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 above argument makes a lot of assumptions for taking the available information into action. First of all, the comparison made between the two companies assumes without stating that both are working in the same field, and have the same set of machinery and jobs involved, and so the risk of the on-the-job accidents can be compared. This need not be the case, as risk involved in both jobs of workers in both companies may be different, like one can be related to nuclear energy and other can be a food product manufacturing company, making risk factors on the job quite different and thus making the comparison invalid.
The exact reasons for each and every accident on the job are either not known or not provided as evidence for the argument. So, it may be the case that there might be some defect in the machines that the workers are using, which is leading to more on-the-job accidents. The point is that without any data regarding the nature and causes of the accidents, it is not right to infer that more accidents are being caused due to lack of sleep or fatigue of workers. The argument quotes experts' opinion regarding this matter, but it does not mention how applicable this opinion is for the domain of work of the company. More evidence regarding the validity of this statement needs to be providedin order to derive any inferences using it.
A major component concerning on-the-job accidents is the skill level of the workers working in the company. If workers are not skilled enough in the operation of the machinery in the factory, then the number of accidents is likely to be high. For a skilled worker set, this number will be definitely low. The company does not provide any details regarding complexity of operating the machines, and the experience of the employees in operating the appropriate machinery. If an analysis of the workers' experience reveals that considerable amount of workers are not qualified enough to operate the machinery, then the company needs to invest in either training the existing workers, or hiring new ones, with suitable experience. Thus, if the company goes ahead without taking this factor into consideration, they might not see the expected result.
Regarding reduction in the work hours of workers, it might not be necessary for all shifts, as it is not known whether there is a pattern in the shift in which particularly more accidents happen or not. Suppose, if the number of accidents in night shift is greater than in any other shift, it might be possible that the nature of work is not suitable to be done in the night, requiring greater worker concentration, which might be at reduced levels in the night. There is no evidence used, giving details regarding the shift in which accidents happen, thus making the solution a leap of inference without sufficient evidence.
Thus, to conclude, there are a lot of factors like domain of the company, worker skill level, equipment quality, time patterns if any in the accidents, to be considered in greater depth, before any step can be taken to try and reduce the accidents. The argument critically rests on these factors, but fails to acknowledge and address any of the above issues, and thus the solution proposed is prone to failure, given any of the mentioned factors plays a major role.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 565 350
No. of Characters: 2674 1500
No. of Different Words: 234 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.875 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.733 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.559 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 192 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 151 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 93 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 65 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 29.737 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.378 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.789 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.331 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.557 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.089 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 476, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...erating the appropriate machinery. If an analysis of the workers experience revea...
^^
Line 9, column 220, Rule ID: TRY_AND[1]
Message: "Try and" is common in colloquial speech, but "'try to'" is recommended for writing.
Suggestion: try to
... depth, before any step can be taken to try and reduce the accidents. The argument crit...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, if, may, regarding, so, then, thus, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 36.0 19.6327345309 183% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 22.0 28.8173652695 76% => OK
Preposition: 87.0 55.5748502994 157% => OK
Nominalization: 22.0 16.3942115768 134% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2745.0 2260.96107784 121% => OK
No of words: 565.0 441.139720559 128% => OK
Chars per words: 4.85840707965 5.12650576532 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.87542086881 4.56307096286 107% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.63928405939 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 252.0 204.123752495 123% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.446017699115 0.468620217663 95% => OK
syllable_count: 882.0 705.55239521 125% => 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: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 7.0 1.67365269461 418% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 29.0 22.8473053892 127% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 62.7092839509 57.8364921388 108% => OK
Chars per sentence: 144.473684211 119.503703932 121% => OK
Words per sentence: 29.7368421053 23.324526521 127% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.15789473684 5.70786347227 55% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => 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: 0.0921548588596 0.218282227539 42% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0342946108712 0.0743258471296 46% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0328137258862 0.0701772020484 47% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0560406661866 0.128457276422 44% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0388851438567 0.0628817314937 62% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.3 14.3799401198 113% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 42.04 48.3550499002 87% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.6 12.197005988 120% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.5 12.5979740519 91% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.54 8.32208582834 103% => OK
difficult_words: 124.0 98.500998004 126% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 18.5 12.3882235529 149% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.6 11.1389221557 122% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.