The following appeared in a newsletter offering advice to investors."Over 80 percent of the respondents to a recent survey indicated a desire to reduce their intake of foods containing fats and cholesterol, and today low-fat products abound in many food s

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The following appeared in a newsletter offering advice to investors.
"Over 80 percent of the respondents to a recent survey indicated a desire to reduce their intake of foods containing fats and cholesterol, and today low-fat products abound in many food stores. Since many of the food products currently marketed by Old Dairy Industries are high in fat and cholesterol, the company's sales are likely to diminish greatly and company profits will no doubt decrease. We therefore advise Old Dairy stockholders to sell their shares, and other investors not to purchase stock in this company."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the advice and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the advice.

The author advises investors against investing into Old Dairy Industries, which specializes in high fat and cholesterol food, and since a recent survey allegedly indicates a desire of consumers to reduce their fat intake, Old Dairy is going to witness a reduction in sales and, consequently low profit as well. However, certain questions need to be answered before this advice can be held valid.

The first question that needs to be answered is the veracity of the survey. The author makes mention of a survey of which 80 percent of its respondents indicated a desire to reduce fat and cholesterol intake. However, the author does not present any other information about the survey. The survey may have asked a lot of questions and few on fat intake, or the survey may not have been detailed enough on questioning people’s desire to reduce fat intake. Like the author infers, the survey only indicated, it did not directly make an assertion, which questions the premise of the authors argument - trend for low fat/cholesterol intake.

Secondly,one does not know who the respondents are. If the survey respondents were fat or obese individuals trying to reduce their weight, they would most likely want to reduce their fat intake so as to lose pounds. It would therefore be incorrect to make an assertion about people’s fat in take based on the opinions of fat or obese people alone.

Even if the survey is valid, another question that ought to be answered before investors make a decision is to determine if it is possible for Old Diary to easily shift its prodduction to low fat and cholesterol food. The author states that many and not all of Old Diary’s product are high fat food; hence Old Dairy markets some low fat/cholesterol food. Old Dairy may be able to shift its production to these low fat food, rendering the need for investors to pull out their share void. Perhaps, Old Dairy possess an advanced effective technology for food production which makes them dominate the market and if they concentrate on low fat food, they could still win the competition and make a lot of profit for their investors.

There is also a need to determine how easy it is for investors to pull out their shares from Old Dairy. If the investors had signed some sort of agreement on the period of their investment, pulling out their share could result in a breach of contract, which could result in penalties against such investors. Investment contracts need to be studied to determine the feasibilty of such an action.

Though this advice may sound reasonable, certain questions still need to be resolved before investors can make decisions on their investment.

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Average: 6.7 (3 votes)
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Sentence: Even if the survey is valid, another question that ought to be answered before investors make a decision is to determine if it is possible for Old Diary to easily shift its prodduction to low fat and cholesterol food.
Error: prodduction Suggestion: production

Sentence: Investment contracts need to be studied to determine the feasibilty of such an action.
Error: feasibilty Suggestion: feasibility

Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 454 350
No. of Characters: 2153 1500
No. of Different Words: 194 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.616 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.742 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.55 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 151 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 97 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 76 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 57 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.222 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.591 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.833 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.363 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.63 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.136 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5

This is how we will argue:

The firs argument is same like you:
However, the author does not present any other information about the survey.

The second argument:
No evidence to prove that the price of Old Dairy will be down or the profits will decrease. the author only said 'are likely to diminish'.

The third argument:
Need to consider more factors before sell shares like recent business plan or technical development in Old Dairy.

In your second and third argument, you first agree with the author and then try to find a new solution. That's not the correct way for GRE argument essays. You should not agree to the author's statement easily but try to find out his flaws.