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 concludes that reducing the number of on-the job-accidents and to increase the productivity, they should shorten each of three work shifts by one hour so that employees will get adequate amounts of sleep. The argument, at first glance, seems logical but it is rife with gaps and lacks in correlating between the accidents and worker’s lack of sleep. If these assumptions prove unwarranted, the conclusion could be seriously undermined and might not produce the intended increase in productivity.
Firstly, it is implied that Quiot Manufacturing has 30 percent more job accidents than nearby Panoply Industries plant while no information about actual accident statistics is provided to compare the numbers. It is possible that number of accidents in Panoply Industries is 100 and that of Quiot Manufacturing is 50, but 30 percent of 100 is more than 30 percent of 50, which if proves to be true then would seriously weaken the claim that Quiot Manufacturing has more accidents than Panoply Industries. Moreover, if Quiot Manufacturing manufactures Fabrics and Panoply Industries manufactures Furniture, then the type of accidents and their work shifts would be different. We just do not know the information to correlate between the two industries. To strengthen this evidence the Vice President should provide the statistical information showing the number of workers in both the industries with number of accidents and its reasons, to compare the two industries mentioned.
Secondly, the Vice President points out that according to experts, significant contributing factors in many on-the-job accidents are fatigue and sleep deprivation among workers and consider this as a reason for accidents in their industry. How many of the accidents are due this factor and what are other reasons? The assumption that this is the only factor leading to increased job accidents without considering other factors, it could be fallible if 8 out of 10 accidents are due to defects in machines and not because of the workers fault. In that case, shortening the work shifts would result in opposite of expected and could reduce the productivity. To bolster the claim the Vice President should provide substantial evidence that majority of the accidents are a result of workers physical weakness and no other factors.
Finally, the assumption that reducing one hour from every shift would be effective to increase productivity is unwarranted as it lacks in providing sufficient details about the work shift timings. Why is it necessary to reduce one hour from every shift, if only the night shift workers could be deprived of sleep? The other day shift workers might not be deprived of sleep as they could get enough sleep during the night. Without knowing the shift timings and the workers medical condition correlating with the sleeping hours, it is hard to believe that the accidents are a result of this. If the day shift workers do not have any fatigue problems as they could get enough sleep during the night time, then the conclusion that one hour from each shift should be decreased is questionable. To fortify the argument the Vice President should mention the shift timings and their correlation in deprived sleep of workers of all the three shifts.
If the night shift workers sleep deprivation is responsible for majority of the accidents in Quiot Manufacturing then the industry could consider ways to reduce the accidents, but this argument is full of unsupported assumptions and adopting the claim could result in less productivity of the industry.
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: 20 15
No. of Words: 578 350
No. of Characters: 2969 1500
No. of Different Words: 217 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.903 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.137 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.835 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 213 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 179 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 123 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 86 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 28.9 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.153 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.6 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.351 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.579 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.141 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 377, Rule ID: IF_IS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'is'?
Suggestion: is
...00 is more than 30 percent of 50, which if proves to be true then would seriously ...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, firstly, if, moreover, second, secondly, so, then, while
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 28.0 19.6327345309 143% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 20.0 12.9520958084 154% => OK
Conjunction : 20.0 11.1786427146 179% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 76.0 55.5748502994 137% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3031.0 2260.96107784 134% => OK
No of words: 578.0 441.139720559 131% => OK
Chars per words: 5.24394463668 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.90322654589 4.56307096286 107% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.91007831721 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 227.0 204.123752495 111% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.392733564014 0.468620217663 84% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 907.2 705.55239521 129% => 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: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 28.0 22.8473053892 123% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 63.6784696738 57.8364921388 110% => OK
Chars per sentence: 151.55 119.503703932 127% => OK
Words per sentence: 28.9 23.324526521 124% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.85 5.70786347227 67% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => 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: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.300004468634 0.218282227539 137% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.10368727452 0.0743258471296 140% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0907476252267 0.0701772020484 129% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.172716416 0.128457276422 134% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0973656089913 0.0628817314937 155% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.7 14.3799401198 123% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.06 48.3550499002 89% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.2 12.197005988 116% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.7 12.5979740519 109% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.06 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 111.0 98.500998004 113% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 15.0 12.3882235529 121% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.2 11.1389221557 119% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => 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.