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 argument is a memo from a vice president of Quiot Manufacturing, stating that there have been 30 percent more on-the-job accident at the factory than a nearby Panoply Industries plant. However, the argument is not completely logically convincing, as there are some assumptions made which proves unwarranted.
First, the vice president assumes that since the Panoply has work shift one hour shorter than Quiot, then this may be a reason for their less on-the-job accident. However this may not be true as there are no stated fact from Panoply included in the argument that their one hour shorter work shift has led to the less on-the-job accident. What if Panoply has incorporated some safety tools to prevent accidents on the job during the past year?. This way, the work shift has no correspondence with the lesser on-the-job accidents, rather due to the safety tools.
Second, the argument assumes that sleep deprivation may be a cause for the higher accidents on the job. In contrast, this may not be true as other factors may be included, such as lack of safety materials, or more accident prone job than the Panoply plant. Thus shortening each of the three weeks shifts would not reduce the on-the-job accidents.
Lastly, the argument assumes that shortening each of the 3 weeks shift would let the workers have more sleep and in turn reduce the on-the-accidents in the factory. But what if this results in shortage of employees at the factory at a particular time. This would rather increase the workload on the employees, make them more stress as they have more work to do, and in all increase the number of on-the-job accidents initially proposed to reduce.
Conclusively, the argument is not in all logically convincing as the assumptions do not answer the questions raised above. Ultimately, the argument may be improved if it included that the lesser time shift at Panoply is a cause for their less on-the-job accidents, if sleep deprivation is really the cause of the increased accidents or other factors, or perhaps the one hour added to each three weeks shifts would surely reduce the number of on-the-job accidents at Quiot Manufacturing.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 6 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 361 350
No. of Characters: 1760 1500
No. of Different Words: 146 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.359 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.875 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.691 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 118 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 90 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 66 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 45 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.786 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.428 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.714 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.436 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.436 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.164 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 163, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: However,
...son for their less on-the-job accident. However this may not be true as there are no st...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, lastly, may, really, second, so, then, thus, in contrast, in short, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 18.0 28.8173652695 62% => OK
Preposition: 45.0 55.5748502994 81% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1801.0 2260.96107784 80% => OK
No of words: 361.0 441.139720559 82% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.98891966759 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.35889894354 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.78181725217 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 158.0 204.123752495 77% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.437673130194 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 551.7 705.55239521 78% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 19.7664670659 71% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 67.7862787874 57.8364921388 117% => OK
Chars per sentence: 128.642857143 119.503703932 108% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.7857142857 23.324526521 111% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.14285714286 5.70786347227 125% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 2.0 8.20758483034 24% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 0.0 4.67664670659 0% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.333519398796 0.218282227539 153% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.124894645611 0.0743258471296 168% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.118670678799 0.0701772020484 169% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.203287583272 0.128457276422 158% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0901772241941 0.0628817314937 143% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.0 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 54.56 48.3550499002 113% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.96 12.5979740519 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.63 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 63.0 98.500998004 64% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.