The following appeared as a memorandum from the Human Resources director at Dexter
Gorman Instruments, a company that manufactures saxophones.
“On this year’s survey about work habits, our employees tended to strongly agree with the
idea that if they took less time to complete their assigned work, the quality of their work
would suffer. However, we recently conducted an internal study that proves this idea
wrong. Managers across several divisions identified an overtime group: the employees
who worked an average of 48 or more hours per week over the past year instead of the
expected 40 hours per week. We then looked at the number of documented work errors
produced by all of our employees during the past year and found that the overtime group
was responsible for significantly more work errors overall than their fellow employees. On
the basis of these findings, our recommendation to the company president is to require
employees to complete their work during the regular 40-hour work week and allow
overtime only for urgent circumstances.”
The author suggests that the company should mandate the workers to finish their work in 40-hour work week and allow overtime only for urgent circumstances however the author fails to make a cogent case. The suggestion is interesting but there are a few questions that are needed to be answered first in order before one can move forward with the proposal.
First, does more error corresponds to a higher error rate? The author assumes that since the employees working overtime have made more errors in the past, it implies that they are more prone to make an error. However, this assumption is flawed as the people working overtime will also be completing more work than other. More work may result in a greater number of errors however the rate of error for them might be the same or even lower than the employees working 40 hours a week. If working overtime does not have any effect on the error rate of the employees then the suggestion in the argument loses its weight.
Furthermore, the argument does not clearly mention what it considers to be overtime. Since the argument wants to make sure that the error introduced by employees is not affected by the number of hours taken to complete the work, the argument should only consider a person completing the given work in more than the time allotted to be overtime. If the argument also considers the employees taking extra work as overtime, then the comparison of two does not make much sense.
Finally, the author assumes that all the error documentation process is full proof. If this assumption is proven to be wrong, then the whole basis of the argument is flawed. There is a possibility that there are errors introduced by other employees that are missed. This would mean that the data itself on which the argument is based is not dependable and thus the argument is weakened.
Examining all the various angles and factors involved, the argument does not justify putting a restriction on the employees to complete their work in the assigned 40-hour work week. The reasoning relies on the data that isn't provided and correlations that may not necessarily exist. While the proposal does highlight a possibility, more information is needed to warrant any action.
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: 17 15
No. of Words: 381 350
No. of Characters: 1809 1500
No. of Different Words: 173 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.418 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.748 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.487 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 121 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 89 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 63 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 34 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.412 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.043 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.765 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.358 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.591 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.106 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 484, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
... the employees working 40 hours a week. If working overtime does not have any effe...
^^
Line 9, column 221, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: isn't
.... The reasoning relies on the data that isnt provided and correlations that may not ...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, furthermore, however, if, may, so, then, thus, while
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 22.0 28.8173652695 76% => OK
Preposition: 37.0 55.5748502994 67% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1852.0 2260.96107784 82% => OK
No of words: 380.0 441.139720559 86% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.87368421053 5.12650576532 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.41515443553 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.53461356581 2.78398813304 91% => OK
Unique words: 177.0 204.123752495 87% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.465789473684 0.468620217663 99% => OK
syllable_count: 583.2 705.55239521 83% => 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: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 49.3092774667 57.8364921388 85% => OK
Chars per sentence: 108.941176471 119.503703932 91% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.3529411765 23.324526521 96% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.64705882353 5.70786347227 81% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 2.0 8.20758483034 24% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 6.88822355289 189% => OK
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: 0.0877272009031 0.218282227539 40% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0325848086129 0.0743258471296 44% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0242848403409 0.0701772020484 35% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0520851038106 0.128457276422 41% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0129050304123 0.0628817314937 21% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.7 14.3799401198 88% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 57.61 48.3550499002 119% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.26 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.93 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 77.0 98.500998004 78% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => 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.