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 author of the argument – a vice president of manufacturing enterprise – suggests decreasing working hours per shift for the employees in order to increase productivity presumably compromised by on-the-job accidents. Though the intentions sound commendable, the argument rests on the plethora of flawed assumptions and remains open to contestation among reasonable people.
To begin with, the arguer implies that on-the job incidents are caused by fatigue and lack of sleep predominantly. He extrapolates this assumption not only at workers of his plant but at workers of the neighboring plant which he uses as a benchmark. In fact, true reason of on-the-job accidents may root at multitude of various factors starting from safety norms adopted at the place of work, how accurately those norms are followed and stretching to consistency of deleterious factors and promptness of administration’s response to these factors. The argument would benefit a lot in event the author presents results of thorought examination of root causes of registered accidents to prove that true trigger is fatigue rather than other possible reasons.
On top of tiredness as a cause of accident, one would want to know whether sleep deprivation persists among workers on regular basis. Though fatigue might have caused majority of accidents at work, that does not mean that other workers who rested well before shift need that extra hour to avoid incidents. It is vital to know that worker who experienced accidents planned and exercised their right for appropriate rest rather than spent all the night time in booze. In this case other measure than reducing working hours are required. For example, to conduct alertness test before the shift. Otherwise, workers who do rest well and want to earn commensurately to their abilities will unfairly suffer because of few weeds in the flock and, very possibly, will start looking for a new working place that will pay adequately.
Finally, vice president’s uncritical interpretation of numbers is fraught with fallacy and sets wrong benchmark. First, the fact, that neighboring plant has 30% less accidents means nothing meaningful when taken out of context. If number of employees at the nearby plant is twice less than that number of the plant in question, then percent of incident per 100 workers is higher at Panoply Industries plant and is more suitable coefficient for comparison. Second, we don’t know what Panoply Industries qualify as an accident. May be, if a worker was hit but did not bleed or bruise immediately, that does not admit as on-the-job accident at one plant but does at the other. Third, we want to know that all qualified accidents are registered willfully at both plants. For example, Panoply Industries might have an incentive for absence of on-the-job accidents and thus, employees are reluctant at registration of benign from their point of view incidents. As a result, even rightfully chosen coefficients might be distorted.
In conclusion, vice president’s intention to improve life of his workers is laudable but to take proposed measures based on suggested information is precipitous. Only in case we know that fatigue is a true and justifiable reason of accidents and scrupulous examination of possible benchmark is conducted, the proposal can be taken into consideration.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Sentence: Though the intentions sound commendable, the argument rests on the plethora of flawed assumptions and remains open to contestation among reasonable people.
Error: commendable Suggestion: No alternate word
Error: contestation Suggestion: No alternate word
Sentence: The argument would benefit a lot in event the author presents results of thorought examination of root causes of registered accidents to prove that true trigger is fatigue rather than other possible reasons.
Error: thorought Suggestion: No alternate word
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 531 350
No. of Characters: 2749 1500
No. of Different Words: 284 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.8 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.177 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.904 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 196 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 164 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 117 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 89 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.136 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.725 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.682 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.271 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.479 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.07 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, if, look, may, second, so, then, third, thus, well, for example, in conclusion, in fact, as a result, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 27.0 28.8173652695 94% => OK
Preposition: 83.0 55.5748502994 149% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2832.0 2260.96107784 125% => OK
No of words: 532.0 441.139720559 121% => OK
Chars per words: 5.32330827068 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.80261649409 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.06774058224 2.78398813304 110% => OK
Unique words: 285.0 204.123752495 140% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.535714285714 0.468620217663 114% => OK
syllable_count: 859.5 705.55239521 122% => 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: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 61.5110686807 57.8364921388 106% => OK
Chars per sentence: 128.727272727 119.503703932 108% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.1818181818 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.18181818182 5.70786347227 108% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 14.0 6.88822355289 203% => Less negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.261578201339 0.218282227539 120% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0712201450925 0.0743258471296 96% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0506921448365 0.0701772020484 72% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.131922085907 0.128457276422 103% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0646500425839 0.0628817314937 103% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.7 14.3799401198 109% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.87 12.5979740519 110% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.95 8.32208582834 108% => OK
difficult_words: 139.0 98.500998004 141% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.