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.
A price president suggests that Quiot Manufacturing shortening a shift by one hour because it had 30 percent more on-the-job accidents than Panoply Industries plant, whose employees work less than it one hour. It seems reasonable at first glance, however there are many flaws in the inference after carefully analyzing it.
To begin with, the vice president assumes the working list for two companies’ employees are identical. Nevertheless, we cannot know what the definition of on-the-job accident is. Does it contain minor injury, such as nail splitting? It’s likely that Quiot define accident as all the hurt, then it’s likely that the rate of accident is much higher than Panoply. In addition, the work involves different dangerous degree of items, but we’re not sure what they actually do in their routine working list.
On the other hand, a vice president proposes that the company should shorten each of its shift hours by one hour according to experts’ conclusion. He assumes that workers’ background is similar, like the distance between working place and home, and the distribution of age. For example, older employees usually need to take care of her own family after a day of work and have to spend much time on commuting if she lives far away from factory. Still, it’s possible that most of the employees working at Quiot live near the company. In this case, even though shortening the shift may not be conducive to the rate of accident.
Last but not least, a vice president supposes that inadequate amounts of sleep is the most significant to the efficiency. However, what’s the background of experts, and what kind of data did they collect before making this conclusion? What’s more, there’s no data supporting that working less an hour is beneficial productivity. It’s likely that a worker may not spend extra hour sleeping instead of exercising or doing any leisure activities. In this case, the expected high working efficiency won’t occur.
To sum up, whether shortening a shift by one hour is a good way for Quiot to lower the rate of on-the-job accident still needs more complete consideration.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 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: 354 350
No. of Characters: 1722 1500
No. of Different Words: 207 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.338 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.864 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.592 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 112 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 95 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 62 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 46 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.667 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.782 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.778 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.296 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.515 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.051 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, first, however, if, may, nevertheless, so, still, then, for example, in addition, kind of, such as, to begin with, to sum up, on the other hand
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: 5.0 12.9520958084 39% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 27.0 28.8173652695 94% => OK
Preposition: 46.0 55.5748502994 83% => OK
Nominalization: 6.0 16.3942115768 37% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1839.0 2260.96107784 81% => OK
No of words: 352.0 441.139720559 80% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.22443181818 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.33147354134 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.88335198778 2.78398813304 104% => OK
Unique words: 211.0 204.123752495 103% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.599431818182 0.468620217663 128% => OK
syllable_count: 564.3 705.55239521 80% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 37.1271173067 57.8364921388 64% => OK
Chars per sentence: 102.166666667 119.503703932 85% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.5555555556 23.324526521 84% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.77777777778 5.70786347227 154% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.356251657418 0.218282227539 163% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.10114411464 0.0743258471296 136% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.113318501469 0.0701772020484 161% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.212971356423 0.128457276422 166% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.107935561874 0.0628817314937 172% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.9 14.3799401198 90% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.0 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.17 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 80.0 98.500998004 81% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.