The following appeared in a memorandum from the owner of Movies Galore, a chain of movie-rental stores.
"Because of declining profits, we must reduce operating expenses at Movies Galore's ten movie-rental stores. Raising prices is not a good option, since we are famous for our low prices. Instead, we should reduce our operating hours. Last month our store in downtown Marston reduced its hours by closing at 6:00 p.m. rather than 9:00 p.m. and reduced its overall inventory by no longer stocking any DVD released more than five years ago. Since we have received very few customer complaints about these new policies, we should now adopt them at all other Movies Galore stores as our best strategies for improving profits."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
Movie rental business has long been associated with various manipulations of market statistics to further its profit making motive. With increase in the number of movies released every year due to technological advancement, the consumers are eagerly looking for cheaper options of movie watching.
The success of a movie is hugely determined by its reciprocation by the masses who love to watch movies with their optimum standard of living. Here the movie rental business has seen huge increase in popularity by providing widely acclaimed movies at cheaper prices than having to go and watch in store. Notwithstanding, the people who rent movies need to have the appropriate device to watch the movie at their leisure.
By stating the example of its store at downtown Marston, the author now claims that to offset the recent decline in profits of Movies Galore, its stores must reduce its operating expenses. The question here is: to offset the decline in profits, can this success in reducing the operation expenses be used on other stores as well? Clearly the answer is no, until the author verifies numerous assumptions not stated in the author's statement.
Firstly, there has been no mention of which all stores have seen a decline in profits. Reducing the operating expenses of a member store which has not seen any decline in profits would greatly harm the overall profit of Movies Galore. Hence, the author needs to specifically mention which all stores needs to reduce their operating expenses.
Secondly, it is highly likely that store at downtown Marton was not situated in a place where there are frequent movie-watchers. Or the case might be that downtown Marton is in an upscale locality where people don't rent out movies often. Hence reducing its operating hours saw a significant decline in its operating expenses which was able to offset some of the decline in profits.
Finally, the author mentions that eliminating all movies older than 5 years also yielded desirable results. The author did not mention as to what was the population distribution at that participating store where this study was conducted. Since older people tend to rent out older movies often than younger population. For example, the store at downtown Marton might be located near a university area where the student population is maximum and they tend to watch recent movies more often than older movies.
Hence the author has to explicitly verify the above assumptions before any decision is being made to reduce the operating expenses in remaining stores of Movies Galore.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 421 350
No. of Characters: 2108 1500
No. of Different Words: 199 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.53 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.007 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.577 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 171 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 108 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 67 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 37 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.158 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.254 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.474 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.346 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.657 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.09 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 7 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 422, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
... numerous assumptions not stated in the authors statement. Firstly, there has been n...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 211, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
... is in an upscale locality where people dont rent out movies often. Hence reducing i...
^^^^
Line 9, column 239, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Hence,
...here people dont rent out movies often. Hence reducing its operating hours saw a sign...
^^^^^
Line 9, column 351, Rule ID: SOME_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'some'.
Suggestion: some
...ating expenses which was able to offset some of the decline in profits. Finally, the au...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 11, column 239, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “Since” 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.
...g store where this study was conducted. Since older people tend to rent out older mov...
^^^^^
Line 13, column 1, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Hence,
...movies more often than older movies. Hence the author has to explicitly verify the...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, firstly, hence, if, look, second, secondly, so, well, as to, for example
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 6.0 12.9520958084 46% => OK
Conjunction : 3.0 11.1786427146 27% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 19.0 28.8173652695 66% => OK
Preposition: 63.0 55.5748502994 113% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2162.0 2260.96107784 96% => OK
No of words: 420.0 441.139720559 95% => OK
Chars per words: 5.14761904762 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.52701905584 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.64240236327 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 202.0 204.123752495 99% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.480952380952 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 689.4 705.55239521 98% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 30.3040913102 57.8364921388 52% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 113.789473684 119.503703932 95% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.1052631579 23.324526521 95% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.21052631579 5.70786347227 91% => OK
Paragraphs: 7.0 5.15768463074 136% => Less paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 6.0 5.25449101796 114% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 0.0 6.88822355289 0% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.312956809 0.218282227539 143% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.113349950832 0.0743258471296 153% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0606939342587 0.0701772020484 86% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.173208995299 0.128457276422 135% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0489021868781 0.0628817314937 78% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.9 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.59 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.49 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 100.0 98.500998004 102% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Maximum six paragraphs wanted.
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.