The following is a memorandum from the business manager of a television station.
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.
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.
According to the business manager, in order to boost the number of viewers and increase advertising revenue, the station should increase the coverage of weather and local news. A number of assumptions have been made in this argument which we need to examine critically to decide if the argument is valid.
To begin with, it is assumed that local businesses cancel their advertising because of the reduction of time for weather and local news. There are many other possible reasons why they have done so. Maybe the overall economy is in recession and the businesses has to reduce their expenses by cancelling the advertising. Or maybe they are not happy with the design of the advertising or find the advertising rather ineffective. If this is the case, the quality of the advertising has to be improved to address the problem. In other words, if the assumption does not hold true, expanding the relevant sections would not help increase the advertising revenue.
Another assumption is that the complaints about local news and weather are necessarily about the relatively short coverage of these topics. Maybe the viewers are unhappy about the inaccuracy of the weather forecast on certain days and complain about it. Or perhaps the viewers do not like the reporting style of the anchors for local news. In fact, the complaints can be filed against many different aspects of the local news or weather reports and have nothing to do with the duration. If the assumption about the complaints is incorrect, the argument would not be very strong.
The final assumption made in this argument is about the reason why the station has lost viewers. It is implicitly assumed that viewers are lost because of the reductio in local news and weather coverage. But there could be other reasons why the viewers stop watching the programs from the station. Maybe the quality of national news from the station is not very good or other sources of national news from the Internet are more informative or comprehensive. Even if the viewers are interested in national news, they may follow national news via other means. Again if the station lost viewers for reasons other than local news or weather, the proposed change would not make a difference.
In conclusion, more information needs to be gathered to examine the assumptions discussed above in order to evaluate the validity of the argument.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
the businesses has to reduce their expenses
the businesses have to reduce their expenses
Sentence: It is implicitly assumed that viewers are lost because of the reductio in local news and weather coverage.
Error: reductio Suggestion: reduction
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argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- not exactly. Look at the conclusion:
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.
while you focused on 'lost viewers'.
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and better switch argument 1 and argument 2 by the order in the topic.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 1 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 398 350
No. of Characters: 1945 1500
No. of Different Words: 171 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.467 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.887 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.583 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 132 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 119 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 71 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 39 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.9 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 4.194 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.55 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.341 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.561 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.124 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 386, Rule ID: NUMEROUS_DIFFERENT[1]
Message: Use simply 'many'.
Suggestion: many
...ct, the complaints can be filed against many different aspects of the local news or weather re...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, if, may, so, as to, in conclusion, in fact, in other words, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 4.0 13.6137724551 29% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 16.0 28.8173652695 56% => OK
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2000.0 2260.96107784 88% => OK
No of words: 398.0 441.139720559 90% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.02512562814 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.46653527281 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.64361729572 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 173.0 204.123752495 85% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.434673366834 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 634.5 705.55239521 90% => 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
Interrogative: 0.0 0.471057884232 0% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 27.7111890759 57.8364921388 48% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 100.0 119.503703932 84% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.9 23.324526521 85% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.9 5.70786347227 68% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 16.0 6.88822355289 232% => Less negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.167763944126 0.218282227539 77% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0610593693822 0.0743258471296 82% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0673985645941 0.0701772020484 96% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.118434170077 0.128457276422 92% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0506881286295 0.0628817314937 81% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.2 14.3799401198 85% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.89 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.59 8.32208582834 91% => OK
difficult_words: 76.0 98.500998004 77% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => 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 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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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.