The following appeared in a memorandum written by the vice president of Health Naturally, a small but expanding chain of stores selling health food and other health-related products.
"Our previous experience has been that our stores are most profitable in areas where residents are highly concerned with leading healthy lives. We should therefore build one of our new stores in Plainsville, which clearly has many such residents. Plainsville merchants report that sales of running shoes and exercise equipment are at all-time highs. The local health club, which nearly closed five years ago due to lack of business, has more members than ever, and the weight-training and aerobics classes are always full. We can even anticipate a new generation of customers: Plainsville's schoolchildren are required to participate in a program called Fitness for Life, which emphasizes the benefits of regular exercise at an early age."
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.
In the present argument the author proposes to to promote better health of its citizens. The author of this proposal is the vice president of a small but expanding chain of stores. Although healthy eating definitely leads to better life, one needs to approach this proposal with caution as it comes from someone who is perhaps searching for newer markets for his/her product.
Even if one discounts ulterior motives, if any, being this proposal, it is rife with assumptions that need careful evaluation. The proposal begins with the author building his/her case on the assumption that his/her stores do well is areas with people who are highly concerned with their health. The evidence seems anecdotal. There is no numerical evidence to back the profitability, as claimed. The author could have given some data to strengthen his/her argument.
One indication of healthy behaviours of people of Plainsville, as provided by the author, is merchants reporting all time high sales of running shoes and fitness equipment in the city. However, this is highly vague. There is no evidence on the timeline of sales, what of fitness equipment is being sold, who is buying, for what purpose. There could be reasons like an upcoming city sporting event like a marathon or some transient fitness fad that must have led to the surge in sales.
The other evidence that the author provides for healthy behaviours is, the reopening of a local health club could have gone out of business due to other factors like license issues and not necessarily due to low enrollment. If the shop is up and running, is on going the enrolments will obviously be better
Banks on tapping newer target audience that is, the school going children. The VP assumes that if the students have to participate in an exercise program, they will also consume the stores healthy snack. There is no basis to correlate exercising to keep fit and eating the brand’s food.
The overall emphasis is allective to a making a profitable business model rather than promoting health. In this case, linking exercise and health foods is a specious argument after all.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: ??? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 358 350
No. of Characters: 1715 1500
No. of Different Words: 190 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.35 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.791 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.494 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 126 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 96 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 65 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 33 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.842 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.934 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.368 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.276 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.557 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.077 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 45, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a word
Suggestion: to
...he present argument the author proposes to to promote better health of its citizens. ...
^^^^^
Line 5, column 93, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ainsville, as provided by the author, is merchants reporting all time high sales ...
^^
Line 7, column 255, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...rollment. If the shop is up and running, is on going the enrolments will obvious...
^^
Line 7, column 260, Rule ID: ON_GOING[1]
Message: Did you mean 'ongoing'?
Suggestion: ongoing
...ent. If the shop is up and running, is on going the enrolments will obviously be bette...
^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 268, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...the shop is up and running, is on going the enrolments will obviously be better ...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, however, if, so, then, well, after all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 24.0 28.8173652695 83% => OK
Preposition: 46.0 55.5748502994 83% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1778.0 2260.96107784 79% => OK
No of words: 354.0 441.139720559 80% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.02259887006 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.33761313653 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.60030051519 2.78398813304 93% => OK
Unique words: 197.0 204.123752495 97% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.556497175141 0.468620217663 119% => OK
syllable_count: 549.9 705.55239521 78% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 53.4134814443 57.8364921388 92% => OK
Chars per sentence: 98.7777777778 119.503703932 83% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.6666666667 23.324526521 84% => OK
Discourse Markers: 2.72222222222 5.70786347227 48% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => 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: 0.116401672987 0.218282227539 53% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0381872604529 0.0743258471296 51% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0503073904491 0.0701772020484 72% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0660880729937 0.128457276422 51% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0429834086331 0.0628817314937 68% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.0 14.3799401198 83% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.84 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.86 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 96.0 98.500998004 97% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.