The following is taken from a memo from the advertising director of the Super Screen Movie Production Company.
"According to a recent report from our marketing department, during the past year, fewer people attended Super Screen-produced movies than in any other year. And yet the percentage of positive reviews by movie reviewers about specific Super Screen movies actually increased during the past year. Clearly, the contents of these reviews are not reaching enough of our prospective viewers. Thus, the problem lies not with the quality of our movies but with the public's lack of awareness that movies of good quality are available. Super Screen should therefore allocate a greater share of its budget next year to reaching the public through advertising."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The advertising director proposes to increase the budget to reach the public via advertising due to his analysis that the problem stemmed from the lack of awareness of the movie production by Super Screen instead of the poor quality of the movies. His analysis may seem plausible at first glance, but more questions need to be answered before any suggestion is made.
To begin with, the director believes that the root cause of the fewer attendees of Super Screen-produced movies last year lies in the lack of publicity instead of the quality of the movies because the percentage of positive reviews actually increased at the same time. However, there is no causality between these two phenomena since they are independent of each other. The most obvious difference between these two phenomena is that attendees are people who enjoy the movie off-line while people who leave positive reviews are another group who are active online. Therefore, questions on the real sources of these two groups and their relative behavior differences need to be answered before making any causal relationship.
Additionally, it is premature to claim that there is no quality issue simply due to the growing percentage of positive reviews because it is possible that people who dislike the movies just don't express their ideas online. Hence, in order to know whether the quality issues exist or not, it is critical to understand both groups who wrote the positive and negative comments. Only by doing so, can the director claim his argument without bias.
Lastly, it is true that attendees were dropping last year, but we still don't know the root cause of the drop. There might be several reasons to contribute to the dropping issue, such as they target wrong audiences, they release the movies too often or the actors in the movie are not famous enough etc.. Thus, it is pertinent to analyze the root cause before any action is taken. Otherwise, even though the budget does allocate to advertising after the director's suggestion, the expected outcome may not happen due to the wrong understanding of the real problem. To be exact, questions on the critical contributors to the dropping viewers need to be answered first, then the following suggestions can be formed with efficacy.
In conclusion, the director's suggestions can not convince the readers in that he makes incorrect causal relationship from two independent phenomena. Also, his analysis of the root cause is biased due to his lack of understanding of both the positive and negative comments and wrongly leverages the growth of positive comments as the evidence to support no quality issue. Finally, no enough evidence is provided to support the root cause of the dropping viewers.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 11 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 452 350
No. of Characters: 2237 1500
No. of Different Words: 209 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.611 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.949 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.636 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 166 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 128 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 90 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 48 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 28.25 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.709 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.875 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.347 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.579 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.085 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 191, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
...that people who dislike the movies just dont express their ideas online. Hence, in o...
^^^^
Line 7, column 73, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
...s were dropping last year, but we still dont know the root cause of the drop. There ...
^^^^
Line 7, column 302, Rule ID: DOUBLE_PUNCTUATION
Message: Two consecutive dots
Suggestion: .
...s in the movie are not famous enough etc.. Thus, it is pertinent to analyze the ro...
^^
Line 7, column 454, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'directors'' or 'director's'?
Suggestion: directors'; director's
... does allocate to advertising after the directors suggestion, the expected outcome may no...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, finally, first, hence, however, if, lastly, may, so, still, then, therefore, thus, while, in conclusion, such as, it is true, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 27.0 28.8173652695 94% => OK
Preposition: 65.0 55.5748502994 117% => 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: 2289.0 2260.96107784 101% => OK
No of words: 450.0 441.139720559 102% => OK
Chars per words: 5.08666666667 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.6057793516 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.66992486138 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 216.0 204.123752495 106% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.48 0.468620217663 102% => OK
syllable_count: 728.1 705.55239521 103% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => 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: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 58.6537550015 57.8364921388 101% => OK
Chars per sentence: 134.647058824 119.503703932 113% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.4705882353 23.324526521 113% => OK
Discourse Markers: 9.41176470588 5.70786347227 165% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.17237201847 0.218282227539 79% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0522923781962 0.0743258471296 70% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0673942169252 0.0701772020484 96% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.097050968405 0.128457276422 76% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0589314422734 0.0628817314937 94% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.8 14.3799401198 110% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 45.09 48.3550499002 93% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.54 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.47 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 101.0 98.500998004 103% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 19.0 12.3882235529 153% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.