The following is a memorandum from the business manager of a television station.
"Over the past year, our late-night news program has devoted increased time to national news and less time to weather and local news. During this period, most of the complaints received from viewers were concerned with our station's coverage of weather and local news. In addition, local businesses that used to advertise during our late-night news program have canceled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to our news programs and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should expand our coverage of weather and local news on all our news programs."
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 television station's manager is assuming that they lost their late night viwers for reducing weather and local news, and if they increase news on local and weather affairs, they will get back their vieweres. In order to come to this conclusion, the manager presented that they are getting complaints about decreasing local and weather news and advertiseres will come back if they increase those topics in the news as this will increase their viwers. However, the manager's claim cannot be validated as it is based upon three unwarranted assumptions.
First of all, the manager is assuming that the people complained are represtative enough to assume about all the viwers lost in the past year. Which doesn't necessarily has to be. Perhaps these people are eager to watch the local or weather news, thus complained, but most other lost viewers are lost for other reasons. They may found interest in new activities. Or may be there is one or more new clubs have been built in the area which is attracting people rather than TV. If any of this happens, then the author's assumpation weakens severely. The manager may need to collect data from a significant proportion of the previous viweres in order to answer this question.
Second of all, the manager is assuming that the advertisers are not coming to their stations, because they lost some viwers. There may be other causes. It is possible that companies are now moving to internet based advertisements. Or perhaps the companies used to advertise on this chanel moved their buisiness away. If something like it happens, the manager's expectation to increase their revenew from advertisement is seriously in question.
The manager also presumes that the last year's situation is still extant. The demography or the intersts of the people of that area has to be similar to that of the last year's. But there is no evidence for that. There could be a rapid migration of people to other places for the closing of some buisiness or educational institutes. It's also possible that NETFLIX, Amazon Prime and other OTT took the viwers away from TV. So at this point, people may not want to watch TV anymore. If that happens, authors claim is flawed and seriously damages his conclusions.
As we can see, there are some unwarranted assumptions made by the author which is severely questioning the conclusion of the manager. He needs more information to prove his assumptions are true and he can get back the revenue by increasing local and weather news. So, only if the manager becomes able to answer the questions with evidential data, then his claims can be valdated.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 4 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 18 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 443 350
No. of Characters: 2127 1500
No. of Different Words: 211 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.588 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.801 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.579 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 139 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 108 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 72 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 48 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.458 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.362 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.75 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.272 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.469 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.073 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 144, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “Which” 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.
...t all the viwers lost in the past year. Which doesnt necessarily has to be. Perhaps t...
^^^^^
Line 3, column 150, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
...the viwers lost in the past year. Which doesnt necessarily has to be. Perhaps these pe...
^^^^^^
Line 5, column 352, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...away. If something like it happens, the managers expectation to increase their revenew f...
^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 41, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'years'' or 'year's'?
Suggestion: years'; year's
...The manager also presumes that the last years situation is still extant. The demograp...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, may, second, so, still, then, thus, as to, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 28.0 19.6327345309 143% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 42.0 28.8173652695 146% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 48.0 55.5748502994 86% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2178.0 2260.96107784 96% => OK
No of words: 442.0 441.139720559 100% => OK
Chars per words: 4.92760180995 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.58517132086 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.63666598845 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 213.0 204.123752495 104% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.481900452489 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 673.2 705.55239521 95% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 5.0 1.67365269461 299% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 17.0 22.8473053892 74% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 49.6392425406 57.8364921388 86% => OK
Chars per sentence: 87.12 119.503703932 73% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.68 23.324526521 76% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.44 5.70786347227 60% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.208662258817 0.218282227539 96% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0467781017734 0.0743258471296 63% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0676517071647 0.0701772020484 96% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.11175402179 0.128457276422 87% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0845367264881 0.0628817314937 134% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 10.6 14.3799401198 74% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 62.68 48.3550499002 130% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 8.7 12.197005988 71% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.02 12.5979740519 87% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.84 8.32208582834 94% => OK
difficult_words: 94.0 98.500998004 95% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.8 11.1389221557 79% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.