The following appeared in a report presented for discussion at a meeting of the directors of a company that manufactures parts for heavy machinery:
"The falling revenues that the company is experiencing coincide with delays in manufacturing. These delays, in turn, are due in large part to poor planning in purchasing metals. Consider further that the manager of the department that handles purchasing of raw materials has an excellent background in general business, psychology, and sociology, but knows little about the properties of metals. The company should, therefore, move the purchasing manager to the sales department and bring in a scientist from the research division to be manager of the purchasing department."
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
This report concludes that the company should move the purchasing manager to sales department and appoint a scientist from research department as the new purchasing manager. The line of reasoning is that the delay in manufacturing is assumed to cause the falling revenues. Furtherly, it cites that such delay is mainly due to the poor planning in purchasing metals, which is the fault of the current purchasing manager who has little knowledge about the properties of metals. Consequently, it’s assumed that a scientist who knows more about the properties of metals will help on the situation. However, this conclusion is not convincing because of following reasons:
First of all, the author readily assumes that the delay in manufacturing is the main course of the falling revenue. However, there are a lot of factors that will affect a company’s revenue, such as pricing, demand of the product and competition in the market etc., It might be possible that the company has increased the price of product recently so that its products are less competitive than the other competitors. It could be also true that the overall economic is getting worse, which affects the sales of this company. These are just few factors that would result in the falling revenue of a company. The author would have to omit all the possibilities to support the conclusion.
Move over, this argument cites that the poor planning in purchasing metals results in delay of manufacturing. And the purchasing manager who has little knowledge about properties of metals is accused to be responsible for it. However, there’re a lot of factors deciding the efficiency of manufacturing, such as transportation of the raw materials, efficiency of the production line and the response time from the supplier, etc. The author should take all these factors into consideration before making the assumption that planning of purchasing is the main factor affecting the efficiency in manufacturing.
Finally, the author predicts that replacing the purchasing manager by a scientist will help to solve the problem. However, a scientist may know very well about the properties of materials but there’s no guarantee that he also knows all the principle about purchasing. It would be imprudent to make the change unless there’s a proof to show that a scientist will be more capable of doing this job than the current purchasing manager.
In summary, this argument is not compelling because it fails to address many factors that should be taken into consideration. In order to make it more reasonable, the author would have to cite more evidence to support the conclusion.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
----------------
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 430 350
No. of Characters: 2159 1500
No. of Different Words: 182 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.554 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.021 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.811 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 157 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 130 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 78 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 62 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.889 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.224 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.333 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.555 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.068 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, consequently, finally, first, however, may, so, well, in fact, in summary, such as, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 11.1786427146 45% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 21.0 13.6137724551 154% => OK
Pronoun: 33.0 28.8173652695 115% => OK
Preposition: 57.0 55.5748502994 103% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2240.0 2260.96107784 99% => OK
No of words: 429.0 441.139720559 97% => OK
Chars per words: 5.22144522145 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.55107846309 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.00084661216 2.78398813304 108% => OK
Unique words: 190.0 204.123752495 93% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.44289044289 0.468620217663 95% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 687.6 705.55239521 97% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 55.3646720715 57.8364921388 96% => OK
Chars per sentence: 124.444444444 119.503703932 104% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.8333333333 23.324526521 102% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.94444444444 5.70786347227 104% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.101688892667 0.218282227539 47% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0349849920532 0.0743258471296 47% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0319695745387 0.0701772020484 46% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0545243554425 0.128457276422 42% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0373833490517 0.0628817314937 59% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.1 14.3799401198 105% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.29 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.16 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 92.0 98.500998004 93% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.