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 discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The argument written by the vice president of Health Naturally appears to be convincing, but on a closer look, it is flawed on various different aspects.
Firstly, the residents of Plainsville seem to be interested in healthy living through exercise. The chain of Health Naturally majorly seem to be selling health foods. While some people may be interested in buying such foods for weight loss, the majority of people might be uninterested in eating "health foods" like protein bars, and various other "healthy snacks". Many of the so called healthy snacks contain copious amounts of artificial sweeteners and sugars. This will not only lead to weight gain instead of weight loss, but will also affect the health of the consumers. Now a days, due to various platforms through which knowledge can be gained, many residents would have already been aware of this, and will thus prefer homemade food instead of store bought food. Also, the phrase "other health-related products" is vague. This can mean exercise equipments. But since the membership in the health clubs are at all-time highs, and other stores report tremendous sales of exercise equipments, the store may already be late in offering more equipments.
Secondly, the vice president mentions opening a store in Plainsville as a plan. Thus, one may assume that there have been no talks about this and the matter is still under consideration. By the time the store is approved and the opening of the store takes place, it may have already been too much time wasted and the chain may thus be late in the game, due to which the profits may not be as high as expected.Also, there is only a mention that there are many citizens in Plainsville. There is no estimate provided to support this claim.
Thirdly, it is mentioned that the children are "required" to participate in the program. The duration of the program is not specified, and the aims and goals of the program are not mentioned. Thus, it is unclear what exactly the program is about. Since it is mentioned as participation in the program is "required" one will assume that the program is compulsory for all children. Anything made compulsory, especially for children, may have a negative effect if the child does not like it. Compulsion of the program does not guarantee that the child will demand "healthy food" from the parent. Children being children, will always have a natural tendency to prefer junk food over healthy food.
Thus, had the vice president clearly explained the commencement date of the store, the number of residents, the ingredients of the health food, other products available in the chain, and the details of the program, the argument would have been cogent.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 2.5 out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 598, Rule ID: NOW_A_DAYS[1]
Message: Did you mean 'nowadays'?
Suggestion: Nowadays
...lso affect the health of the consumers. Now a days, due to various platforms through which...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 602, Rule ID: A_PLURAL[1]
Message: Don't use indefinite articles with plural words. Did you mean 'a day' or simply 'days'?
Suggestion: a day; days
...affect the health of the consumers. Now a days, due to various platforms through which...
^^^^^^
Line 9, column 410, Rule ID: SENTENCE_WHITESPACE
Message: Add a space between sentences
Suggestion: Also
... profits may not be as high as expected.Also, there is only a mention that there are...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, if, look, may, second, secondly, so, still, third, thirdly, thus, while
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 31.0 19.6327345309 158% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 16.0 28.8173652695 56% => OK
Preposition: 55.0 55.5748502994 99% => OK
Nominalization: 7.0 16.3942115768 43% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2328.0 2260.96107784 103% => OK
No of words: 453.0 441.139720559 103% => OK
Chars per words: 5.13907284768 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.61343653406 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.95557208368 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 220.0 204.123752495 108% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.485651214128 0.468620217663 104% => OK
syllable_count: 699.3 705.55239521 99% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 8.0 1.67365269461 478% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 65.9073980974 57.8364921388 114% => OK
Chars per sentence: 105.818181818 119.503703932 89% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.5909090909 23.324526521 88% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.45454545455 5.70786347227 78% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.206357220661 0.218282227539 95% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0652651972611 0.0743258471296 88% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0768972950694 0.0701772020484 110% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.143284376907 0.128457276422 112% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0751400543779 0.0628817314937 119% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.1 14.3799401198 91% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 59.64 48.3550499002 123% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.53 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.39 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 108.0 98.500998004 110% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.