The following appeared as part of a promotional campaign to sell advertising space in the Daily Gazette to grocery stores in the Marston area:
"Advertising the reduced price of selected grocery items in the Daily Gazette will help you increase your sales. Consider the results of a study conducted last month. Thirty sale items from a store in downtown Marston were advertised in The Gazette for four days. Each time one or more of the 30 items was purchased, clerks asked whether the shopper had read the ad. Two-thirds of the 200 shoppers asked answered in the affirmative. Furthermore, more than half the customers who answered in the affirmative spent over $100 at the store."
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
The argument states that Advertising the reduced price of selected grocery items in the Daily Gazette will help you increase your sales. This conclusion is based on the premise of a study conducted for a store in downtown Marston. The store's sales increased after its thirty items were advertised in the Gazette. The ckerks confirmed that two-thirds of the 200 shoppers had read the ad. At first glance, the author’s argument appears to be somewhat convincing, but further reflection reveals that it is based on some dubious assumptions.
The Argument readily assumes that advertising selected grocery items at discounted price will increase the sales. But the argument does not specify the exact items that were advertised at discounted price. We do not know whether these items were perishable items such as milk or eggs or non-perishable items such as food-grains or spices. Also we are not aware whether all the grocery stores have these items in their inventory that were advertised by a store located in downtown Marston.
The argument does not consider the location of the store. If the store is located at a remote place away from the city, the sales may not increase considerably since the customer-base is small. On the other hand if the store is a supermarket located in the busy city, the sales may still not increase due to competition from other stores.
To sum up, this argument is not completely convincing as it stands. To better evaluate the argument we need more information about the various points such as locality of the grocery store, the list of 30 items that were on sale at the discounted price and whether a particular store has those items in their inventory.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 2.0 out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 6 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 285 350
No. of Characters: 1381 1500
No. of Different Words: 146 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.109 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.846 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.646 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 87 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 76 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 51 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 29 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.357 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.49 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.571 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.379 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.507 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.146 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 3 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 340, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Also,
...le items such as food-grains or spices. Also we are not aware whether all the grocer...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, if, may, so, still, third, such as, to sum up, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 5.0 12.9520958084 39% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 22.0 28.8173652695 76% => OK
Preposition: 33.0 55.5748502994 59% => More preposition wanted.
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1415.0 2260.96107784 63% => OK
No of words: 285.0 441.139720559 65% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.9649122807 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.10876417139 4.56307096286 90% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.71874357671 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 143.0 204.123752495 70% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.501754385965 0.468620217663 107% => OK
syllable_count: 456.3 705.55239521 65% => 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: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 19.7664670659 71% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 48.02741564 57.8364921388 83% => OK
Chars per sentence: 101.071428571 119.503703932 85% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.3571428571 23.324526521 87% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.85714285714 5.70786347227 103% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.30382987297 0.218282227539 139% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.117622889639 0.0743258471296 158% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.142904006827 0.0701772020484 204% => The coherence between sentences is low.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.181753413958 0.128457276422 141% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.110924117923 0.0628817314937 176% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.1 14.3799401198 84% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.49 12.5979740519 91% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.12 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 63.0 98.500998004 64% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.