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 above argument claims that the profits of stores are more ascended when they are located in areas with people who are leading a healthy and active lives. This claim is backed by the observations made in Plainsville where the sales have skyrocketed. Deriving from these observations, plans have been made to establish more stores in salubrious areas without any concrete evidences backing these observations nor supporting the plans made. These missing blanks are discussed below.
The author mentions profits are more in areas where people are interested in leading healthy lives than areas where they are not. But they fail to explain the basis on which these profits are determined. For example consider two stores. Assume that one store has sold 50 pair of shoes in one day and the other store sold 49 shoes. When compared it is easy to point out which store has more profit than the other. But when it is viewed in larger scale this difference in sales is not that significant. Similarly, no concrete analysis is provided on comparing the profits of the stores in different areas that shows clear inequality of sales in the stores.
Adding to this, the author mentions that the schools in Plainsville has made it mandatory for children to attend a program called "Fitness for Life". When something is made compulsory by the school authorities it is expected to see children taking it seriously whether they are willing or not. Hence it is no surprise that more and more children buying sports equipment. But this also means that the reason for such high sales is not because of the location of the store but rather the policies of schools in that area. This could counter attack the claim that sales would increase when the location is shifted to a health prone zone.
Furthermore, the argument states that the health club was closed down for more than half a decade. And yet it is suddenly running with more and more people joining the club. No reasons are mentioned that would explain the sudden operation of the health club. Maybe the authorities decided to fund this club or people wanted to flaunt their health club membership to other town residents or the health club founder came up with new strategies to attract more members and restart the club. No matter the reason, the sudden increase in sales of sports equipment is clearly dependent on the re-opening of the health club and the reasons for such sudden inclination of people towards healthy lifestyle is unknown too.
From the above discussion, it is clear that without more information and clear surveys it is impossible to conclude that the stores sales are proportional to individuals with healthy lifestyle in that area. The plan to establish more stores in areas concentrated with health obsessive people needs more decisive evidence and pristine statements from the store managers from all stores for clear sales analysis.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 8 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 489 350
No. of Characters: 2378 1500
No. of Different Words: 215 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.702 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.863 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.444 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 168 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 116 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 76 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 47 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.261 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.906 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.304 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.294 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.294 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.078 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 271, Rule ID: CD_NN[1]
Message: Possible agreement error. The noun 'pair' seems to be countable, so consider using: 'pairs'.
Suggestion: pairs
...ores. Assume that one store has sold 50 pair of shoes in one day and the other store...
^^^^
Line 2, column 331, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “When” 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.
... day and the other store sold 49 shoes. When compared it is easy to point out which ...
^^^^
Line 3, column 304, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Hence,
...iously whether they are willing or not. Hence it is no surprise that more and more ch...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, furthermore, hence, if, may, similarly, so, for example
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 28.0 19.6327345309 143% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 3.0 12.9520958084 23% => OK
Conjunction : 18.0 11.1786427146 161% => OK
Relative clauses : 25.0 13.6137724551 184% => OK
Pronoun: 38.0 28.8173652695 132% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 62.0 55.5748502994 112% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2429.0 2260.96107784 107% => OK
No of words: 489.0 441.139720559 111% => OK
Chars per words: 4.9672801636 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.70248278971 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.52780755125 2.78398813304 91% => OK
Unique words: 218.0 204.123752495 107% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.445807770961 0.468620217663 95% => OK
syllable_count: 749.7 705.55239521 106% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 56.0122859869 57.8364921388 97% => OK
Chars per sentence: 105.608695652 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.2608695652 23.324526521 91% => OK
Discourse Markers: 2.86956521739 5.70786347227 50% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.14390345592 0.218282227539 66% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.045505089595 0.0743258471296 61% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.042661563078 0.0701772020484 61% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0859967870752 0.128457276422 67% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0300405160944 0.0628817314937 48% => 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: 12.6 14.3799401198 88% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 58.62 48.3550499002 121% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.55 12.5979740519 92% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.91 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 100.0 98.500998004 102% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => 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.