% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 14.0 6.88822355289 203% => Less negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.364778118647 0.218282227539 167% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.10950599271 0.0743258471296 147% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0714587426876 0.0701772020484 102% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.196943608018 0.128457276422 153% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0720536464388 0.0628817314937 115% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.3 14.3799401198 86% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 53.21 48.3550499002 110% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.88 12.5979740519 102% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.3 8.32208582834 88% => OK
difficult_words: 78.0 98.500998004 79% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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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.