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 time 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 just canceled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to the program and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level."
The plan aimed at attracting more viewers for the late-night news program and avoiding the loss of advertising revenue is based on a number of unwarranted assumptions. The plan is not likely to succeed since the success depends on the unstated assumptions and is not based on logical reasoning. Thus, if the assumptions are proven not to hold true, the plan will not lead to the expected results.
First and foremost, the manager fails to present detailed information about the complaints received from the users. Were the complaints about the quality of the weather and local news or the quantity? Did the viewers want to see more news about the weather and local issues or more? Without having any information about the content of the complaints, this matter cannot be used as an argument in favor of this plan.
Similarly, there is no information presented as to why the businesses have canceled their advertising contracts. There is no logical link between an increased time devoted to international news and businesses canceling their contracts. A possible reason for the cancellations could be that the number of viewers of the late-night program has decreased, or that the groups of people watching news at that time of day are not interested in what the businesses are promoting. Therfore, a survey should be done in order to identify the reason why these businesses have chosen to cancel their contracts.
Finally, it is assumed that reverting to the previous time table would increase the number of viewers and avoid further cancelations of advertising contracts. This is merely an assumption and the manager fails to provide the reason why the schedule was changed in the first place. The reason may be that viewers wanted more international news. It might even be the case that very few viewers want to watch news late at night, and regardless of how the program is organized, the viewers remain low. Without surveying the viewers and the businesses about their preferances, there is no way to deduce that the plan would work as expected.
All in all, the manager fails to provide crucial information to support his claim that the plan will mitigate the situation. The success of the plan depends on numerous unstated assumptions. Therefore, further research should be carried out to identify whether these assumptions hold true before proceeding with the plan.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 1 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 7 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 393 350
No. of Characters: 1945 1500
No. of Different Words: 181 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.452 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.949 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.693 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 139 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 114 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 71 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.684 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.798 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.368 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.328 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.58 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.113 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
finally, first, if, may, similarly, so, therefore, thus, as to, in the first place
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 20.0 28.8173652695 69% => OK
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 7.0 16.3942115768 43% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1993.0 2260.96107784 88% => OK
No of words: 393.0 441.139720559 89% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.07124681934 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.45244063426 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.77650703538 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 182.0 204.123752495 89% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.4631043257 0.468620217663 99% => OK
syllable_count: 606.6 705.55239521 86% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 38.5279694785 57.8364921388 67% => OK
Chars per sentence: 104.894736842 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.6842105263 23.324526521 89% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.31578947368 5.70786347227 76% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => 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: 0.214735625587 0.218282227539 98% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0705089396231 0.0743258471296 95% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0693899094342 0.0701772020484 99% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.114130520482 0.128457276422 89% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0639919878115 0.0628817314937 102% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.8 14.3799401198 89% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 59.64 48.3550499002 123% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.13 12.5979740519 96% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.88 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 81.0 98.500998004 82% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => 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.