The following appeared in a memorandum written by the vice president of Nature’s Way, a chain of stores selling health food and other health-related products.
“Previous experience has shown that our stores are most profitable in areas where residents are highly concerned with leading healthy lives. We should therefore build our next new store in Plainsville, which has many such residents. Plainsville merchants report that sales of running shoes and exercise clothing 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 ‘fitness for life’ program, 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.
The argument claims that Nature's Way, a chain of stores selling health food and health-related products is opening its next franchise in Plainsville, and it is going to be very successful. The reasons provided to support this claim are: Plainville residents lead healthy lives, city merchants report high sales of running shoes, exercies, etc., full attendance at local health clubs, and schoolchildren's mandatory fitness-for-life program. Stated this way, the argument is based on a number of assumptions that are essential to prove its claim.
First, the author postulates that the new franchise will be successful since Plainsville residents are similar in their health-related habits to other area where Nature's Way franchises tend to be most successful. This conclusion has an inherent assumption that the health habits of the residents are the sole factor affecting the sales. There are other factors that the argument fails to consider such as the affordability of these products for the Plainsville residents, or the possibility of a more famous competitor already present in Plainsville.
Second, the argument fails to provide any evidence or statistical data for the reliability of Plainsville merchant's reports. Therefore, it is based on the assumption that these reports are gathered from across the city and provide viable insights into the sales pattern of the entire city. If this is not true, it will not furnish a good reason to accept this evidence supporting the claim.
Third, it assumes that exercise, and full attendance at weight training, and aerobics classes will directly affect the sales or the success of the new franchise in the city. Nature's Way is, as stated in the argument, a chain of stores selling health food and other health-related products. Absent information on the types of products leads to speculation about the relationship between exercise and "health products". It is entirely possible that the health products of the company are not useful for the kind of exercise stated in the argument, and people are not as focused on healthy food as they are on exercise. If this is the case, it seriously undermines the argument's reasoning.
Lastly, the claim that schoolchildren's mandatory fitness-for-life program makes them potential customers for the new franchise relies on the assumption that these children are interested, or have the will to actively participate in the program. For all we know, this program is focused on yoga and other exercises that do not require any tools.
In sum, the argument is flawed because it is based on a number of assumptions that are not clarified, and therefore it is unconvincing. Unless the author provides justifiable evidence for the facts or assumptions, one cannot evaluate the merits of the claim that the new franchise will be successful.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 6 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 6 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 452 350
No. of Characters: 2327 1500
No. of Different Words: 201 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.611 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.148 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.979 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 173 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 135 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 104 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 66 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.111 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.317 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.556 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.338 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.606 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.089 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, if, lastly, second, so, therefore, third, kind of, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 6.0 12.9520958084 46% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 37.0 28.8173652695 128% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 49.0 55.5748502994 88% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2398.0 2260.96107784 106% => OK
No of words: 452.0 441.139720559 102% => OK
Chars per words: 5.30530973451 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.61088837703 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.06319671153 2.78398813304 110% => OK
Unique words: 212.0 204.123752495 104% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.469026548673 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 738.0 705.55239521 105% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 8.0 1.67365269461 478% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 51.3285231032 57.8364921388 89% => OK
Chars per sentence: 133.222222222 119.503703932 111% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.1111111111 23.324526521 108% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.61111111111 5.70786347227 63% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.210723095147 0.218282227539 97% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0752725429417 0.0743258471296 101% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.116731860423 0.0701772020484 166% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.106634123524 0.128457276422 83% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.103387806319 0.0628817314937 164% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.1 14.3799401198 112% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 48.3550499002 95% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.81 12.5979740519 110% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.89 8.32208582834 107% => OK
difficult_words: 115.0 98.500998004 117% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.